Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) — who was considered a frontrunner for the GOP vice presidential nomination in 2012 — came out in support of marriage equality on Friday morning, becoming the only sitting Republican senator to support same-sex marriage. But you wouldn’t know that from watching Fox News, since the network virtually ignored the story.
A ThinkProgress analysis using TV Eyes found that the right-leaning channel mentioned the word “Portman” just three times from 6:00 AM to 11:59 PM on Friday, while competitors MSNBC and CNN — which broke the story early that morning — covered the senator’s evolution extensively, mentioning “Portman” 27 and 40 times, respectively:
Fox News has a habit of ignoring pro-LGBT news that does not appeal to the conservative base. For instance, the network offered slim coverage to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the passage of New York’s historic same-sex marriage law, and failed to report that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bashing 2004 re-election campaign — had come out as gay.