Over a three-day period beginning on Saturday, Fox News devoted a fraction of the coverage its cable news counterparts gave to the ongoing surge in U.S. coronavirus cases -- just 53 minutes. In the same time frame, Fox gave more than 2 hours of coverage to its latest obsession, the dubious revelations published by the New York Post regarding Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter and a laptop containing allegedly scandalous emails connecting the elder Biden to long-debunked conspiracy theories about his son’s work at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

By contrast, CNN covered the coronavirus surge for nearly 5 hours over the same period, while MSNBC devoted a bit more than 2 and 1/2 hours.

The U.S. set a record high number of new coronavirus cases in a single day on Friday -- more than 83,000 infections. That record high daily level of new cases continued into Saturday -- even though, historically, coronavirus data typically lags over the weekend -- and yesterday marked a record of more than 70,000 new daily cases averaged over the last seven days, a measure considered more reliable than single-day case counts.

Fox’s simultaneously relentless focus on the thinly sourced Biden story and lack of coronavirus coverage betrays the network’s facade as a legitimate, independent news source rather than an unofficial arm of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “Hunter,” “Biden,” “Bo,” “Beau,” or “Joe” within close proximity of any of the terms “New York Post,” “the Post,” “laptop,” “e-mail,” “email,” “Burisma,” “Pozharskyi,” “MacBook,” “computer," “Shokin,” “Archer,” “Zlochevsky,” “Mesires,” “Bobulinski,” or “Costello” or any variation of the term “Ukraine” from October 24-26, 2020.

We also searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “coronavirus,” “virus,” “COVID,” “COVID-19”, “pandemic,” or “outbreak” from October 24-26, 2020.

We timed any segment related to the New York Post’s Hunter Biden email story or the record number of new US coronavirus cases, which we defined as instances when either story was the stated topic of discussion or when there was “significant discussion” of either, which we defined as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed either. We timed only the relevant portions of such multitopic segments. We also timed passing mentions as well as teasers for upcoming segments about either story. We rounded all times to the nearest minute.