In July, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continued to heavily favor Fox News for interviews. The conservative network aired more than two hours of interviews with Trump during the month, more than all other outlets we studied combined.
Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz noted in early July that Trump and his advisers had changed the candidate’s strategy towards media appearances, largely turning down requests to appear on outlets other than Fox News. That strategy seems to largely remain in effect, at least in terms of Fox’s main cable competitors: CNN and MSNBC did not air any interviews with Trump in July, while he appeared on Fox 10 times during the month.
During an interview with The Washington Post, Trump acknowledged his refusal to appear on CNN, telling reporter Philip Rucker, “I don’t do interviews with CNN anymore because it’s not worth it. It’s very biased against me.” (Despite Trump’s objections about CNN's coverage, the network employs several pro-Trump pundits, including his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.)
Overall, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News aired a combined 3 hours and 14 minutes of interviews with Trump during the month, compared to 2 hours and 4 minutes for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Since the beginning of June 2016, news programs on the broadcast networks and the three major cable news channels have aired 8 hours and 15 minutes of interviews with Trump, compared to 4 hours and 20 minutes of interviews with Clinton. The majority of Trump’s airtime has come from Fox News; the only qualifying Trump interview on MSNBC to air since the start of this study in June was a three-and-a-half-minute preview of a June 23 Lester Holt interview with the candidate.
Methodology
From July 1 through July 31, Media Matters tracked every interview of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on the three cable networks from 6 a.m. through midnight, and we tracked interviews on ABC's Good Morning America, World News Tonight with David Muir, 20/20, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos; CBS' CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes, and Face the Nation with John Dickerson; and NBC's Today, Nightly News with Lester Holt, Dateline, and Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. We included all original interviews. We included repeats of interviews if aired in their entirety or if a significant, uninterrupted portion was aired on a different show. Previews of upcoming interviews were included if a significant, uninterrupted portion was aired. A significant, uninterrupted portion needed to be at least 3 minutes in length to be included in this study. Clips shorter than 3 minutes of past or upcoming interviews were not included. Interviews were timed from the moment the guest was introduced to the moment the guest left the show.