Fox News scrambles to protect Trump as he becomes 'problem for network'

While liberal-leaning MS NOW regularly features a who's-who of Never Trump conservatives — including George Conway, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, The Bulwark's Bill Kristol, and hosts Joe Scarborugh, Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele — Fox News and Fox Business are much more favorable to President Donald Trump. But according to Guardian opinion columnist Margaret Sullivan, Trump is becoming a "problem" for Fox News as the right-wing cable news outlet goes out of its way to cut off viewers from negative information about him.

"No Fox, no President Trump, one might argue," Sullivan writes in a column for The Guardian. "But now, Trump, with his bottom-dwelling approval ratings and waning power, looks more and more like a problem for the network. So far, though, he's one problem that Fox refuses to ignore."

Sullivan cites recent examples of Fox News going out of its way to avoid negative coverage of Trump.

"Two breaking stories roiled U.S. politics this week and immediately got big play on most news sites," Sullivan explains. "The Supreme Court surprisingly rejected — for now — Donald Trump's attempted restrictions on mail-in ballots, a blow to Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. And the investigative site ProPublica revealed that a Russian oligarch had helped to bankroll the Bahamas wedding of Trump's son Donald Jr., to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The blockbuster story quickly became ProPublica's most-read article this year and was covered heavily elsewhere."

Sullivan continues, "'There's no looking away from this Trump scoop,' wrote CNN's Brian Stelter. Unless you watched Fox News, of course. There, it was business as usual. The wedding blockbuster got barely a nod on Monday night: a mere minute on the right-wing network's evening programming, as the progressive non-profit watchdog Media Matters reported."

Sullivan notes that Fox News also downplayed the "vote-by-mail story."

According to Sullivan, "'The news broke during the 7 p.m. hour, but Laura Ingraham, a law school grad, didn't bother to tell viewers,' Stelter noted. Neither did the other big-name Fox opinion hosts, Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity. You would have had to wait until 11.30pm for that 45-second report, Stelter wrote, even as it was a leading story in many other places."

Media Matters' Matt Gertz, in an interview, described the lengths that Fox News goes to when it comes to protecting Trump.

Gertz told Sullivan, "This is the 'negative space' of Fox News coverage, in which they pretend something is simply not happening. Trumpian corruption is the biggest part of this … They are concerned with coddling their audience and maintaining the GOP's political power."