MSNBC and CNN far more obsessed with Birther issue than Fox

The stats. [Link]

Ace crunched the numbers and found the following breakdown of birther stories as a percentage of total coverage for each cable news channel:

- Fox News: 0.4 percent

- MSNBC: 9.2 percent

- CNN: 5 percent

MSNBC devoted 23 times as much airtime as Fox to cover the birther issue. CNN devoted 12.5 times as much. So, as mentioned above, one was 35.5 times more likely to see a birther story on Fox's competition than on FNC itself.

Ace also makes this key point:

Now one can note, rightly, that MSNBC and CNN were always knocking, knocking down this issue. Fine. But who was distracted by this? If, as Obama says, this was a "distraction" from "real issues" and therefore "silliness" -- which network(s) fed their partisan viewers a steady diet of this silliness?

Which network fed them the least of it and, therefore, kept a better focus on things that were not silly?

Of course even Fox News did its part to debunk the birther nonsense. The channel's hosts of course played no part in the conspiracy theory, but its commentators also frequently spoke out against it. "Special Report" conservative panelists, Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes, routinely opined on its absurdities. FNC contributor Karl Rove certainly did his part to combat the conspiracy theory.

Unfortunately, simply by giving a megaphone to Donald Trump - the personality who undergirded much of the birther coverage of late - news networks implicitly gave voice to the conspiracy theory. Simply ignoring the theory is generally the best way to combat it, and Fox led the field in that regard (on cable news, anyway). MSNBC, meanwhile, not only led the charge to promote the certificate hunt, it also promoted Donald Trump, host of sister network NBC's "The Apprentice" - a fact that recently earned the cable channel the ire of its own on-air talent.