Coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency on the three major TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—was overwhelmingly negative in 2018, just like it was the year before, but despite the adverse focus on his administration, public opinion on the president has actually improved.

Excluding neutral statements on the Trump administration, the tone was 90 percent negative versus 10 percent positive in 2018, a report published on Jan. 15 from the Media Research Center (MRC) found.

Despite this, Trump’s approval ratings actually improved during the year from a 40 percent rating on Jan. 1 to a 42.7 percent approval rating on Dec. 31, according to an analysis by RealClearPolitics.

Trump’s presidency was again the biggest story of 2018, as it was in 2017, with almost 87 hours or 28 percent of all evening news airtime dedicated to it. Those numbers were, in fact, lower than the 99 hours of coverage in 2017.

“To determine the spin of news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about the President or his administration from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as experts or voters,” Rich Noyes, MRC’s Research Director explained in the report.

Similarly, a 2017 report by Pew Research Center found reporting on Trump has been the most negative compared to other presidents over the past 25 years. Their analysis across 24 different media organizations on the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency revealed only 5 percent of media reporting during the period was positive.

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https://www.theepochtimes.com/tv-networks-coverage-of-trump-90-negative-in-2018_2767472.html