It’s usually big news when someone close to the President of the United States goes on trial. Or maybe it isn’t.
It all just depends on the mainstream media and what their agenda is. The Media Research Center crunched the numbers. Coverage of the Paul Manafort trial from the over the air networks got over two minutes of coverage per night. But the trials of President Bill Clinton's Whitewater business partners, Jim and Susan McDougal got just 36 seconds per night on the network news in 1996.
“The liberal narrative is that they have to do everything they can to stop Donald Trump,” Geoffrey Dickens, the MRC's Deputy Research Director, told KTRH. “And back in the Clinton days they brushed everything under the rug.”
Dickens says there used to be a time when the media at least tried to show that they were impartial; the key word being 'tried.'
“You don’t see that now. It’s just naked that they are pushing the agenda and there is no objectivity,” Dickens explained.
In total, the Manafort trial got over 50 minutes of coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC in just 22 days of coverage. The three networks, for the 87 days of the Whitewater trials, gave it over 51 minutes of coverage.