Fox News attacks the media roughly every 14.5 minutes—far more often than MSNBC (every 61 minutes) or CNN (every 140 minutes)—according to a new analysis of 15 years of cable news transcripts.
“Disparaging journalism is a far more central part of Fox News programming than it is of either MSNBC or CNN programming,” researchers concluded. The study examined “inter-journalism disparagement,” defined as negative statements about the conduct or content of an explicitly identified journalism target, such as a specific outlet or the news media in general.
According to Niemanlab, tesearchers from Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy analyzed a random sample of one week of programming per year from 2011 to 2025 across CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC (later MS NOW). The resulting dataset included 3,543 transcripts and nearly 19 million words—roughly 62,000 pages of text. Because of the volume, they trained OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 model with a detailed 20-page instruction document; the model achieved 99.5% accuracy in identifying instances of disparagement compared with human coding.
The stark difference between the networks held across the full 15-year period. Fox News showed some dips in the two years leading up to the 2016 and 2024 elections, but levels rebounded to near-peak in 2025. CNN and MSNBC rates converged somewhat after 2017, with MSNBC declining slightly and CNN rising slightly. Researchers noted that the networks should not be viewed as mirror images of partisan journalism on this dimension.
On Fox News, the most common target by far was “the media,” followed by CNN and the “mainstream media,” with The New York Times, MSNBC, and The Washington Post also appearing frequently. The network focused more on attacking journalism as an institution than on specific outlets. In contrast, both CNN and MSNBC most often targeted Fox News, followed by “the media” and “right-wing media,” though at much lower overall frequencies. The most frequent individual disparagers were predominantly Fox hosts, led by Sean Hannity, Greg Gutfeld, and Tucker Carlson.Niemanlab
The findings come amid record-low trust in journalism. Gallup data from 2025 showed only 8% of Republicans expressing trust in the news media, compared with 51% of Democrats, with the partisan gap remaining wide even after a slight recent uptick among Republicans. The researchers suggest high-volume disparagement of journalism may contribute to this decline and plan further study of whether exposure reduces trust. They also note that some scholars describe this pattern as moving beyond traditional partisan journalism into “anti-media media,” which uses the appearance of journalism to undermine the institution’s democratic role—a characterization they say fits Fox News based on the data.Niemanlab
The study was led by Philip M. Napoli of Duke University, with contributions from Adam Meskouri, Anjini Mani, Grant Socol, and Harrison Walley. Full methodological details appear in a related paper.