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About to watch all CNN shows minus Wolf Blitzer from noon thru 10 pm today and noting the coverage of Beto. This is going to be brutal.
1) 12 pm Inside Politics: show starts with 10 mins of Beto coverage tho surprisingly there is some mixed coverage w a few panelists going against Beto while others are clearly in the tank for him. 50 minutes in and they give Beto a second segment, its actually fairly negative
2) as they talk about his comments about his wife raising their kids “sometimes with my help”. In total Beto got 13 minutes of fairly even coverage tho I doubt this trend will continue as we go to more pundit/talking head driven shows
1 PM CNN Right Now: Beto gets talked about in second segment as well as in final segment for a total of 11-12 mins of pretty even coverage again
2 PM Brooke Baldwin first hour: Beto coverage in second segment leans positive but relatively fair, 5-6 mins long. They sneak in a second Beto segment that’s only 2 minutes but very superficial and positive. Beto got 8 mins of coverage
3 PM Brooke Baldwin second hour: Beto covered in second segment and the coverage is pretty negative as part of the segment is Bakari Sellers going after him really hard for being an entitled White guy tho Bakari still manages to take a nasty shot at Bernie. 8 minute segment.
1) 4 PM Tapper: Beto coverage in 2nd segment again as Congress blocking Trump has taken some of Beto’s muster. 9 Min Segment is actually brutally negative w all 4 of the panelists taking massive shots at him and even Jake Tapper
2) calling him out on not having policies on his official campaign page. (Kamala Harris has the same issue yet was never called out by CNN for this). 9 mins of very negative coverage for Beto
1) I refuse to watch Blitzer so I’m jumping to 7 PM and Erin Burnett: Beto bumped to third segment as Trump said something absurd about his supporters getting violent which caused them to bump Beto back. Anyway the 10 minute segment is pretty negative
2) w 1 of the 3 person panel being from Texas and being fairly pro-Beto but the 2 CNN regulars going after Beto pretty aggressively. Another 3 minute segment at end that’s neutral. So overall 12-13 mins of mostly negative coverage.
1) 8 pm Anderson 360: Beto covered in second segment and it’s 9 mins long w the guy Cooper’s interviewing being the Vanity Fair writer who is a bit in the tank for Beto but Anderson himself not having it as he also points out the lack of policies on Beto’s campaign page.
2) He then interviews Axelrod about Beto and Axelrod is shilling pretty hard for Beto, but once again Cooper seems a bit dismissive.
1) 9 pm Cuomo: (I’m not doing more afte this) Cuomo interviews KellyAnne Conway who does her weird flirt/fight thing with Cuomo that she always does and at this point I just want it to stop. This isn’t good reporting and it isn’t good television. It’s just painful. Anyway back
2) to Beto, the second segment is on Beto with Cuomo asking, “Is he Beto than Biden and Bernie” and at this point it’s taking all I have to continue watching. It’s 4-5 minutes of pretty neutral coverage. Beto gets a second segment of about 3 neutral minutes for a total of 8 mins
Don Lemon mentioned on Cuomo’s show that they were going to be talking about Beto in his show too.
1) So my conclusion from watching 8 hrs of CNN coverage of Beto is that I was actually pretty surprised at how negative and hostile they were towards him. They gave him tons of coverage, and he would have gotten even more if not for a few breaking news stories throughout the day
2) But it was fairly negative, specifically with people who regularly appear on CNN trashing him and 2 separate hosts calling him out for having no issues page in his campaign website despite the fact they let Kamala get away with not having one ..
3) which brings me to my takeaway. MSNBC coverage was much more positive because MSNBC is more aligned with the Obama side of the party while CNN in many ways is still the Clinton News Network
4) And the few people they had on from Obama’s world were pretty pro Beto such as Axelrod while the Clinton surrogates were less than enamored. And I think the reasoning is that the Clinton people are really in the bag for Kamala and I think they see Beto as a threat to her
5) and that’s why, while Beto’s coverage was much better than Bernie’s on the day he announced as at least Beto got covered on CNN’s primetime shows while Bernie was blacked out, Beto’s coverage was pretty negative and even dismissive.
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