In the day after Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that pregnancy from rape “is something that God intended to happen," the Fox News Channel only covered the scandal for about 2 minutes, even though Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney refused to rescind his endorsement of Mourdock.
“I believe life begins at conception,” Mourdock explained during a debate Tuesday night. “The only exception I have for to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”
The liberal watch dog group Media Matters reviewed coverage on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel and found that Mourdock's comments were almost completely ignored by the conservative network.
"Fox News mentioned the comment twice, devoting just over two minutes of coverage to it," Media Matters' Todd Gregory wrote. "Meanwhile, CNN gave the topic an hour and 20 minutes of coverage and MSNBC covered the topic for 2 hours and 7 minutes."
On the Fox News marquee "straight-news" program Special Report, anchor Bret Baier briefly mentioned Mourdock in a 37-second segment about the presidential race in general. The Fox Report later devoted one minute and 37 seconds to the subject.
By contrast, Raw Story calculated that Special Report alone spent about 23 minutes on the Obama administration's response to September attacks in Libya.
