THURSDAY: At Mediaite, Rumpf and Hall get it right!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2026

How one nation turns into two: In this morning's report, we referred to a "thought piece" in the New York Times which starts exactly like this:

Why Nancy Guthrie’s Disappearance Is Breaking Through the Noise

It is the crime drama that Americans cannot look away from.

The apparent kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of the television personality Savannah Guthrie, has commanded outsize public attention since her disappearance nearly two weeks ago, suffusing the national psyche even amid a torrent of other news.

Networks and news media outlets have covered the twists of the case in day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour detail, as Ms. Guthrie’s homestead near Tucson, Ariz., has become a focus of internet sleuths and a televised shrine. 

We agree with one part of that presentation. It's true! Americans haven't been able to look away from this crime drama if they're watching CNN or the Fox News Channel.

For better or worse, those two cable news channels have gone all in on this event since at least last Saturday morning. If Americans get their news from one of those channels, they've been seeing endless, repetitive reporting and speculation pretty much all around the clock.

For the record, CNN has always tended to focus on "human interest" / disaster events. Hurricane, flood, tornado or fire? CNN is inclined to throw the rest of the world away in thrall to such emotionally draining events. A celebrity-connected disappearance may tend to involve a similar type of appeal.

On the other hand, we've been surprised by the round-the-clock coverage of the Nancy Guthrie disappearance at Fox. 

For the record, Fox is more inclined to cover "true crime" than are CNN or MS NOW, even when no celebrity is involved. That said, Savannah Guthrie, the celebrity in question here, hails from the part of the realm Fox dismisses as "fake news." 

We can't help wondering if some Fox viewers are balking at the sympathetic coverage being extended to someone who works inside Silo Blue. But as we've noted, we've also wondered if Fox is using this event as a way to push the sitting president out of the news at a time when prevailing "hard news" stories have been damaging him in significant ways.

(Last Saturday morning, we turned to Fox & Friends Weekend to see what the friends might say about the sitting president's repellent Truth Social repost—his ludicrous, destructive report about the two Obamas. 

(Silly us! Starting at 6 o'clock sharp, the three friends talked about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. Indeed, they talked about that disappearance and about virtually nothing else. At a time when the president was taking a beating in the wider discourse, they seemed to have wished his absurd misbehavior away.)

That said, the messengers at Fox are vastly skilled at disappearing any event which is politically harmful for President Trump. Two recent reports at Mediaite have helped demonstrate how that sifting of content works.

For starters, consider this report by Sarah Rumpf. She describes the way Fox personnel disappeared the president's Obama repost on the day it appeared

Fox News Went All Day Without Mentioning Trump’s Obama Ape Video That Even Republicans Criticized

President Donald Trump’s now-deleted post with a video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes sent shockwaves through the political world Friday, dominating the day’s news cycle and even sparking some rarely-seen critiques from Republicans.

But in Rupert Murdoch’s television empire, it was ignored until the sun had set.

[...]

A review of the entire day’s programming on both the Fox News Channel and Fox Business found not one single mention of the story all day long Friday until after 6 pm ET as the weekend kicked off, on Special Report with Bret Baier.

Using Snapstream’s transcript search function, Mediaite looked for mentions of “Obama,” “Truth Social,” “gorilla,” “ape” and “tim scott.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is the only Black GOP Senator and was one of the earliest Republicans to criticize Trump’s post, explicitly calling it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

The story was not covered at all, neither to defend nor criticize the president, report on the reactions to the post, or mention it at all, until Bret Baier’s program spent slightly more than two minutes on it.

Last Friday, for wiser or dumber, the re-post went unmentioned all day long on Fox News and Fox Business. In the 6 o'clock hour, it was cited on Special Report—the Fox News Channel's one straight-ahead "newshour" program.

Special Report plays by more traditional rules. According to Rumpf's research, the repost went unmentioned on every daytime show.

Yesterday, Colby Hall offered a similar report about the way Pam Bondi's congressional hearing was handled by Fox. Especially given the principal topic at issue, the hearing was a fairly tough go for MAGA. 

Here's what happened on Fox:

Fox News Minimized Pam Bondi’s Epstein Hearing Amid Criticism of Trump DOJ’s Handling

Cable news signals its priorities in real time. On Wednesday morning, viewers watching MSNBC heard Jeffrey Epstein’s name more than 300 times in the first three hours of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, according to reliable (but not perfect) SnapStream transcript data. CNN mentioned him more than 150 times. Fox News mentioned him three.

Fox News was not ignoring the hearing. Chad Pergram interviewed Bondi as she entered the hearing, offered updates, and viewers caught flashes of the sharper exchanges. But the network declined to carry almost all of the proceedings live or give them the kind of sustained, real-time attention that signals an event truly matters. That editorial judgment is worth examining.

For better or worse, Bondi was wished away by Fox. If you watch the Fox News Channel, you'll rarely be asked to hear about things that might tend to undermine your approval of President Trump.

Those are important reports. With regard to Rumpf's methodology, we once conducted similar research concerning an extremely peculiar bit of behavior by President Trump—the pardon he granted to the Honduran president for his major drug-running conviction. 

We found that, over the course of the week which followed the pardon, it was mentioned briefly one time on Special Report—but it was never mentioned on a wide range of other Fox News Channel programs.

Due to a technical snafu, our data somehow got lost. For that reason, we never reported that remarkable fact about the way this "cable news" channel allowed viewers to maintain their spotless minds with respect to that otherwise high-profile event.

Here's the bad news: 

Our major Blue American have often behaved this same way. Giant orgs like the New York Times fail to report this dynamic.

This is happening around the clock. In such ways, we've turned into two separate and distinct Americas—Americas Red and Blue.