Since Saturday night’s tragic Colorado Springs shooting at an LGBTQ community safe haven, Club Q, Fox News has covered the incident for just 50 minutes. By contrast, MSNBC has spent more than 5 hours covering the shooting, and CNN has devoted 3 hours.

The attack came just as November 19 turned to November 20, which is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that honors the victims of anti-transgender violence.  Authorities say the Colorado Springs Police responded  6 minutes after receiving reports of gunfire. They arrived at the scene where a lone gunman had killed five people and injured another 25. The 22-year-old alleged assailant, who reportedly had a history of prior violent incidents, used a “long gun” in the attack, according to authorities.

Fox News Live provided the most coverage of any Fox News show, with 21 minutes. Fox was also on the scene early on the morning of November 20 for a live press conference with police that the network broadcast for approximately 10 minutes. The next show, Fox & Friends Weekend,  covered the shooting for 7 minutes; the remaining  Fox shows that did cover the shooting did so for 3 minutes or less each.

While the motivation for the attack is still unknown, for months extremist experts have warned that right wing rhetoric could escalate into potential hate crimes or violence towards the LGBTQ community. Fox News, for its part, along with right-wing media and political figures, have picked up the recently reignited anti-drag, anti-trans crusade that online groups and more fringe figures in right-wing media have been building for months.

 

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for any of the terms “shot,” “gun violence,” “death,” or “attack” or any variation of any of the terms “shoot,” “wound,” “kill,” “injure,” “gunfire,” or “terror” within close proximity of any of the terms “Colorado,” “LGBT,” “LGBTQ,” “gay,” “lesbian,” or “Club Q” or any variation of either of the terms “nightclub” or “Aldrich” (including misspellings) from November 19, 2022, the night before the shooting occurred, through noon ET November 21, 2022.

We included segments, which we defined as instances when the Club Q shooting was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the shooting. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the shooting with one another.

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

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.