Fox News Nails ‘60 Minutes: Spent Ten Minutes on Palin, Skipped Reid’s ‘Negro’ Remark

Newsbusters ^ | January 11, 2010 | By Scott Whitlock

[curth]

Fox News correspondent Eric Shawn on Monday hit 60 Minutes for spending ten minutes out of a 13 minute segment highlighting negative dirt on Sarah Palin. At the same time, the news magazine ignored racially charged remarks made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Shawn analyzed Anderson Cooper’s January 10 interview with the authors of Game Change, observing, "...Most of the CBS story was critical of Sarah Palin."

He explained, "The story did not mention Reid calling then-candidate Barack Obama light-skinned with no Negro dialect, comments for which the Senator has since apologized." This is despite the fact that authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin broke the "Negro" story. Shawn noted the segment ran 13 minutes and three seconds. He then broke down the numbers: "That means that Sarah Palin was the focus for just over ten minutes, ten minutes and four seconds. Hillary Clinton, 90 seconds. President Obama, just under a minute."

Underlining CBS’s lopsided totals, he concluded, "Harry Reid not a minute, not a second, not a nanosecond." 60 Minutes’ explanation for all of this? Shawn observed, "We've asked a spokesman for a response. We're waiting for that response. A source, meanwhile, explained that they only had so much time for the story, and they had to focus on more important things that affect the country."

[Gator113]

The traitor media will never change, it just needs to die.

[marron]

"That means that Sarah Palin was the focus for just over ten minutes, ten minutes and four seconds. Hillary Clinton, 90 seconds. President Obama, just under a minute."

So now we know with scientific accuracy how important who is compared to whom.

[Qwackertoo]

Good for Eric Shawn. Can’t wait to see some commentator segments on Fox with Sarah Palin. It is going to make their heads explode on the alphabet networks when the ratings skyrocket even higher.

[jeffc]

The U.S. media: Democratic Party mouthpiece

[the invisib1e hand]

the national consciousness is, apparently, idiot-savant.

[John-Irish]

“60 Minutes’’. Phfft! Is anyone expecting ‘’60 Minutes’’ to be objective and fair to conservatives and tough on Liberals? C’mon folks, get real. That’s like expecting someone to go through’’ Mein Kampf’’ and say, “Here, look, see. I found lots of passages where Hitler condemned anti-Semitism’’.

[LiberConservative]

I haven’t watched 60 Minutes in decades. Not since I was young, liberal and stupid.

[Chode]

Sara just scares the sh!t out of them...

[antceecee]

Yup! She certainly does.

[militanttoby]

Looks like Fox is starting to defend one of their own :). Maybe they now will investigate Levi’s background and sources of income.

[Chode]

[5thGenTexan]

Funny thing is that they had to claim that Sarah Palin becoming a news commentator on a cable channel is more important to this country than racial comments by the Senate Majority Leader.

The same Sarah Palin that was so meaningless as to be laughable a few months ago.