After the news of the ruling came out during the 10 a.m. hour of February 6, Fox News dedicated just 10 minutes to the story. CNN and MSNBC dedicated much more time to the ruling, airing 1 hour and 39 minutes and 1 hour and 34 minutes, respectively.

Fox News has repeatedly ignored — and misled its viewers about — Trump's various legal issues, part of a long pattern of hiding Trump's extremism from its viewers. Yet several Fox figures have themselves disputed claims of presidential immunity or called for President Joe Biden to be prosecuted criminally.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within close proximity to any of the terms “trial,” “supreme,” “court,” “election,” “Washington,” “D.C.,” “conspiracy,” “defraud,” or “Capitol” or any variation of any of the terms “rule,” “immunity,” “appeal,” “prosecute,” “January 6,” or “insurrection” from 10 a.m. EST February 6, 2024,  just before a D.C. federal appeals court rejected Trump's immunity claims, through 1 p.m. EST February 6 , 2024.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the ruling rejecting former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claims to shield himself from insurrection charges was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the ruling. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the ruling with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the ruling without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the ruling scheduled to air later in the broadcast.