Fox and other right-wing channels lavish attention on Trump. DeSantis is far, far behind

Former President Donald Trump is receiving the vast majority of attention from Fox News and the two smaller conservative cable channels, making it vastly more difficult for Gov. Ron DeSantis and the other lagging candidates to get their messages to Republican primary voters.

DeSantis, who is running a distant second place to Trump in public opinion polls, is faring even worse in the amount of exposure he’s getting on the cable channels that are a direct pipeline to Republicans.

Trump had had more than 6½ times the candidate airtime that DeSantis received on Fox, Newsmax and OAN in June and July. The figures were reported Monday by Media Matters For America, a left-leaning organization that monitors conservative media.

“Trump dominated the three networks’ candidate airtime,” Media Matters reported, receiving 32 hours and 28 minutes — more than half the total. DeSantis “garnered a comparatively paltry” four hours and 57 minutes.

Overall, Media Matters found, 16 Republican candidates received 63 hours of interview time and live event coverage in June and July on the three right-wing channels.

Trump has a commanding polling lead, though not quite as massive as the coverage advantage. He had more than 3½ times the level of support among Republican primary voters than DeSantis on Monday in the RealClearPolitics average of national public opinion polls.

Air time on Fox, Newsmax and OAN is a valuable commodity for Republican presidential candidates. Conservative outlets, especially Fox, are a key source of information for Republican primary voters who will determine who their party nominates next year for president.

“That does shape the way the viewers see who is a viable candidate,” said Robert Gutsche, an associate professor in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Gutsche, co-founder of the MediaLab@FAU, wasn’t involved in the Media Matters analysis.

On Fox, by far the biggest and most influential of the three channels, Trump commanded the most attention by a wide margin in June and July.

The Trump advantage was not nearly as lopsided on Fox as on Newsmax, headquartered in Boca Raton, and OAN, which stands for One America News. The smaller channels have been attempting to attract voters by positioning themselves as more pro-Trump than the much larger Fox.

Media Matters said Fox and its commentators have “provided crucial support to the former president’s candidacy.”

Illustrating the importance of Fox, it is the Republican National Committee’s choice to host the first Republican presidential debate next week. The RNC also picked the smaller Fox sibling channel, Fox Business Network, to host the second Republican debate next month.

It was appearances on Fox years ago that helped catapult DeSantis from obscurity as a junior member of Congress to a prominent national political figure. His constant defense of Trump caught the attention of the then-president, who ultimately rewarded DeSantis with his blessing during the 2018 midterm election, propelling him to the Republican nomination for governor and victory in the general election.

As DeSantis emerged as a 2024 challenger to Trump, their relationship soured with the former president viewing him as an ingrate.

In the early stages of the 2024 campaign, DeSantis appeared to be the favored candidate of Fox, which doesn’t hide its political leanings, and the Murdoch family, which controls other media outlets including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

But that’s no longer the case.

In June and July, Fox aired eight interviews with Trump, totaling 3.5 hours. It also aired 48 minutes of Trump events.

Fox aired 12 interviews with DeSantis in June and July, for a total of 1 hour and 55 minutes, a Media Matters representative said. It also aired 49 minutes of DeSantis event coverage.

Fox granted more total air time to candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, founder of a biotech company and an investor (3 hour and 1 minute), than to DeSantis (2 hours and 44 minutes).

Neither the DeSantis campaign nor Fox News Media immediately responded to requests for comment about the Media Matters findings.

The third Florida candidate, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, has been struggling to gain traction since he announced his candidacy on June 15.

Fox aired 11 interviews with Suarez after that date — the point at which Media Matters began tracking — for a total of 1 hour and 23 minutes, the Media Matters spokesperson said. It didn’t air any Suarez event coverage. (Suarez also had three Newsmax interviews totaling 15 minutes.)

Fox relied much more on interviews of the candidates by its personalities than its smaller rivals.

The candidates appeared for interviews on Fox 141 times for almost 20 hours of coverage.

Newsmax had 39 interviews over five hours and OAN had nine lasting 1 hour and 19 minutes.

Newsmax and OAN devoted much more time to live candidate events, such as speeches and town halls. Fox aired 2 hours and 27 minutes of live candidate events. Newsmax aired 13 hours and 10 minutes and OAN aired 18 hours and 12 minutes.

In total time — live candidate events plus interviews — Trump was the overwhelming leader, with DeSantis a distant second. Ramaswamy had total airtime of 4 hours and 24 minutes and former Vice President Mike Pence had 3 hours and 56 minutes.

Trump had the most interview time across the three channels, with 4 hours and 25 minutes on the three channels. Frequent live coverage of Trump events on cable channels in 2016 is widely seen as helping him win the presidency that year.

The combined total interview time for all Republican candidates in June and July was 26 hours and 10 minutes.

Ramaswamy had just under 4 hours of interviews, followed by former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, 2 hours and 47 minutes; and DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina with 2 hours and 26 minutes each.

Trump also was far ahead in time devoted to coverage of live events. Of the 33 hours and 48 minutes of live event time across the three networks, Trump got 28 hours and 2 minutes.

DeSantis was second with 2 hours and 31 minutes and Pence was third with 1 hour and 41 minutes. No other candidate exceeded 30 minutes of live event time.

Several things are happening at once, Gutsche said.

Trump generates a lot of news, most notably criminal indictments, so he’s obviously someone the channels will feature, he said. At the same time, Trump is a ready source of attention-grabbing, provocative statements.

Attention to Trump helps him do better in polling. And doing better in polling turns into more attention for Trump. The converse happens with candidates who don’t get much attention. Lack of attention contributes to their poor poll showing, and poor poll showings makes it less likely they’ll get media attention.

What’s going on at the conservative channels warrants attention, Gutsche said, and is essential to understanding the information people on the right are receiving.

That’s part of why he watches. “When people ask me questions and I’m trying to understand an issue, I not only have to go to some of the main(stream) areas, I have to go to Newsmax, right? I have to have an understanding of these other places.”

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