Fox News Doubles Airtime For GOP Senators During Hearing On Islamic State Threat

 Fox News' live coverage of the Senate Armed Services hearing on U.S. strategy against the Islamic State repeatedly cut away when Senate Democrats held the floor.

On September 16, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the U.S. campaign to counter the terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Fox News' America's Newsroom aired live coverage of the hearing for nearly 40 minutes without interruption. After opening remarks from Dempsey and Hagel, Fox aired questions from Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking majority and minority members, respectively. Yet when Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) was given the floor, Fox cut away, only rejoining footage once Republican Sen. John McCain (AZ) began questioning.

After airing more than six minutes of McCain's questions, Fox once again cut away during Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson (FL)'s time so that America's Newsroom co-host Martha McCallum could praise McCain for “obviously a very strong line of questioning.”

An hour later, the network resumed coverage of the hearing only to highlight  “heated” questions from another Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC).

In all, the network aired more than 16 minutes of GOP questions, while showing just over 8 minutes of Democratic questioning, according to a Media Matters count.

Fox News has a long history of heavily favoring Republicans in their live coverage of congressional hearings by cutting away from Democrats. 

This post has been updated for accuracy.