Supporters cheer as President Joe Biden arrives on stage for a political rally at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Philadelphia, Saturday, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti)

I had to do a double take the other day when I stumbled upon a cable news interview with a Biden voter. It was unexpected and rare, like finding a four-leaf clover or winning the lottery. One of those impossible things you can’t imagine ever happening no matter how hard you try. But it happened — at least this one time.

Here’s the clip of that brief interview so you can see for yourself. You’ll note that not only does this New Hampshire voter support Joe Biden, he is actually articulating normal reasons for doing so, including Biden’s progress on building infrastructure and fighting climate change. No crazy conspiracy theories or support for authoritarian policies.

Even though there are millions more Biden voters than Trump voters (something everyone but the election deniers know), it is a lot harder to find stories about them. Why is that? Surely, there are interesting stories to tell about the diverse Biden coalition. But interesting is not outrageous, and too many news organizations are still addicted to the promise of clicks from Trump-related content.

The media’s Trump voter fixation began in 2016 when after completely failing to understand the Trump phenomenon, the news media sent mobs of reporters out to local diners to interview Trump voters. Eight years later, they are still doing it. As a former broadcast news executive, I can tell you that eight-year-old stories are not news.

Just this past weekend, the ABC news program “This Week” spent seven minutes talking to three die-hard Trump voters from Pennsylvania. Why? Reporter Martha Raddatz said it’s because “more 72 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and it’s important to understand why.”

Really, Martha? In 2020, 81,282,916 people voted for Joe Biden. But so far, ABC hasn’t done a special segment on any of them.

Media critic and former newspaper editor Mark Jacob says the obsession with Trump voters is because, “The mainstream media is mostly made up of privileged, well educated people, often on the coasts, who see red-state, working-class Trump voters as some great mystery. Therefore they conduct anthropological missions to investigate them. On the other hand, they understand Biden voters, so they ignore them.” 

It’s bad journalism to cover one side of the story in this fashion. I’ve been critical of “both sides” news reporting because it’s become warped by journalists who report both sides of stories that only have one side. (Here’s the piece I wrote about that problem.) But in this case, I think both sides would be good journalism. If a news outlet is talking to Trump voters, they should also talk to Biden voters.

The focus on Trump voters is also misleading. If you just look at the coverage, you might think all white working men are Trump supporters. Never mind that in swing states like Michigan, working class unions like the United Auto Workers are supportive of President Biden. If you look at the coverage of voters generally, because of the bias towards covering Trump’s voters, you will think Trump supporters wearing hats are the most common kind of voter. But the electorate is much more diverse.

I wish the selective focus on Trump voters were an isolated example of the excessive coverage he and his supporters get in the media. It is not. Remember the breathless live shots counting down to his arrival at a podium or on a tarmac? Or the failure to rigorously fact-check him from the very moment he entered the race? All these years later, it’s clear that news organizations are still struggling with how to cover Trump. But at least this past week, some are trying to figure out a smarter way forward.

Take the recent elections. The night of the Iowa caucuses, MSNBC didn’t take Trump’s live remarks because it was concerned about all of the falsehoods he would likely spout. That experiment was modified a week later when the network opted to carry his New Hampshire victory speech with a warning to viewers that it would be on alert for falsehoods. Moments into his remarks, Trump lied about how many times he’d won New Hampshire elections (once, not three times as Trump falsely claimed) and the cable network bailed out. CNN also limited live coverage of Trump’s two victory speeches but gave him more airtime than MSNBC on both nights.

I’m with media critic Margaret Sullivan who says: “Cover Trump fully and fairly? Of course. Broadcast him live as he spews his political talking points? No way.” Former CNN president Jonathan Klein is also in the no live coverage of Trump camp: “I don’t know why anyone has to take him live. Instead, responsible news organizations should monitor what he says and later use material that eliminates or corrects falsehoods,”

Broadcasting live remarks by Joe Biden obviously doesn’t carry quite the same risk. Surely, the press must follow the same rules of rigorously reporting on what the president says, but there’s no concern he’ll actively spread lies on live television. This week, Biden talked about reproductive rights, blue-collar workers and repairing the nation’s infrastructure, and no one had to pull the plug.

The unbalanced coverage problem also extends to the sheer amount of the coverage itself. On Jan. 21, I did a very unscientific scan of the headlines and subheads on homepages of 12 of our leading print and broadcast news organizations. I was shocked to find that Trump’s name appeared 86 times while Biden was mentioned only 12. Not only that, but there were also several outlets including ABC, MSNBC, LA Times, Chicago Tribune and the Miami Herald that didn’t have a single Biden mention on their homepages. Not a single one in a week that included a historic stock market peak, the Eagle Pass immigration legal standoff, the New Hampshire primary, the stop gap funding bill and more.

I think there’s a simple question journalists need to answer: Why, for the first time ever, has the President of the United States received less press coverage during his term than the guy he beat? The answer certainly is not that those stories are more newsworthy. It’s time to rethink that unbalanced coverage and give some attention to the guy in the White House doing normal president stuff. Then, the press can turn to millions of Americans who are eager to explain why they are supporting Joe Biden. Some of them even wear hard hats and go to diners.

Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist who talks media every month on WCPT 820AM on “Live, Local & Progressive with Joan Esposito” with former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob. You can follow her on Threads @jenniferschulzechi or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.

EDITOR’S NOTE (1/29): A previous version of this article stated Schulze did the scan of headlines this past Sunday, Jan. 28. The scan happened on Jan. 21.