BROADCAST BIAS: Networks side with church invaders, call attack mostly ‘peaceful’

Media coverage reveals bias as networks spend little time reporting Minnesota church protest that disrupts Sunday service, despite resulting criminal charges.

Overall, the church protest, when it had to be mentioned, was merged into the constant template of "growing protests" and "rising tensions" – in other words, we’re going to play this story as long as we can. 

But through mid-week, through early Wednesday morning, these networks could only muster two minutes and 43 seconds between them on their morning and evening newscasts. Most of that was NBC, because reporter Maggie Vespa offered Armstrong a platform to proclaim, "They need to be investigating Jonathan Ross for the killing of Renee Good, not trying to weaponize their power against nonviolent, peaceful demonstrators." Armstrong wasn’t asked how disrupting (and basically ending) a church service is "peaceful."

ABC gave this invasive protest 51 seconds overall in those first three news cycles, and CBS News – the supposedly Trump-friendly network under new boss Bari Weiss – gave it only 14 seconds to that point.