Well, you’ve already been treated to the E-trade baby and his shocked face, so I’ll spare you
(MRC) Wednesday’s congressional hearings on the September 11 terrorists attacks in Benghazi provided a stark contrast between Fox News Channel and MSNBC. From the time the whistleblower testimony began at 11:36am through their conclusion after 5pm, FNC devoted 108 minutes to simply airing the hearing with no anchor commentary. MSNBC, in comparison didn’t allow any live coverage. Instead, the cable network aired a scant five minutes and 20 seconds of taped snippets of testimony.
CNN came in second, allowing a mere 17 minutes of footage. After the 2pm hour, CNN lost all interest, instead the network’s anchors eagerly promoted the coming verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial. (FNC’s reporting on the story after 2pm dropped off to five minutes of taped footage.) The hearings commenced at 11:36 and so did Fox’s coverage. CNN waited until noon to break in and MSNBC came in last at 12:17 (with a taped report and discussion only).
That’s 108 minutes of live coverage for Fox News, 17 for CNN, and zero for MSNBC.
I’m not particularly surprised that CBS, NBC, and ABC did not provide live coverage, they rarely do, people might lynch them if they pre-empt the soaps. But, let’s look at the evening news
(MRC) In total, the three network evening newscasts gave a combined 19 minutes 12 seconds to coverage of the kidnapping case, while only 10 minutes 3 seconds to the new Benghazi revelations. A nearly 2-to-1 disparity.
[UPDATE: On Thursday night, May 9, ABC’s World News and the CBS Eevening News didn’t mention Benghazi. NBC Nightly News offered 27 seconds on House Speaker John Boehner’s call for the release of State Department e-mails.]
None led with the hearings. Nor did their morning shows on Thursday provide real coverage, only 7 minutes overall to 56 for Jodi Arias. Just imagine if Obama was a Republican, or had John McCain been president. Consider the wall to wall lead story coverage for Abu Ghraib for weeks, an issue which the DoD had been investigating for 6 months prior to being exposed, and conducted by low level soldiers being jerks, where no-one was killed nor really injured, just their feelings.
Related, the talking points for Benghazi were changed 12 times, per ABC’s exclusive (kudos for printing the story, perhaps someone other than CBS’ Sharyl Attkinson is interested in journalism before politics). Obviously, the liberals linked in the Memeorandum pull are spinning furiously.
