Big news stories mean that TV networks don't pause their coverage for commercial breaks, either while vital Congressional hearings are under way or when the president is giving an important speech.
Sometimes, however, the president puts in a call to his favorite news operation and talks for nearly an hour and there are no commercial interruptions there, either.
Granted, the Fox network executives may consider it a public service to carry the president's message even as he avoids calling the other major networks, or they may wallow in the delight that he calls them and not the others, especially since he gets more sympathetic interviews.
Other news operations, moreover, don't carry presidential ramblings for the hour or more that he takes up with his chats on Fox. In a way, the others don't have the problem of deciding when or whether to interrupt the chat for a commercial break.
In any case, suspending all regular programming in favor of live, uninterrupted coverage of important news events is part of what they do, and TV operations -- both local and network -- lose a lot of advertising revenue when they do.
Moreover, it is their journalistic duty to do it, without fear of government retribution if the news is harmful to any administration's reputation. It is also a news outlet's choice to stress elements of the news that are favorable to a particular party.
That's one choice. Another is to be neutral, and many media outlets manage to do both, with news coverage that is neutral and commentary that is not.
Viewers and readers, then, are also free to choose which news and commentary outlet to read or watch.
That's part of the notion of a free press and of free speech. This is a right we are all born with, and is guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution.
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