When David Brock's little website establishes a standard, why do they quietly abandon it only 30 days later? Updated! Updated Again!

The ever-vigilant watchdogs at Media Matters, the website run by self-admitted liar David Brock, were up in arms a month ago. Their complaint? Fox News didn't cover as much of the Democratic Convention speeches as the other two cable networks. In fact, they even put up a chart purporting to demonstrate that those other two networks covered a greater percentage of the speeches than Fox did:

FOX News Channel aired one hour and 16 minutes less of speeches from the convention live than did CNN and one hour and 47 minutes less than did MSNBC.

So Brock's boys have established the standard of judgment. Will FNC cover the Republican speeches more than the other two networks, less, or the same? That shouldn't be too hard for the M&Ms to remember for just one calendar month.

But at Media Matters, standards are like pie crust--made to be broken. Their new press release about FNC's Monday coverage is out, and (surprise!) all of a sudden, they're not making comparisons to the other networks at all:

On the first day of the Republican National Convention, FNC gave substantially more time to the speeches at the RNC than it did at the DNC.

Cased closed? Not quite. Why aren't they making the comparisons to CNN and MSNBC, like they did last month? Why has the standard suddenly shifted to "total minutes"? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that FNC began its straight convention coverage at 10:00 pm--the exact same time they did for the Democrats a month earlier.

So how is it that the minutes are longer for the Republican coverage? Well, could it be that the speeches were longer? Duh! After McCain's lengthy address, Giuliani actually went way overtime, continuing well past 11:00 pm. Brock's brigade wants you to believe it's Fox's fault that Rudy didn't stick to his script.

But wait, if the speeches went overtime, wouldn't that mean that the other networks will also have inflated numbers of minutes for their coverage too? And that would mean the other networks also devoted more time to the speeches? Precisely. That's why the Media Matters crowd has quietly stopped its Fox vs CNN/MSNBC comparison charts--by that standard Fox's coverage is no different than it was a month ago. So they change the subject.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Update: Media Matters is not doing their job. There has been another gross inequity. Fox covered the speeches of George Bush and John Kerry at the American Legion. And would you believe it, the total minutes were not equal! Fox covered George Bush's speech for 27 minutes, but for John Kerry they had aired 40 minutes of coverage! That's 48% more coverage for Kerry. And meanwhile, MSNBC, who joined Kerry in progress after airing anchor chit-chat and a huge block of commercials, only aired 33 minutes. Get on this, Brock!

And meanwhile, they have updated their chart, showing that on night two Fox covered 55 minutes, compared to 65 minutes for the Democrat convention. Oops! Maybe that's why a press release hasn't appeared on Yahoo news yet. Also, Brock's boys are still avoiding any comparison FNC to CNN or MSNBC, unlike what they did a month ago. Since both networks aired speeches Fox didn't, the comparative analysis that they loved so much in July would have shown that FNC aired fewer speeches from the floor than the other networks. Just like they did at the Democrat convention.

Update II: The chart has been updated again, showing 58 minutes at the RNC, vs 42 at the DNC, but still no percentage comparisons with the other networks, as they trumpeted last month. Also, no mention of the fact that the GOP was media savvy enough to pack the 10:00 pm hour solid with just two speeches that ran longer than the DNC speeches did--still the major factor in how many minutes the coverage runs.