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    How Partisan Media Outlets Covered RFK Jr.’s Trump Endorsement

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    Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to suspend his presidential campaign and endorse former President Donald J. Trump was — depending on where on the political spectrum the coverage came from — treated with either outright glee — or derision. Conservative sites primarily focused on the potential electoral boon to Mr. Trump, while liberal media outlets focused more on Mr. Kennedy’s dysfunctional campaign, including by returning to several negative story lines.Mr. Kennedy announced on Friday that he would suspend his presidential campaign in key battleground states, though he intended to remain on the ballot in some states. He suggested he worried his presence in the race would pull voters away from other candidates, though recent polling wasn’t clear about who might benefit from Mr. Kennedy’s change in plans.Conservative sites, more than a dozen of which prominently featured the news on their home pages, saw the news as a win for Mr. Trump. They argued that Mr. Kennedy’s decision could reshape the race by turning Mr. Kennedy’s supporters into Mr. Trump’s, and by shifting the attention of Americans away from this week’s Democratic National Convention.Liberal media outlets described Mr. Kennedy’s decision as self-serving, and in keeping with his unpredictable campaign. Several referenced Mr. Kennedy’s assertion that Mr. Trump had offered him a role in a second Trump administration, something the former president declined to confirm on Friday. The sites referred to him using words like “power-hungry” and “transactional.”Here’s how the news was covered by a selection of outlets:FROM THE RIGHTThe Washington ExaminerWashington ExaminerThough polling suggests Mr. Kennedy’s decision is unlikely to significantly shift the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Mr. Trump, many conservative commentators said the decision could swing the contest. Ben Shapiro, the editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said in a livestream after Mr. Kennedy suspended his campaign that the announcement, which was made during a speech in Phoenix, could “dwarf” the positive impact of the Democratic National Convention for Ms. Harris.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Conservative Media Pay Little Attention to Revelations About Fox News

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      Even in today’s highly partisan media world, experts said, the lack of coverage about the private comments of Fox’s top executives and hosts stands out.Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business, have avoided the story. Newsmax and One America News, Fox’s rivals on the right, have steered clear, too. So have a constellation of right-wing websites and podcasts.Over the past two weeks, legal filings containing private messages and testimony from Fox hosts and executives revealed that many of them had serious doubts that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election through widespread voter fraud, even as those claims were made repeatedly on Fox’s shows. The revelations, made public in a defamation lawsuit against Fox brought by Dominion Voting Systems, have generated headlines around the world.But in the conservative media world? Mostly crickets.On 26 of the most popular conservative television news networks, radio shows, podcasts and websites, only four — The National Review, Townhall, The Federalist and Breitbart News — have mentioned the private messages from Fox News hosts that disparaged election fraud claims since Feb. 16, when the first batch of court filings were released publicly, according to a review by The New York Times.The majority — 18 in all, including Fox News itself — did not cover the lawsuit at all with their own staff. (Some of those 18 published wire stories originally written by The Associated Press or other services.)Four outlets mentioned the lawsuit in some way, but did not mention the comments from Fox News hosts. One of those, The Gateway Pundit, published three articles that included additional unfounded allegations about Dominion, including a suggestion that security vulnerabilities at one election site using Dominion machines could have led to some fraud, despite no evidence that votes were mismanaged.“These results are shocking,” one article asserted.The Gateway Pundit did not respond to requests for comment.Even in a media world often divided along partisan lines, the paucity of coverage stands out, media experts said. And it means that many of the people who heard the conspiracy theories about election fraud on Fox’s networks may not be learning that Fox’s leaders and on-air stars privately dismissed those claims.The Spread of Misinformation and FalsehoodsCutting Back: Job cuts in the social media industry reflect a trend that threatens to undo many of the safeguards that platforms have put in place to ban or tamp down on disinformation.A Key Case: The outcome of a federal court battle could help decide whether the First Amendment is a barrier to virtually any government efforts to stifle disinformation.A Top Misinformation Spreader: A large study found that Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast had more falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims than other political talk shows.Artificial Intelligence: For the first time, A.I.-generated personas were detected in a state-aligned disinformation campaign, opening a new chapter in online manipulation.“Choosing not to do stories is a form of bias,” said Tom Rosenstiel, a veteran press critic and a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. “The things you ignore and the things you choose to highlight are an important part of how you show whether you are a serious news organization.”Mainstream news organizations often report on themselves when they are at the center of a scandal, Mr. Rosenstiel said, because they get “much more credit when they expose the lens on themselves as aggressively as they would anyone else.”Who Is Covering Dominion’s Lawsuit?A review of 26 conservative news and opinion sources showed little coverage of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News. More