A study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that one cable news channel is trailing the others in covering the Rupert Murdoch/News Corp. phone-hacking scandal — but it probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the channel’s ownership picture.
Fox News might dominate in the cable news race for viewers, but when it comes to covering the recent travails of its corporate owner, News Corp., it’s falling far behind, Pew reports.
The center found that Fox News devoted about one-fifth as much time to the U.K. phone-hacking scandal as MSNBC and one-sixth as much time as CNN.
The study looked at coverage from July 6-8 and from July 11-15, beginning right after revelations that News Corp.’s News of the World tabloid had hacked into the phone of a murdered girl and ending with the resignations of two top News Corp. executives.
Is this because Fox is doing too little or the others are doing too much. For a UK story it is getting an incredible amount of coverage. I could see if one of Murdoch’s US newspapers was involved, but that hasn’t happened yet.
How could Fox News be “lagging behind” when they were running Rupert Murdoch’s testimony before Parliament live?
What Fox News isn’t doing is the usual TMZ-style breathless speculation that passes for news these days.
But Bill, you can’t really think that Fox is being “Fair & Balanced” in their coverage. If this would Sumner Redstone’s company instead of Rupert’s, Fox (as well as CNN & MSNBC) would be all over this.