President Trump argued Monday night that media coverage of mail bomber Cesar Sayoc was biased when compared with how news outlets treated James T. Hodgkinson’s shooting of Republicans practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game last year. According to the president, Sayoc’s admiration of Trump was heavily emphasized, whereas the coverage of Hodgkinson barely focused on his loyalty to Bernie Sanders. Some media outlets were quick to dismissTrump’s assertion, but he raises an interesting question: Do the data show any validity to the president’s concerns?
On June 14, 2017 Hodgkinson opened fire on a GOP baseball practice, wounding several people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. The identity of the shooter and the fact that he volunteered for Sanders’ presidential campaign was known within hours. Early headlines, including at CNN, clearly pointed out the connection.
However, coverage quickly dropped the association with Sanders, with a Politico article three weeks later referring to the shooter merely as “James Hodgkinson of Illinois.”
In contrast, one of the most striking elements of coverage of last week’s mail bombing campaign was how blame was almost immediately assigned to Trump. Long before even the most basic information was known about the suspect, media personalities and their guests had largely pinned responsibility on the president. As Philippe Reines later put it on MSNBC, “We didn’t know the name of the bomber but we know who to blame.”
The timeline below overlays coverage of the first nine days of coverage after both events, showing the percentage of daily English language online news coverage of the event that mentioned Sanders or Trump, as monitored by the GDELT Project.
