Last week NewsBusters published a study which found ABC's World News Tonight had spent just 25 seconds covering the widespread Minnesota fraud scandal involving allegedly sham businesses set up by Somalians. As of this morning, Wednesday, January 7, that number has climbed to a still-pitiful 35 seconds. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: ABC's World News Tonight remained almost silent on the story. They have mentioned this scandal just twice, for a total of 35 seconds, and they have spent about three and a half times more airtime portraying Minnesota's Somalian population as the victims of ICE and the Trump administration. NBC Nightly News was initially disinterested in the story until late December, when YouTuber Nick Shirley uploaded a video allegedly showing daycare fraud in the state. Since then, the vast majority of their coverage has revolved around his own independent reporting. They're up to 364 seconds, or just over six minutes. CBS Evening News has diligently covered this scandal, with their total attention paid amounting to 12 minutes and 44 seconds. MRC analysts examined every edition of the big three broadcast networks’ flagship evening newscasts from December 1, 2025 through January 6, 2026, for any discussion of the Minnesota social-services fraud scandal. Through the 6th, ABC still has spent just over half a minute on the story on the evening news. Until this past week all of their coverage was limited to a single 25-second mention during a December 3 report about ICE “sowing fear” among Somalian neighborhoods in the Twin Cities. Anchor David Muir also briefly alluded to the scandal on January 6, 2026, bringing the total up to 35 seconds. Before December 29, NBC’s total coverage amounted to 65 seconds across three different broadcasts. Since then, however, their coverage has climbed to a much more respectable 364 seconds, or just over six minutes. Their more recent reporting has focused almost entirely on the investigative work of journalist Nick Shirley, who uploaded a video in late December which purported to show a throng of fraudulent Somali-run daycares. NBC’s reporters initially seemed credulous of Shirley's investigation, but in a January 5 report they adopted a more skeptical tone, citing a denial by Democratic Governor Tim Walz's administration of any day-care fraud. CBS continued to far outperform its counterparts, granting nearly thirteen minutes of airtime (766 seconds) to the scandal, across six full-length reports and several additional news briefs. CBS remains the only of the three networks to report on the sheer extent of the fraud, which has since allegedly reached as high as $19,000,000,000. ABC spent significantly more time attempting to defend the Somali population in Minnesota and scoffing at President Trump’s harsh criticism of Somalians during a cabinet meeting. This vicarious outrage outpaced their coverage of the actual fraud by approximately 3.5-to-one (122 seconds vs 35 seconds).  Before December 29, NBC’s sympathetic framing of Somalians in Minnesota got over twice as much airtime as the scandal (148 seconds vs 65 seconds). Since then, however, their coverage has become much more focused on the fraud aspect of the story, and they only spent an additional 25 seconds explicitly defending the accused fraudsters. While CBS Evening News co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois routinely adopted this same Somalians-as-the-real-victims framing, the detailed reporting by Jonah Kaplan instead focused primarily on the scandal itself. As a result, CBS was the only network to offer more coverage of the actual fraud allegations than the resulting backlash against the alleged perpetrators (496 seconds vs 103 seconds). While NBC’s sudden interest in this scandal is a positive development, it’s likely they would not have paid it nearly as much attention if not for the work of independent journalists like Nick Shirley, who's been routinely dismissed as a "conservative YouTuber." CBS deserves credit for consistently giving this story its due. In fact, correspondent Jonah Kaplan is the only broadcast reporter who appears to have done real investigative work on this topic, given he’s uncovered and broken new details about the scandal, rather than simply rehashing the work of others. ABC, meanwhile, remains the most journalistically bankrupt of the three big broadcast networks. As of January 7, 2026, anyone who primarily relies on World News Tonight for their news likely has no idea that anything is going on in Minnesota at all – or what exactly is behind Governor Walz's resignation.