Blatant vs. Balanced: CNN, MSNBC Played Faves With Mass. Election Night Speeches; Fox Carried All of Both

January 25th, 2010 2:37 PM
JohnnyDollar0110

Building on Brad Wilmouth's critique at NewsBusters of Keith Olbermann's disgraceful treatment of Scott Brown's U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, Johnny Dollar (HT Taxman Blog) measured the coverage of the victory/concession speeches of Brown and his opponent Martha (or is it Marcia?) Coakley.

Imagine my non-surprise when I saw the results (graph follows the jump):

During Tuesday night's coverage of the Massachusetts special election, CNN and MSNBC aired only a fraction of the Republican candidate's speech. Fox News Channel aired both candidates' speeches in their entirety.

.... CNN only ran 26% of Brown's speech, while MSNBC aired 37%. Fox News Channel carried 100% of both speeches:

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Oh, but you don't understand, John. Letting Keith Olbermann rant on about Brown as "irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees," and "sexist" was much more important than actually letting the candidate's words get through to the audience. (/sarcasm)

If there's a bright side, it would at least be that showing all of Coakley's awful "dream lives on" speech probably turned off quite a few viewers, even in the fever swamps of CNN and MSNBC.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.