Posting 3
Topic: Politics
Author: Jeremy W. Peters
Publication Name: NY Times
Date of Publication: April 12, 2012
Length of article: 2 pages
On Wednesday, Newt Gringrich lashed out at Fox News when it shifted its political coverage to Mitt Romney's benefit, which he claims to have "doomed his flagging campaign." In response to this, Fox News struck back at Gringrich, calling him bitter, showing tenacity and alacrity to match the former House speaker.
Gringrich, a former Fox news commentator, accused Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the network's parent company News Corporation, of influencing the story behind their backs. "I assume its because Murdoch at some point said, 'I want Romney,' and so 'fair and balanced' became Romney,' said Gringrich. "And there's no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox." He goes on further to say that "CNN is less biased than Fox this year," and that they are "more likely to get neutral coverage from CNN." He believes that Fox will distort the story, and that this is just a fact.
On the other hand, Fox denies these accusations, saying that Gringrich is merely "auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN," and that he's bitter over the termination of his contributor contract. This claim is supported by the evidence that Rick Santorum, who had also accused the network of favoring other presidential candidates, also had a contract with Fox News closed just last year. Therefore it makes sense that Gringrich could have ulterior motives. However, Gringrich speaks some truth. The Pew Research Center, which researches the amount of attention that presidential candidates get from the media, found that Mitt Romney is the most covered candidate on multiple news stations. It was found that Romney has been in 66% of the news stories about the campaigns. Rick Santorum was covered about 33%, and Gringrich was about 1% of the coverage. Since the incident, Gringrich has appeared three times on Fox, and has not shown any signs of a grudge towards the network.
Conclusion:
Newt Gringrich is accusing Fox News of bias against him, because they are covering more of Mitt Romney's campaign. Fox has denied these accusations, saying that Gringrich is bitter at the loss of his contract with Fox and is now trying to get even with them. This is supported by the fact that Rick Santorum's contract was terminated last year, and he was taking shots at Fox as well, saying that the network was "favoring other candidates." However, this is contradicted by the fact that the Pew Research Center has found that Romney and Santorum have dominated the news coverage, with Gringrich being a mere 1% of the fuss. Oddly enough, Gringrich shows no signs of animosity towards Fox News at this point.
Newt Gringrich is bitter because his former employees are not covering him as much in the news as they are covering other presidential candidates. He is accusing them of "selling out" because he used to work for them but they are not covering him in the news as much as he would like, with only 1% of covering vs the 66% and 33% of the other candidates. However other news sources say that the reason that the others are being covered more is because they are doing more 'idiotic' things that give them more coverage than the Gingrich, and he shows little fuss once he is shown on TV a bit more.
ReplyDeleteOn wednesday, Newt Gingrich and Fox news publicly condoned each other. Newt Gingrich who was a former Fox news commentator, was quick to blame Rupert Murdoch the chairman of Fox' news' parent company. Only 1% of candidacy coverage is about him, relative to the 66% and 33% of Romney and Santorum respectively. Oddly enough, after this incident, Gingrich appeared on Fox news itself and did not show any animosity towards them.
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