The last four days have seen Fox News dedicate much more time to covering the “woke mob” online outrage surrounding Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad than the latest developments around President Donald Trump and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — 85 minutes compared to three minutes, to be exact.
According to a Thursday report by Media Matters, the news organization logged 85 minutes of time breaking down the online reaction to the actresses’ viral jeans ad. Comparatively, Fox News spent a meager three minutes talking about Epstein and new comments the president made about the disgraced financier during his trip to Scotland.
The minute count was gathered using SnapStream’s video database and calculating mention count through Kinetiq and timing the segment. Fox News mentioned the jeans ad 62 times compared to only 14 mentions for Epstein. Other networks broken down for the two topics included Newsmax (180 for Epstein, 42 on Sweeney), CNN (638 for Epstein, six for Sweeney) and MSNBC (756 for Epstein, 0 for Sweeney).
The report also points to how the two topics were discussed. Epstein’s three minutes were reached in the brief in-passing mentions he received as part of smaller stories. Sweeney’s American Eagle ad was a part of a number of larger discussions and segments that brought her count up to the 85 total minutes.
Sweeney’s jeans ad earned backlash after some online called the ad tone-deaf and even racist, saying it celebrates Sweeney’s whiteness and physique. Many viral comments deriding the ad brought up arguments suggesting that it’s not only supposedly promoting white supremacy, but also eugenics, nazism and master race propaganda.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” Sweeney says in the ad. “My jeans are blue.”
After weeks at the center of the news cycle following the DOJ and FBI’s memo that they would not be releasing any more information on Epstein, Trump’s latest comments on the matter came during his trip to Scotland and had him theorizing that Epstein “stole” accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre while she worked at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
“I think she worked at the spa,” Trump said. “He stole her, and by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.”
