CNN Has Covered The UK Covid-19 Variant More Than 4x MSNBC And Fox News Combined With 3x The Number Of Interviewed Doctors

 March 2, 2021

The analysis and report below was compiled by the Media-Data Research Consortium (M-DRC) leveraging the television news annotation dataset created under the M-DRC's Google Cloud COVID-19 Research Grant "Quantifying the COVID-19 Public Health Media Narrative Through TV & Radio News Analysis.”

There are significant differences between three leading U.S. cable TV news networks in their coverage of the looming threat of the COVID-19 “UK variant” B.1.1.7. The differences are evident in the number of times the variant was mentioned in the on screen text, number of expert medical doctors interviewed and – perhaps most importantly – in the time devoted to segments with those medical experts.  CNN has covered the UK variant 4x as much as its peers MSNBC and Fox News combined, with 3 times the number of interviewed medical experts, addressing what the FCC has called the critical information needs of communities.

CNN 

19 Medical Doctors 

3,299 seconds of segments devoted to MDs discussing UK variant

MSNBC

4 Medical Doctors

299  seconds of segments devoted to MDs discussing UK variant

Fox News

2 Medical Doctors

510 seconds of a segment devoted to a MDs discussing UK variant

 

The Threat Of The COVID-19 UK Variant To the US

There is rising concern that not enough attention in the U.S. is being paid to the faster spreading and currently most prevalent of the COVID-19 variants, the  “UK” variant B.1.1.7.  Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH in a recent podcast and interview likened the risk to the U.S. of a UK variant infection as a “Category five hurricane” and that "everything points to the threat being severe and needing preparation actions right now” with "everything governors and mayors are doing right now is going to help this virus basically take off. So my conclusion right now is not to prepare for a possible Category five hurricane would be irresponsible.”  

Also in a letter to the White House, the CDC Director and Dr. Fauci, “Immediate Action is Needed to Address SARS-CoV-2 Inhalation Exposure,” Osterholm and other leading experts stated, "unless strengthened precautionary measures are implemented, the new variants will likely bring an explosion in new infections."

In addition to increasing medical risks, these new “successful” mutations are challenging policy makers to consider revising vaccination regimes and their messaging to a public already suffering exposure to a COVID-19 infodemic of false or misleading information.  First Draft is empowering journalists and other public health communicators with resources to help them give citizens reliable guidance.  Twitter has recently enhanced its approaches to flag or remove COVID-19 misleading information.  However, little attention is being given to identifying and addressing underreporting of important public health developments.  Our research flags one such void, a significant difference between cable news network coverage of the rapidly evolving potential threat of the UK variant.  We also demonstrate the utility of quantitative analytic approaches, and tools, for identifying other discontinuities in reporting of consequential public health news.

Methodology

The on-screen text of every frame of every second of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News programs, from December 1, 2020 through February 26, 2021 was analyzed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) available via the AI TV Explorer, built on top of The Internet Archive’s TV News Archive.  An OCR search was made for the coincident on-screen appearance of the abbreviation “Dr” AND ("uk" or "united kingdom" or "B.1.1.7") OR either of these words ("variant" or "mutant" or "mutation" or "strain").  Search results revealed segments during which medical doctors were being interviewed about the UK variant.  The words appeared in lower third text strips (Chyrons) often used to identify the name, title and affiliation of an interviewee.

The AI TV Explorer search results include the date/time of every second OCR search terms are detected, and thumbnails of each detection which are linked to relevant portions of each program playable through the TV News Archive.  We inspected each occurrence and used the TV News Archive interface to mark the beginning and end of each relevant segment during which a physician was interviewed about the UK variant.  Physician names and affiliations displayed in the Chyrons were recorded along with the durations of each of these precision reference quotes.  See Table 1 for counts of the OCR detections (in seconds), number of individual doctors appearing and the duration of each relevant interview segment. Links to the video in the TV News Archive of each interview segment quoted are presented in Appendix I.

Results

CNN has presented more than 3 times the number of experts and 4 times the air-time devoted to medical doctor commentary regarding the UK variant than MSNBC and Fox News—combined.

Cable TV News 12/1/20 – 2/26/21
MD’s Commenting on SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 "UK Variant"
AI TV Explorer search 12/1/20 – 2/22/20 seconds on-screen OCR detection of search terms Number of Individual Dr's commenting on UK variant Seconds of air time of segments devoted to Dr's addressing UK variant
CNN 3,713 19 2628
MSNBC 131 4 229
Fox News 277 2 510
Total 4694 25 4038
% of total
CNN 79% 76% 82%
MSNBC 15% 16% 6%
Fox News 6% 8% 13%

Matching Clips

Cable TV News   12/1/20 – 2/26/21: MD’s Commenting on SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 “UK Variant”

CNN

AI TV Explorer search query: (ocr:"UK" OR ocr:"UNITED KINGDOM" OR ocr:"B.1.1.7") AND (ocr:"VARIANT" OR ocr:"MUTANT" OR ocr:"MUTATION" OR ocr:"STRAIN") AND ocr:"DR" AND Station:CNN AND PublicationDate>=12/1/2020 AND PublicationDate<=2/26/2021 23:59:59 UTC

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Dr. Mark McClellan  Director, Duke-Margolis Center

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases

Dr. Peter Hotez Professor and Dean of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director; Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases; Dr. Peter Hotez Professor and Dean of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Peter Hotez Professor and Dean of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Professor of Medicine and Surgery, George Washington University

Dr. Leana Wen CNN Medical Analyst

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Dr. Ashish Jha Dean, Brown University School of Public Health

Dr. Mark McClellan  Director, Duke-Margolis Center

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director

Dr. Mark McClellan  Director, Duke-Margolis Center

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director

Dr. Leana Wen CNN Medical Analyst

Dr. Leana Wen CNN Medical Analyst

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed  Epidemiologist, Former Detroit Health Commissioner

Dr. Jorge Rodriguez  Internal Medicine & Viral Specialist

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Roshini Raj  Associate Professor of Medicine, NYU Langone Health

Dr. David Nicholl  Consultant Neurologist, City Hospital, Birmingham, England

Dr. Francis Collins  Director, U.S. National Institutes of Health

Dr. Celine Gounder  Former Member, Biden-Harris Transition COVID Advisory Board

Dr. Ashish Jha Dean, Brown University School of Public Health

Dr. Ashish Jha Dean, Brown University School of Public Health

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Dr. Jorge Rodriguez  Internal Medicine & Viral Specialist

Dr. Seema Yasmin  CNN Medical Analyst

Dr. Megan Ranney  Medical Physician, Brown University

  • 111-second segment quote: 

https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20201231_200000_The_Lead_With_Jake_Tapper/start/2446.7/end/2558.6

Dr. Peter Drobac  Infectious Disease Expert, University of Oxford

Dr. Amesh Adalja  Fellow, Infectious Diseases Society of America

Dr. Michael Mina  Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

Dr. Ashish Jha Dean, Brown University School of Public Health

Dr. William Schaffner  Professor, Infectious Diseases, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Dr. Francis Collins  Director, U.S. National Institutes of Health

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director

MSNBC

AI TV Explorer search query: (ocr:"UK" OR ocr:"UNITED KINGDOM" OR ocr:"B.1.1.7") AND (ocr:"VARIANT" OR ocr:"MUTANT" OR ocr:"MUTATION" OR ocr:"STRAIN") AND ocr:"DR" AND Station:MSNBC AND PublicationDate>=12/1/2020 AND PublicationDate<=2/26/2021 23:59:59 UTC

Dr. Peter Hotez Professor and Dean of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Amesh Adalja  Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security

Dr. Anthony Fauci Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases

Dr. Bernard Ashby  Florida State Lead for the Committee to Protect Medicine

Fox News

AI TV Explorer search query: (ocr:"UK" OR ocr:"UNITED KINGDOM" OR ocr:"B.1.1.7") AND (ocr:"VARIANT" OR ocr:"MUTANT" OR ocr:"MUTATION" OR ocr:"STRAIN") AND ocr:"DR" AND Station:FOXNEWS AND PublicationDate>=12/1/2020 AND PublicationDate<=2/26/2021 23:59:59 UTC

 Dr. Marty Makary  Fox News Medical Contributor

Dr. Janette Newseiwat Fox News Medical Contributor

Dr. Marty Makary  Fox News Medical Contributor