Fox News: A Timeline About How a Jihadist Attack on America Was Really Just an Exploding Bentley
How Fox News Got This Story Completely Wrong
On Wednesday November 22, 2023, Fox News made a number of false assumptions about a tragic car accident in Niagara Falls, NY. A Fox News correspondent reporting from Manhattan claimed ‘high ranking police sources’ confirmed that a car explosion near a border checkpoint was related to a terrorist attack.
For three and a half hours Fox hosts and journalists assumed with no supporting evidence that the terrorists involved were radicalized Muslims responding to the Israel-Hamas war.
At around 5:00 p.m. the network walked back its reporting and confirmed that authorities at the scene of the accident did not think it was related to a terrorist event. No other major media company made the same mistake.
This timeline breaks down six hours of Fox News broadcasts from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m.
11:30 a.m. EST
A car exploded at a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls, NY. A 2022 Bentley Flying Spur sped through an intersection at a high speed.
The driver hit a median causing the car to go airborne. The vehicle slammed into a row of security booths at the Rainbow Bridge and burst into flames killing the driver and passenger.
I wasn’t exactly sure when Fox News began reporting on the story so I captured and analyzed Fox News programing starting with “Outnumbered,” which aired from 12:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
The program didn’t include any information about the accident so I went ahead and captured, “America Reports,” a two-hour news program from 1:00-3:00 p.m.
“America Reports”
1:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Relevant Guests included:
Bill Daly, former FBI investigator
Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican candidate for president
Morgan Ortagus, former State Department Spokesperson - Trump Admin.
Fran Townsend, former U.S. DHS Security Advisor - Bush Admin.
Paul Mauro, retired NYPD inspector
The program is normally cohosted by John Roberts and Sandra Smith, two members of what is considered the legitimate news team at Fox. Because it was the day before Thanksgiving Gillian Turner was filling in for Smith.
1:30 p.m.
The producers cut into the broadcast with a breaking news story about the explosion. The network did not cut to a commercial until at least 30 minutes into “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” some time around 3:30 p.m.
After the brief breaking news segment about the explosion Roberts read a brief statement by the FBI in Buffalo, NY and went right into a story about a trans woman swimmer in New Jersey.
1:46 p.m.
Roberts read a statement while the screen was completely dedicated to a live free of the scene of the crash.
“Alexis McAdams is reporting that according to high level police sources, the explosion was an attempted terrorist attack,” said Roberts.
1:51 p.m.
Roberts discussed the crash with Eric Shawn, a Fox News correspondent reporting from New York City.
“This is being looked at as an act of terrorism. Certainly would seem to bring a lot of credence to what the FBI director was saying in in hearings on Capitol Hill recently,” said Roberts.
Roughly twenty minutes after the story broke, Eric Shawn was the first person to suggest that the alleged terrorist attack might have had something to do with the Israel-Hamas war.
“John, that's exactly what FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House just last week, saying because of the unrest in the Middle East, that the FBI was monitoring a variety of possibilities, that there could be a radical Islamic terrorist attack right here in the United States, including potentially covered by Hamas,” said Shawn.
There was absolutely no physical evidence at the scene of the crash that would support Shawn’s assumption.
2:00 p.m.
Roberts’ cohost, Gillian Turner asked Bill Daly, former FBI investigator, what kind of terrorist group could have carried out an attack like this.
“It's very difficult at this point to kind of, you know, come to any of those assumptions. Certainly, we know that the FBI Director Wray, just, you know, in the past few days have reiterated concerns about potential terrorist activities, certainly emanating from from the war with Gaza,” said Daly.
Roberts interrupted Daly with a. series of assumptions.
“And here's a question for you, Bill. And that is these likely wouldn't have been people who came into the United States yesterday. I mean, it's easy enough to procure a vehicle, but you've got to procure explosives as well. hen you've got to have the know how to put those together into a vehicle. Now, again, maybe this vehicle exploded accidentally, which would indicate potentially a level of expertise with explosives that was less than competent. Or maybe they just thought that they were going to get caught and decided to pull the trigger on it. But this is something that would have required some measure of planning,” said Roberts.
2:14 p.m.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was already scheduled for an interview. Instead of speaking to him about his campaign, Gillian Turner asked him questions about the explosion at the border.
She mentioned that John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, told reporters that there was no current, credible, specific threat to the homeland.
“What are you hoping to hear from the White House moving forward through this?” asked Turner.
“I'm hoping to hear the truth. I'm going to be very candid when I hear a statement like that. I don't believe them,” said Ramaswamy.
He continued.
“That's the hard truth. I think they may be stating it with good intentions, believing that they're telling a noble lie. That's been the consistent practice of the government. Tell a noble lie because you believe that people can't handle the truth. Well, look at the actual warnings we're seeing. Look at even the signs like the news just off the cuff. The breaking news now.” said Ramaswamy.
2:16 p.m.
Alexis McAdams, reporting for Fox News from New York City repeated her claim that the explosion was a terrorist attack. Niagara Falls is about a six and a half hour drive from Manhattan.
“Hey, John. So we've been checking in with sources at the state level and local police, high level sources telling me in the past 30 minutes or so that they believe this is a terrorist attack that was committed there in Buffalo near the bridge. . .But one thing we do know for sure is that this high level police source I talked to just recently believes that this was a terrorist attack . . .what what we're checking in on right now is getting from sources who are on the ground that they're looking for a second car possibly involved. We don't know exactly where this vehicle is coming from or came from before this explosion. But what we do know is that it was full of explosives according to those high level sources. We know two men in that vehicle are dead. That includes the driver and the passenger of that car.”
Alexis McAdams reporting from New York City.
2:30 p.m.
Fran Townsend, former U.S. DHS Security Advisor from the G.W. Bush Admin. called in to give her expert opinion.
“This sort of bomb, this kind of a vehicle bomb is sort of a classic technique of, you know, jihadist. And so I don't think law enforcement yet understands who it was or what the intended target was. But the detonation of an explosive vehicle explosive, this size is regrettably, look, there could have been many more casualties. But as I say, very much a hallmark of jihadist.”
2:47 p.m.
Morgan Ortagus, former State Department spokesperson from the Trump Admin. appeared from a Fox News studio to talk about the incident.
“I don't know how much more this White House can take, to be honest. I mean, it feels like every few months there is a war in a new theater or there is now an attack on the homeland. Remember, we talk a lot about Israel. It came on the show initially to talk about Israel and what was happening there. There were 30, at least 31 Americans that were killed there. Still at least nine Americans that we know of that are held hostage in Israel. And as I've been saying since October 7th, whenever Iran and Hamas are these other organizations chanting death to Israel, they chant, ‘Death to the America’.”
2:50 p.m.
Roberts interviewed Paul Mauro a retired NYPD inspector who is a regular guest on Fox News. Roberts continued to push the idea that the attack was carried out by a Muslim extremist group despite the lack of any evidence connecting the crash to a specific terrorist organization.
“When you take a look at all of the people who have designs against America as the remnants of ISIS, you know, al Qaeda is still out there. There's Palestinian Islamic Jihad, There is maybe some Hamas operatives or Hamas sympathizers. We have seen the FBI director give congressional testimony that we are at a higher level of threat since the heyday of ISIS. Is there any one specific group that immediately comes to mind if this were to be either a a person who represents a terror group or sympathetic to a terror group?” asked Roberts.
Mauro responded.
“I would hesitate to pin this to any particular group. I mean, the obvious conclusion that it is that it goes to what's going on in Gaza, that this feels to me and I look at, you know, full disclosure, I did this work for about 15 years. My gut tells me, here lone wolf. It sounds like there were two perps in the car. And the other thing is this. You know, as of now, it looks like everybody's carrying it as a terrorist attack. And that does seem to be where it's developing. But we haven't even gotten that confirmed.”
Roberts then switched his focus.
“So, you know, there's good indications here, Paul, that this vehicle did come across the border from Canada. But when you look at the major cases of terrorism in this country that have happened. 911, Boston Marathon bombing, the anthrax attacks, the Beltway snipers, the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber, the World Trade Center bombing, West Side highway attack. Only three of those were foreign influence. The rest were all domestic.”
This was the only time in the entire six hours of Fox News coverage that I captured and analyzed that anyone even suggested that a domestic terrorist could have caused the explosion.
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