pressrelations Study: Trump Dominates Media Coverage, Especially Among Unreliable Media

According to a new pressrelations study on media credibility in the US election, even though President Trump falls well behind challenger Joe Biden in current polls, he dominates international media coverage.

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Business Wire, Inc.Business Wire, Inc.
Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
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Tags: 
White House, Federal Government, Public policy, Government, Communications, Social media, Elections, Campaigns, Public relations, Investor relations, Donald Trump, Articles, Presidents of the United States, Politicians, American people of German descent, Right-wing populism in the United States, Joe Biden, Credibility, Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign
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United States, Texas
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PRESSRELATIONS
Summary
Key Points: 
  • According to a new pressrelations study on media credibility in the US election, even though President Trump falls well behind challenger Joe Biden in current polls, he dominates international media coverage.
  • Unreliable media outlets in particular report positively on Trump.
  • The more trustworthy the outlet, the more neutral it reports on Biden, and the more negative its coverage of Trump.
  • To evaluate the trustworthiness of media sources, the study relies on NewsGuards scores as integrated into the media monitoring portal NewsRadar.


According to a new pressrelations study on media credibility in the US election, even though President Trump falls well behind challenger Joe Biden in current polls, he dominates international media coverage. Unreliable media outlets in particular report positively on Trump. The analysis is based on more than 25,000 manually coded US, German, Austrian, and Swiss online articles and TV reports, and more than 3,000 tweets by both presidential candidates.

The analysis shows that the reliability of a source is clearly related to the sentiment of its articles. The more trustworthy the outlet, the more neutral it reports on Biden, and the more negative its coverage of Trump. In return, the lower the credibility of a source, the more negative its tone towards Biden while more positive towards Trump. Credible media sources also deal with false reports much more intensively, the study found. Less trustworthy media tend to report one-sidedly and avoid fact-checking Trump.

In September, Biden's share of exclusive coverage shrunk from 15 to only 9 percent. Trump currently has twice as many exclusive TV and online articles, and more than twice the reach. The situation is very different when it comes to the candidates’ activity on Twitter. With his tweets, Biden achieves on average 36 percent more interactions than the incumbent president — and that with less than an eighth of the followers of Trump.

To evaluate the trustworthiness of media sources, the study relies on NewsGuard’s scores as integrated into the media monitoring portal NewsRadar.

The analysis also serves as a basis to further develop the joint project of pressrelations and the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE — an AI system for identifying potential false reports. The current study is available for download at http://pressrelations.news/election. A final report covering the entire survey period from August 01 to November 03, 2020, will be published after the election.

About pressrelations

Founded in 2001, pressrelations GmbH, based in Dusseldorf and with further locations in Austin (Texas), Berlin, Dublin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Moscow, Singapore, and Sofia, is a service provider for cross-media monitoring and analysis services. The company combines proprietary NewsRadar technology with the expertise of its news managers, analysts, and consultants. pressrelations provides more than 500 clients with practical insights and recommendations for planning, controlling, and evaluating their communications work.

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