So I heard on one of the news shows I was watching last night, that a Harvard study of the media determiend that 93% of CNN’s coverage of Trump was negative.  Furthermore, to quote the Washington Times coverage of the study:

“The Harvard team found that CBS coverage was 91 percent negative and 9 percent positive. New York Times coverage was 87 percent negative and 13 percent positive,” Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner. “Washington Post coverage was 83 percent negative and 17 percent positive. Wall Street Journal coverage was 70 percent negative and 30 percent positive. And Fox News coverage also leaned to the negative, but only slightly: 52 percent negative to 48 percent positive.”

News Busters captured this Chyron from CNN’s John King.

CNN: TRUMP IS RESPONSIBLE FOR INCITING THE BOMBER. HE NEEDS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.
(At least @mkhammer insisted rhetoric doesn't = violence) pic.twitter.com/KjkGGPSaMK

— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) October 25, 2018

Most recently in the Senate campaign of John James, a small town reporter from the Huron Daily Tribune, accidentally left her thoughts of James on his voicemail.

Clearly, we expect her write-up of James to be unbiased.

We all know that a politician suing the media for libel is almost impossible.

How much of  challenge would it be to say that when a media organization is so overwhelmingly biased against one candidate or side, and so overwhelmingly biased towards another, that that coverage – especially the opinion coverage – is not news but political advertisement and an in-kind donation by a media source.

Then calculate what  the dollar value would be if a candidate tried to buy that much negative airtime against an opponent.

Then have the FEC sue these media organizations for that value in unreported in-kind donations in excess of FEC limits.

At the very least, it would make a very interesting First Amendment case.