For Second-Straight Day, Fox Carries Entire Romney Speech Live But Only 3 Minutes Of Obama
Written by Solange Uwimana
Published
For the second day in a row, Fox News devoted extensive coverage to a campaign speech by Mitt Romney, far overshadowing the coverage the network gave President Obama's campaign speech. In fact, Fox News carried Romney's entire 26-minute speech live, while it cut Obama's remarks off after just three minutes.
MSNBC, meanwhile, aired about 14 minutes of Romney's speech as opposed to 15 minutes of Obama's. CNN gave Romney and Obama equal airtime, going back to regular coverage after each had spoken for about 12 minutes.
Fox's America's Newsroom joined Obama's campaign speech in Hilliard, Ohio, at 10:49 a.m. on Friday but cut away at 10:53 to go to commercial. Four minutes later, Fox showed footage of the West Allis, Wisconsin, venue where Romney was scheduled to speak later that day. The hosts then segued to showing footage of Staten Island, New York, while talking about the damage the area sustained because of Hurricane Sandy.
At 11:25 a.m., Fox interrupted a discussion on the recently released October jobs report to go live to West Allis for Romney's speech, which it aired until Romney stopped speaking at 11:53 a.m. Co-host Jon Scott then led a discussion about both campaign speeches with Fox News contributors Monica Crowley and Julie Roginsky.
On Thursday, Fox also aired Romney's entire speech, which lasted almost 25 minutes, but cut away from Obama's remarks after just six minutes. While Obama was speaking in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson attacked him over Hurricane Sandy and what Carlson called the Obama campaign's “incredibly divisive, nasty” tone.
By contrast, MSNBC aired both Thursday speeches in their entirety -- Obama's speech lasted about 23 minutes -- while CNN aired the entire Obama speech and all but the first two minutes of Romney's comments.
According to C-SPAN, Obama's speech in Hilliard lasted a total of about 28 minutes.