News in Review: Wednesday, March 8, 2023

What does the news landscape look like?

Fox News is now the top story, due to discovery from its Dominion lawsuit and Tucker Carlson’s controversial framing of footage from January 6, 2021. The 2024 GOP presidential nomination story has slipped to second place. The train derailment story has lost momentum.

This is how the top stories were covered on each side of the media yesterday:

• Fox News / Murdoch / Carlson (135% more on the left)

• Trump / DeSantis / 2024 (29% more on the left)

• Abortion / pills (55% more on the left)

Media bias ratings are from AllSides.

This is how articles from liberal and conservative outlets were distributed over the past five days amongst the top stories.

Liberal outlets used these words more than conservative outlets:

• election (3.5x)

• care (1.2x)

• trump (1.1x)

Conservative outlets used these words more than liberal outlets:

• qin (13.1x)

• taiwan (11.7x)

• chinese (6.9x)

What is happening in the top stories?

Now for a deep dive into our top three stories, starting with…

Fox News / Murdoch / Carlson

• Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed an intense dislike of former President Trump post-2020 election in text messages.

• Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said under oath that he believes the 2020 presidential election was free, fair and not stolen.

• Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, saying the network crippled the company’s business by broadcasting false claims from Trump’s lawyers.

• Fox News and its parent company face serious threats to their financial and reputational health from a defamation lawsuit tied to coverage of the 2020 election.

• Dominion Voting Systems argues Fox News defamed it by knowingly repeating falsehoods from former President Trump and his aides and allies.

Trump / DeSantis / 2024

• Former President Donald Trump and his supporters used CPAC to criticize U.S. aid to Ukraine, spotlighting it as a wedge issue in the upcoming Republican primary election.

• Aid to Ukraine is widely supported by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and by several White House hopefuls, but top contenders including Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) have taken a more protectionist stance.

• Trump won the CPAC straw poll with 62 percent support, while DeSantis came in a distant second with 20 percent support.

• Trump framed the 2024 election as an existential battle for the future of the country.

Abortion / pills

• Republican lawmakers in Florida have filed bills to outlaw most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

• Five women in Texas are suing the state over its abortion ban.

• The White House is providing legal and messaging advice to allies in states pushing restrictions on abortion access.