While liberal-leaning MS NOW — the network formerly known as MSNBC — regularly features a who's-who of Never Trump conservatives — including George Conway, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, The Bulwark's Bill Kristol, and hosts Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele — Fox News and Fox Business remain considerably more favorable to President Donald Trump. Yet according to Margaret Sullivan, a veteran media journalist who previously served as The New York Times' public editor and as media columnist for The Washington Post, Trump is becoming a "problem" for Fox News, as the right-wing cable outlet goes out of its way to cut viewers off from negative information about him.

"No Fox, no President Trump, one might argue," Sullivan writes in a column for The Guardian. "But now, Trump, with his bottom-dwelling approval ratings and waning power, looks more and more like a problem for the network. So far, though, he's one problem that Fox refuses to ignore."

Sullivan points to recent examples of Fox News working to avoid negative coverage of the president. "Two breaking stories roiled U.S. politics this week and immediately got big play on most news sites," she explains. "The Supreme Court surprisingly rejected — for now — Donald Trump's attempted restrictions on mail-in ballots, a blow to Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. And the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica revealed that a Russian oligarch had helped to bankroll the Bahamas wedding of Trump's son Donald Jr., to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The blockbuster story quickly became ProPublica's most-read article this year and was covered heavily elsewhere."

"'There's no looking away from this Trump scoop,' wrote CNN's Brian Stelter," Sullivan continues. "Unless you watched Fox News, of course. There, it was business as usual." The wedding blockbuster received barely a nod on Monday night, amounting to a mere minute on the right-wing network's evening programming, as the progressive non-profit watchdog Media Matters reported. For viewers who rely on a single network for their political news, a story left un-aired there is, in effect, a story never encountered — the dynamic at the heart of Sullivan's argument.

Sullivan notes that Fox News likewise downplayed the vote-by-mail story. "'The news broke during the 7 p.m. hour, but Laura Ingraham, a law school grad, didn't bother to tell viewers,' Stelter noted. Neither did the other big-name Fox opinion hosts, Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity. You would have had to wait until 11.30pm for that 45-second report, Stelter wrote, even as it was a leading story in many other places."

Matt Gertz of Media Matters, in an interview with Sullivan, described the lengths to which Fox News will go to protect Trump. "This is the 'negative space' of Fox News coverage, in which they pretend something is simply not happening. Trumpian corruption is the biggest part of this … They are concerned with coddling their audience and maintaining the GOP's political power," Gertz said. With the midterm elections approaching — the same contests the mail-in ballot ruling could influence — how Fox allocates its airtime, and how watchdogs like Media Matters continue auditing those choices, remains a storyline worth watching alongside the coverage itself.