While high prescription drug costs affect millions of Americans, and lawmakers are constantly working to tackle the issue, televised evening news programs rarely report on rising medication costs, according to a study from the progressive nonprofit research group Media Matters.
For the study, Media Matters examined transcripts of weekday evening news programs on broadcast television and other weekday evening news shows on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC from Dec. 6, 2016 to March 10, 2017. The group looked for mentions of buzzwords like "drug," "cost" and "prescription" to identify and record how many segments each channel featured on high drug costs. Prime-time events like town halls or public debates were not included.
Here's the breakdown.
Broadcast evening news
ABC — zero segments
*Includes data for World News Tonight.
CBS — zero segments
*Includes data for Evening News.
NBC — one segment
*Includes data for Nightly News.
PBS — two segments
*Includes data for NewsHour.
Cable news
CNN — four segments
*Includes data for Situation Room, Outfront, Anderson Cooper 360 and CNN Tonight.
FOX — four segments
*Includes data for Special Report, First 100 Days, Tucker Carlson Tonight, The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity.
MSNBC — six segments
*Includes data for For The Record, Hardball, All In, Rachel Maddow and Last Word.
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