Study: Fox News ‘ignoring’ same-sex marriage court victories
A study has found that Fox News is spending almost no time covering same-sex marriage court victories.
The study, carried out by Media Matters for America, looked at the coverage of news channels MSNBC, CNN and Fox News relating to the recent string of equal marriage victories.
The group found that news coverage of rulings in states that introduced equal marriage in the past year – New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Pennsylvania – was nearly non-existent on Fox.
While MSNBC spent over an hour covering the victories, and CNN more than 15 minutes, 24-hour news channel Fox spared just 2 minutes and 14 seconds to coverage.
In total, looking at all 13 pro-equal marriage rulings since the Defence of Marriage Act was repealed last year, Fox spent a total of just over 10 minutes discussing the court decisions, while two received no Fox coverage at all.
The group wrote: “Fox News is in an awkward position. Anti-equality forces are losing in court ruling after court ruling, and marriage equality supporters have won the battle for public opinion
“Rather than further stake a position on the wrong side of history, it appears Fox News has taken to sidestepping the issue altogether.
“Though Fox News continues to house a number of right-wing holdouts, the network has withdrawn from its battle against same-sex marriage, uninterested in dwelling on the end of an era when warnings of activist judges and slippery slopes could score the network cheap points without raising many eyebrows.
“Now, the marriage equality revolution is passing Fox News by largely unnoticed. It’s a kind of eerie silence that’s almost as newsworthy as the legal victories that induced it.”
