This late in the Republican primary, Fox News host Sean Hannity has decided to step up his "Hannitization" game. Simple softballs just aren't enough anymore, so the host of Hannity is now mitigating criticism against Republican presidential candidates from other conservatives.
In a November 14 interview with Newt Gingrich, Hannity derided conservative columnist Kathleen Parker as “a CNN conservative which isn't a real conservative” because of her remarks on CBS' Face the Nation about Gingrich: “Well, he's certainly the flavor of the week. And Newt Gingrich does very, very well in debates. You know, he's not really much of a campaigner. In fact, he's been described as sort of a misanthrope. That would be sort of interesting, wouldn't it? To have a misanthropic President.”
Hannity conveniently re-characterized her statements about Gingrich by saying that she's “accusing [Gingrich] now of hating mankind.”
So who's winning the Fox Primary? Each week at Media Matters, we watch the interviews, crunch the numbers, and tell you what Fox is up to in the presidential campaign.
Last Week's Results
Total time: 2 hours and 26 minutes; Total appearances: 20
Most Total Airtime on Fox: Newt Gingrich (34 minutes)
Most Total Appearances: Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney (3 appearances each)
Fox Show with the Most Total Candidate Airtime: Your World with Neil Cavuto (35 minutes)
Fox Show with the Most Candidate Appearances: Your World with Neil Cavuto (4 appearances)
Longest Candidate Interview: Hannity (15 minutes with Newt Gingrich)
Softball Question(s) of the Week: During the Novemeber 18 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry this:
O'REILLY: Do you believe that Barack Obama -- the person, not the President, the person because a lot of conservatives do believe this -- doesn't like America?
(A table of the November 14 - 20 data is available here.)
The Numbers Since June 1
Total time: 61 hours and 9 minutes; Total appearances: 505
Most Total Airtime on Fox since June 1: Herman Cain (9 hours and 50 minutes)
Most Total Appearances since June 1: John Bolton (67 appearances)
Fox Show with the Most Total Candidate Airtime Since June 1: On the Record with Greta Van Susteren (10 hours and 15 minutes)
Fox Show with the Most Candidate Appearances since June 1: On the Record with Greta Van Susteren (75 appearances)
Longest Candidate Interview since June 1: Stossel (40 minutes with Gary Johnson)
(A table of all the data since June 1 is available here.)
Previous Fox Primary Reports
June 1 - 5
June 6 - 12
June 13 - 19
June 20 - 26
June 27 - July 4
July 5 - 10
July 11 - 17
July 18 - 24
July 25 - 31
August 1 - 7
August 8 - 14
August 15 - 21
August 22 - 28
August 29 - September 4
September 5 - 11
September 12 - 18
September 19 - 25
September 26 - October 2
October 3 - 9
October 10 - 16
October 17 - 23
October 24 - 30
October 31 - November 6
November 7 - 13
Methodology
Media Matters searched the Nexis database for all guest appearances on Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, and Fox News Sunday for the 10 declared and potential presidential candidates in question: Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum.
For programs where a transcript was unavailable, Media Matters reviewed the raw video.
Changes to the reports
Media Matters added McCotter to the data beginning on June 20 and Roemer beginning on July 21. We stopped including McCotter on September 22; he dropped out of the race that day.
We stopped including Pawlenty and Trump in the data beginning on August 14; Pawlenty dropped out of the race on that date. And while Trump stated that he would no longer seek the Republican nomination but may instead run as an independent (on June 1, the beginning of this report), we decided to drop him from the data on this date.
We stopped including Bolton in the data beginning on September 6; Bolton decided not to run on this date.
We stopped including Palin in the data after her decision not to run was made on October 5.
We stopped including Giuliani in the data after he announced on October 11 that he would not run.