Outrage from Hillary Clinton supporters who insist she has been the victim of media bias is being greeted with eye-rolling from conservatives.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman weighed in Monday with a column accusing reporters of being tougher on the Democratic presidential nominee than on Republican Donald Trump, saying the media are “engaging in innuendo.”
“True, there aren’t many efforts to pretend that Donald Trump is a paragon of honesty. But it’s hard to escape the impression that he’s being graded on a curve. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential,” Mr. Krugman said.
He said the press has paid little attention Mr. Trump’s “multiple scandals,” including the $2,500 penalty the Trump Foundation paid in 2013 for an improper $25,000 donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation,” Mr. Krugman said.
Billionaire “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban has also decried what he called pro-Trump bias on the part of the mainstream media.
“I’ll say it again. The MSM has gone all in on Trump,” Mr. Cuban said in a Sunday tweet.
The complaints drew hoots from the right, given that studies have repeatedly shown that most news coverage tilts leftward and that Democrats working in newsrooms far outnumber Republicans.
Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the conservative Media Research Center, described Mr. Cuban’s comment as the “most delusional thing I’ve seen on Twitter in years.”
Mr. Trump received significantly more coverage than any other Republican presidential contender during primary race, but he has also repeatedly complained of unfair treatment in the press.
“It is being reported by virtually everyone, and is a fact, that the media pile on against me is the worst in American history!” he said in an Aug. 23 tweet.
Mrs. Clinton told CNN in July that she was subject to an unfair “Hillary standard” in the media, which RedState’s Leon Wolf described as “hilarious.”
Research shows neither candidate is a stranger to bad press. A Harvard University study released in June found that Trump coverage grew increasingly negative during the course of the Republican primary season, hitting 61 percent negative and 39 percent positive at the end.
The same study found that Mrs. Clinton had “by far the most negative coverage of any candidate” during the year leading up to the nomination, with her “bad news” exceeding her “good news” in 11 of 12 months.
Meanwhile, an MRC report released in June found that Mr. Trump received four times more negative coverage on network news than did Mrs. Clinton from Jan. 1 to June 7.
Mr. Krugman followed up his column Monday on Twitter with, “True fact: I was reluctant to write today’s col because I knew journos would hate it. But it felt like a moral duty.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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