Mainstream Media Gives Laken Riley Murder Trial a Measly 20 Minutes – Sara A. Carter

Newsbusters found that mainstream media outlets ABC, CBS, and NBC barely covered the trial of the murder of Laken Riley while they obsessed over the joke by Tony Hinchcliffe during President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in which the comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

Newsbusters measured the air time the networks dedicated to covering the heartbreaking trial of Laken Riley from Friday, November 15 through Tuesday, November 19, finding that they gave it just 20 minutes and 33 seconds across their top morning and evening news shows as well as their Sunday morning talk shows.

According to Newsbusters:

“ABC’s newscasts — Good Morning America and World News Tonight — fetched nearly half the total at eight minutes and 19 seconds.

Between CBS’s newscasts CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News, Riley’s trial drew only six minutes and 34 seconds.

NBC fell even further back with a measly five minutes and 40 seconds over five days on Today and NBC Nightly News.”

The Sunday morning talk shows (ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press) reportedly gave the trial no coverage.

In comparison, Newsbusters found the networks spent nearly 78 minutes discussing Hinchcliffe’s joke between October 27 to November 1. CBS spent the most time on Hinchcliffe’s joke at 31 minutes and 25 seconds, ABC at nearly 24 minutes, and NBC at nearly 23 minutes.

Newsbusters recalled the dramatic reaction of ABC’s Good Morning America to Hinchcliffe’s joke in which they called it “dark,” “incendiary,” “profane,” and “vulgar.”

For additional comparison, Newsbusters pointed out that ABC, CBS, and NBC covered John Kelly’s declaration that Trump is a “fascist” and “Hitler” for nearly 65 minutes.

The coverage of Laken Riley’s murder trial was also found to be conveniently pieced together on these networks when they did cover it as NBC News correspondent Priya Sridhar ignored that Riley’s mother and stepfather attended a Trump rally and that they placed blame for Riley’s death on the open southern border where millions of illegal migrants have crossed into the United States.