Fox news commentator full#

But a similar statement also cropped up on CNN, with Marc Short, now chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, telling the audience about “certain parts of the pro-abortion industry that was marketing fetus body parts.”Īccording to the researchers, that was actually the only statement CNN aired during the study period regarding the claim about Planned Parenthood and fetal tissue, meaning regular viewers of the network weren’t given accurate information to counter Short’s comment. For example, the study authors found that Fox News commentators and guests made numerous statements about the claim that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue (multiple investigations have found no evidence of this). That effect shows up in what the networks are saying, not just how much they’re saying it. As Kann and her co-author Julie Tulbert put it in a report on their research, “CNN and MSNBC are allowing Fox News to drive abortion-related conversations.” During the study period, Fox aired 334 segments with substantive discussion of one of the abortion topics, while MSNBC had 115 and CNN had just 77.

The authors found that Fox News had the vast majority of statements on these topics as well as the majority of more in-depth discussions of abortion. Specifically, they looked at four topics that have been in the news in recent years: videos from the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress purporting to show that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue abortion funding rules like the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for most abortions Planned Parenthood’s role providing reproductive health services and discussions or allegations of “extreme” abortion procedures, like “abortions until the moment of birth.” “When other networks do engage, the terms are already set.” Fox News covers abortion more than other networksįor their study, released on Monday, Media Matters researchers looked at coverage of abortion between March 2, 2018, and February 28, 2019. On abortion, “Fox News is the loudest voice in the room,” Kann said. And because Fox is often first to the story, the network and its conservative-leaning hosts often get to define what that debate looks like. The result is American viewers don’t hear about abortion as an issue of health or human rights but only as a topic of political debate. Overall, study author Sharon Kann told Vox that when other networks do talk about abortion, they’re often just responding to what Fox News has already said or commenting on political controversies that Fox helped create. When the authors looked at specific statements on abortion, they found commentators on MSNBC and CNN echoing statements made on Fox - from the false claim that Planned Parenthood has been proven to sell fetal body parts to the idea that recent laws allow abortion almost “up until the time you cut the umbilical cord.” Overall, the study authors judged Fox News statements on abortion to be inaccurate 85 percent of the time - but they found that 67 percent of statements at CNN and 40 percent at MSNBC were inaccurate as well. The study, provided exclusively to Vox ahead of publication, suggests Fox dominates the abortion debate when it comes to content.

Fox news commentator full#

It found that a full 94 percent of statements on those topics came from Fox. The progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America recently looked at coverage of common abortion-related topics on the big three cable networks: Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. When it comes to coverage of abortion, Fox News dominates the cable news landscape. How did something that’s already illegal, and that isn’t abortion, become the subject of abortion legislation in Congress? The answer has to do with who’s driving the abortion debate in America right now: Fox News.

No abortion-rights group supports this.īut the idea that “post-birth” abortion is happening, and that abortion-rights supporters want it to be legal, made its way into speeches by President Donald Trump and to the floor of Congress, where Republicans have tried more than 70 times to get a vote on a bill that would protect abortion “survivors.” This would be murder, not abortion, and it’s already illegal in every state. Politicians, media outlets, and ordinary people began talking about “post-birth” or “fourth-trimester” abortion, claiming that doctors in America are killing babies after they’re born. Something strange happened to the abortion debate earlier this year.