The Fox News channel says Gingrich is ‘auditioning for a gig at CNN’ after former House speaker complained Fox favoured Romney

Fox News has attacked the struggling Republican presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, after an outburst in which he blamed the network for the failure of his campaign and claimed it was biased in favour of Mitt Romney.

The channel, where Gingrich had a contract before hitting the campaign trail, dismissed the accusations and claimed his criticism of the network was motivated by a desire for a job at rival CNN.

Gingrich’s outspoken criticism of Fox came at a meeting in Delaware on Wednesday with Tea Party activists.

According to the RealClearPolitics website, which was given access to the meeting, Gingrich said: “I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through. In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year.

“We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact.”

Fox hit back in a strongly personal attack. In a statement provided to the Guardian, it said: “This is nothing other than Newt auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN – that’s the kind of man he is. Not to mention that he’s still bitter about the fact that we terminated his contributor contract.”

While Gingrich has chosen to remain in the Republican race after the exit of Rick Santorum on Tuesday, he has won only two states so far and is trailing well behind Romney. He is also struggling financially, having accumulated huge debts during the campaign and suffered the indignity of seeing a $500 cheque to the Utah Republican party bounce.

Gingrich is campaigning this week in Delaware, one of several states where he hopes he can benefit from Santorum’s departure.

At the Delaware meeting, he said he was working on the assumption that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, Fox’s parent company, had thrown his support behind Romney.

“I assume it’s because Murdoch at some point said, ‘I want Romney’, and so ‘fair and balanced’ became ‘Romney’. And there’s no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox.”

Fox, led by Roger Ailes, has been the main media forum for the Republican candidates. Fox insists it has been fair and balanced. In the initial stages of the primary and caucus season, it even seemed to be more hostile toward Romney than the other candidates. But by March, Santorum was complaining, on Fox, about bias.

Santorum said Romney enjoyed a huge advantage in terms of money, organisation and media coverage. “He’s had Fox News shilling for him every day,” Santorum said.

Gingrich is to attend the White House correspondents’ dinner at the end of the month, but as a guest of CNN, not Fox. He insisted he was largely indifferent to the views of journalists: “They know I don’t care about their opinions. I don’t go to their cocktail parties. I don’t go to their Christmas parties. The only press events I go to are interesting dinners when the wife insists on it, so we’re going to go to the White House correspondents’ dinner because she wants to. And we’re actually going to go to CNN’s table, not Fox.”

He expressed disappointment that former colleagues Fox, with whom he had a contract until he officially joined the Republican race, had apparently written him off last summer.

Gingrich enjoyed massive media coverage when he won the South Carolina primary in January, but interest dipped after he failed to win Florida the same month. Since then, coverage has gradually evaporated, with no print journalists any longer attached full-time to coverage of his campaign.

In the meeting in Delaware, according to the RealClearPolitics report, he expanded his criticism of the media beyond Fox, in particular columnist George Will, whom he accused of personal jealousy.

“In the case of Will, I was on [George] Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning with him, and it was kind of a ‘You’re not allowed to run for office – I mean, if you could run for office, why am I not running for office?’ ” Gingrich said. “And it’s almost like they were personally offended. You know, ‘This can’t be real’, and ‘How can this guy go do that?’

“I got that reaction from Will a few years back about writing a book, because I’m supposed to be a politician. He’s supposed to be the writer. Well, I’ve now written 24 books, and 13 of them are New York Times bestsellers. I mean, there’s a morning when George ought to just get over it.”

As well as criticising the media, Gingrich attacked the Republican party, describing it as “inarticulate". He added: “The Republican party is a managerial party that doesn’t like to fight, doesn’t like to read books.”

He described Delaware as his best chance of a win on April 24.

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