BONUS Newsletter: How Fox News Covered the Wagner Group Rebellion in Russia
An overview of Fox News coverage of Friday 3/23/23 and Saturday 3/24/23
As I was capturing and analyzing various shows on Fox News on Friday night I noticed a huge story was evolving about Russia. At first I wasn’t sure what to think of it as any story about the War in Ukraine and Russia is automatically suspect.
At about 6:00 p.m. EST mainstream news outlets started reporting that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a private mercenary compiled partly of convicts, was staging some type of rebellion against the Russian government.
In the shows I was scheduled to analyze on Friday night the crisis was hardly mentioned. Fox News was completely ignoring it.
I thought it would be interesting to go through all of primetime shows on Friday night and to analyze a couple of opinion based shows along with a legitimate news program from Saturday.
For each program I pulled roughly 30 seconds from each intro to show where the network was putting its focus.
Special Report by Bret Baier - 6:00 p.m. EST
Time spent on story: 8 minutes 15 seconds.
Trace Gallagher was filling in for Baier. The first segment was about Hunter Biden.
“Breaking tonight, White House lawyers are denying any political interference in the investigation into crimes by the president's son. So is Mr. Biden's attorney general. Yesterday, we told you that two whistleblowers contend Hunter Biden received preferential treatment. Earlier this week, we learned the president's son struck a deal with prosecutors that lets him avoid jail time. White House correspondent Jackie Heinrich starts us off tonight,” said Gallagher
Experts
Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, retired U.S. Army - Kellogg is a frequent guest on Fox News. For this segment he was fairly straight with the facts as he knew them. There was no political spin on the story.
Jesse Watters Primetime - 7:00 p.m. EST
Time spent on story: zero minutes
The program was hosted by Pete Hegseth sitting in for Jesse Watters. He started the show by showing a few media clips that were meant to mock Hunter Biden, then he went into his monologue
“Joe was never laughing with us. Joe was laughing at us. And he's been laughing since the moment he stepped into the White House. But nothing like we saw last night. While Joe was welcoming the prime Minister of India to a state dinner. You won't believe who was in the crowd rubbing elbows and shaking hands with his fellow so-called Washington elite. And that's Hunter Biden. He was at the White House just like it was any ordinary week. Have you ever seen someone fresh off of federal charges smile this much with fake teeth?” said Hegseth.
Hegseth also said the following with absolutely no irony or shame.
“I don't remember Barron Trump or the Bush twins flouting the law. Do you? Hunter Biden, maybe the only person in the world who can plead guilty to a crime,” said Hegseth.
It’s interesting that Hegseth only mentioned Trump’s minor aged son, not the adult children who have faced criminal investigations.
The Bush twins did have some legal problems for drinking alcohol while underage while their father was in the White House.
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were both nearly indicted for real estate fraud over misleading prospective buyers about condo units in Trump SoHo.
Eric Trump had a number of shady dealings with a charity that was supposed to be dedicated to children with cancer some of which involved his father.
Former President Donald J. Trump was forced to pay more than $2 million in court-ordered damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing charitable funds at the Trump Foundation.
Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, had a failing real estate deal bailed out by the Qatar government while he was actively working in the White House.
Soon after Trump left office and Kushner received a $2 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Fox News Tonight - 8:00 p.m. EST
Time spent on story: Zero minutes
Kayleigh McEnany was the guest host for the week. Again Hunter Biden was the lead story.
“An IRS whistleblower has officially released the most damning and revealing evidence in the Joe Biden influence peddling scheme. And that's what it is. Not the Hunter Biden scheme, but the Joe Biden one. The messages released show Hunter Biden wrote a shakedown message to a Chinese executive where he clearly references that his father, Joe Biden, sitting right beside him. But we were told Joe knew nothing about these foreign business dealings. Someone's lying and we got no answers at the White House press briefing,” said McEnany
“Fox News Tonight,” was the most egregious in its omission of any news about Russia.
The producers did cut into the live broadcast basically to announce that the government investigation into the origin of the COVID-19 virus was inconclusive.
Someone also thought it was a good idea to dedicate four minutes to Mike Robison and his pet monkey Winston. Robison is the press secretary for Joe Exotic, a man best known for the Netflix series “Tiger King.”
Exotic has declared he’s running for president while serving 21 years for 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire of his rival Carol Baskin
Fox News thought a segment about an eccentric convicted felon running for president was more important that a potential civil war in Russia. I guess the producers couldn’t resist the allure of the monkey.
Hannity - 9:00 p.m. EST
Time spent on story: Two minutes in a breaking news segment
Tammy Bruce was sitting in for Sean Hannity.
“Tonight, special treatment for both Joe and Hunter Biden. According to two IRS whistleblowers, the father and son duo were protected by the DOJ's surprise. According to these claims, Biden appointed U.S. attorneys blocked felony tax charges against Hunter. The laptop from hell was buried in the investigation into the big guy himself was stymied,” said Bruce.
The show appeared to be live as she introduced the breaking news segment about the unrest in Russia - Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot gave a brief two minute breakdown from Ukraine.
The Ingraham Angle - 10:00 p.m. EST
Time spent on story: 30 seconds - Breaking news segment
At this point in the evening multiple news organizations were publishing stories about the Wagner rebellion in Russia.
Ingraham opened her program with the latest Hunter Biden scandal.
“The explosive story of the IRS whistleblower about the Hunter Biden investigation. It's really instructive for many reasons, and I think chief among them is this impressive expanse of the Joe Biden protection racket, because this really is a Joe Biden scandal. And it, of course, includes the media that waited hours and in some cases until today to even comment on this scandal,” said Ingraham.
The Ingraham Angle broadcast a 30-second segment about the Wagner military rebellion. It was hard to know if the show was pre-taped or live as Ingraham never acknowledged the segment.
Fox & Friends - Saturday - 9:00 a.m. EST
Time spent on story: nine minutes and 30 seconds
Experts:
K.T. McFarland, former deputy national security adviser - Trump admin. (McFarland worked with Michael Flynn, a retired Army Lieutenant General who resigned over revelations about his potentially illegal contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.)
It took until Saturday morning for Fox News to actually open a show with the news from Russia. I was only able to snag the third hour of Fox & Friends but it was memorable. Will Cain started the hour.
“We begin this hour with a Fox News alert. The Russian army now reportedly using artillery and helicopters to open fire on advancing rebel convoys. Just 300 miles south of Moscow. This appears to have escalated. President Vladimir Putin is promising to crush the armed rebellion happening inside his country as forces that once fought for Russia inside Ukraine vowed to march on the Kremlin,” said Cain.
.K.T. McFarland started off her appearance by making reckless assumptions that she had no evidence to support.
“Nobody knows. I mean, it could be one of about five different possibilities. It could be that Vladimir Putin has a false flag operation that he's trying to somehow find a scapegoat, whether it's the Wagner group or whether it's his own Defense Department. It could be that the head of the Wagner group is trying to figure out how he can position himself either in a coup and like an anti-military for a Wagner group coup or how he positions himself to make Vladimir Putin look weak so that when their critical elections in 2024, maybe Vladimir Putin doesn't win. It could be any one of those things. And it could well be that it evolves. It could start as one thing. And then Putin says, I can take an advantage here and take an advantage there,” said McFarland.
Rachel Campos-Duffy went even further.
“Back in the Iraq and Afghanistan war. I was one of those people that just sort of believed everything that came out of my government. And now I don't believe I don't believe a lot of it. And I'm always questioning things. And I asked our last guest on this topic, Rebecca Koffler, if she thought it was possible that we could be behind this attempted coup with the Wagner group. And she said it's definitely one of the possibilities or NATO,” said Campos-Duffy.
McFarland doubled down even though she had no real evidence to back up any of her claims.
“You know, I think she's right that the United States government, whether it's been actively or behind the scenes, been very involved in Ukraine and Russia for a long time, mean one of the things I was struck with when I went to Ukraine right after the revolution in 2014 was that Russians would come up, pro-Russian Ukrainians would come up. They point to a hotel room in the Maidan Square. They would point to a window. So that's what the that's the CIA's office. They were directing this entire coup against the president of Ukraine, pro-Russian elected president of Ukraine. And so were we involved where we're not involved, we always said we weren't involved. But, you know, maybe we weren't involved,” said McFarland.
Cavuto Live - 10:00 a.m. EST
Time spent on story: 25 minutes
Experts:
Dr. Mark Esper, former Defense Secretary - Trump Admin.
Lt. Col Bob Maginnis, retired U.S. Army
The host Neil Cavuto seemed genuinely excited about the Russia story.
“Something that is so stunning is going down right now in Russia. That's right. Russia today, the scene. Russian tanks rolling into Moscow to protect it from what President Vladimir Putin is calling a rebellion, not from Ukrainian supporters. Try Russian mercenary fighters. The new group claiming control of the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. That is the same group, by the way, that's been fighting the Ukrainians at a cost of more than 20,000 Russian soldiers lives. Its leader blames many of those deaths on Russian military leaders,” said Cavuto.
The host, Neil Cavuto, is part of the legitimate news team at Fox. At no point were any assumptions made about the actions of the Wagner Group. None of the experts promoted any theories they could not back up with evidence.
If I swiped out Cavuto with a CNN anchor most viewers wouldn’t be able to tell it was a Fox News program. This program only explored three topics.
One Nation with Brian Kilmeade - 8:00 p.m. EST
Time spent on story: 19 minutes
Experts/Elected officials:
Gen. Jack Keane, retired four-star general, U.S. Army
Dan Hoffman, former CIA station chief in Moscow
Dan Bilak, former chief investment advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Brian Kilmeade opened his show with the Russia story.
“I know you've been watching all day the rebellion in Russia. So far. It looks like it's halted. Over the last 24 hours, we've seen the greatest threat to Russia's Vladimir Putin's power since he took over in 1999. The world watched Vladimir Putin's mercenary army turn its forces from Ukraine over to Moscow, getting within 125 miles before pausing.
A deal was cut just a sudden is there unopposed bullets down the M4 highway. Came a deal with the Bogdan mercenary chief and he turns back and he is maybe bugged out. Video showing its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin leaving Russia as you retreat's his forces agreeing to remove himself from the bloodthirsty group he founded. They're supposed to. They're supposed to fold the Wagner Group into the regular Russian army. Good luck with that,” said Kilmeade.
I was expecting more sensational coverage from Kilmeade since he’s extremely hawkish about the war in Ukraine. All of the experts and Senator Graham actually handled the topic professionally.
No one made any wild assumptions about the Wagner Group that they couldn’t back up with evidence.