You may note that Republican Ron Paul came in second place in Nevada Saturday. You would never know it, however, by listening to/watching the coverage. CBS Radio News would not mention it, for one, at the top of the hour. They, like their Television brethren, focused on South Carolina and briefly the Democratic rankers in NV. MSNBC had a three hour block entitled, "NV Caucus Report" on Comcast listings. During that three hours they only covered SC….it was kind of obvious the pundits and anchors weren’t prepared for this much coverage from that state–including Tim Russert and Brian Williams. No live coverage or reporters in Nevada, nothing reported from Nevada. The bank of reporters must have finally hit the slots.
They ended up talking about everything from what brand of toilet paper McCain prefers to the car Huckabee drove in college, with South Carolina plastered all over the screen. It seemed an obvious change in planned programming. They would occasionally show the democratic win list and percentages in NV, but didn’t seem to follow up with the Republican list. They would briefly mention Hillary’s win in NV.
We watched FOX News, MSNBC and CNN an hour and a half straight skipping around and they just wouldn’t mention Nevada….all SC. Finally, MSNBC mentioned Romney won Nevada’s Republican race and we finally saw a list that included Ron Paul–full screen. But that was it. We never saw Nevada mentioned on CNN or Fox News in the time we were watching. If they did, it must have been minimal. It should be interesting to see what Nevadans think about their state getting absolutely minimum coverage. At least they ran the rankers for the state on the news scroll at the bottom for MSNBC. Perhaps the Ron Paul campaign has a point on media bias. We sure saw it on Saturday night.
