Appearing as a guest just past 9:30 a.m. on FNC's America's Newsroom on Monday, liberal FNC analyst Kirsten Powers, as already recounted by Mediaite, observed that "obviously, there's a bias behind" the broadcast networks giving so little attention to the lawsuit against the Obama administration that was recently filed by numerous Catholic institutions challenging the requirement that employers provide free contraception to employees.
Substitute co-host Juliet Huddy recounted a recent MRC finding that the evening newscasts on ABC and NBC had ignored the lawsuit while the CBS Evening News had only devoted 19 seconds to the development. ABC's Good Morning America had also ignored the story, while NBC's Today show devoted just 20 seconds, while CBS This Morning had included an entire segment.
Huddy harkened back to the numbers for the evening newscasts as she posed:
I'm going to ask you guys something. This is very curious. We were talking about this yesterday on Fox and Friends, that, as of yesterday morning, the big three networks - as they used to be called, I guess you could say - ABC, CBS, NBC, had devoted a total of 19 seconds to coverage of this. And it was actually just CBS. The other two didn't even bother covering it. What do you think is behind that?
Powers responded:
Well, obviously, there's a bias behind it because, when it came to covering this from the perspective that there was this "war on women" being waged by the Catholic Church - which I don't subscribe to - they, I think, I don't know what the numbers are, but it was pretty startling how much time they spent on it. So, you know, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in even understanding where the Church is coming from
