Fox Pundit Defends Coverage Of News Corp Scandal By Fox News And Wall Street Journal: “We’ve Covered This Well”

Appearing on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Fox Business Network Senior Correspondent Charlie Gasparino defended the Wall Street Journal and Fox News’ coverage of News Corp’s — Fox and the WSJ’s parent company — phone hacking scandal in the UK, in the following exchange:

Gasparino: It’s a story, we’ve been covering it a lot. Thank God I cover Wall Street, I don’t need to report on my boss. If you look at this from a purely business standpoint[...] when the market heard [Murdoch's] explanation they believed him. Confidence was returning back to the company. I see a lot of corporate executives go before Congress and similar panels and the flub it and they lose confidence in the market and Wall Street. And that did not happen this time.

Arianna Huffington: The coverage of Fox and The Wall Street Journal of this story has been embarassing for journalism. [...} The Wall Street Journal editorial's whitewashing what is a very serious scandal.

Gasparino: I think we've covered this well. We have straight news reporters that have covered this all day.

Fox News coverage of the News Of The World phone hacking allegations has been far less comprehensive than Gasparino suggests. Last week, Fox and Friends finally addressed their parent company's scandal, described Murdoch as having done "all the right things," and argued that the public and the media "should move on."

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, as mentioned by Arianna Huffington in the exchange this morning, came to News Corp's defense, characterizing the call for an investigation into News Corp in the U.S. as "liberal press demand[ing] a media prosecutor.”