Between late Thursday morning and Friday morning, as news unfolded about a cop killing in Illinois, followed by a manhunt and standoff with the suspect, the three broadcast networks and Fox News Channel all gave significant attention to the story,
By contrast, CNN and MSNBC showed little interest as CNN buried it in a few briefs before 6:00 a.m. Eastern, and MSNBC only gave it an inital 33 seconds as breaking news, promising updates, only to never mention it again.
The first report came from MSNBC at 11:25 a.m. Thursday as Chris Jansing was fill-in host for MSNBC Live with Craig Melvin. A few minutes later, FNC's America's Newsroom ran breaking news on the story, and, in the final half hour of the show, ran several briefs, spending more than two minutes on early coverage. The show informed viewers that a police officer had been wounded at a hotel while trying to serve a warrant.
After The Daily Briefng with Dana Perino just gave the story a brief update, Shepard Smith Reporting spent more than three minutes on the latest developments, and informed viewers that McHenry County deputy Jacob Keltner had been killed, and that suspect Floyd Brown was in a standoff with police.
FNC's last brief from Thursday came on Special Report with Bret Baier, by which time the suspect had been captured, and then, Friday morning, Fox and Friends First led with the story at the beginning of each of its two hours, giving two briefs of a half-minute each. Fox and Friends also gave it a couple of briefs.
Fox News Channel spent more than seven minutes on the story total.
CNN only gave the events about a minute and a half of total time in three briefs that were buried on the Early Start show between 4:14 and 5:14 Friday morning.
And on Thursday evening, ABC, CBS and NBC all provided reports, with ABC's World News Tonight leading with the story and giving it the most time at two minutes, 20 seconds.
