Fox News: A Train Derailment in Ohio was More Important than the Ukraine War.
A condensed overview of 17 hours of Fox News for the week ending 2/26/23
On every Fox News show I covered last week anchors compared the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio with the war in Ukraine. President Biden stood in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a show of strength just a few days before the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion.
As every Fox News personality on the network expressed outrage and indignation that President Biden would go to an active war zone instead of East Palestine absolutely no one thought to aim their anger at the train company that caused the environmental disaster.
Fox News hosts also deemed the concept of equity and inclusion as some sort of socialist plot. The network also spent a lot of time covering a the salacious Alex Murdaugh double murder trial and a prayer revival at a college campus.
Any viewer who watched the same shows I covered last week would have missed out on a Supreme Court case that could radically change most social media platforms. They also wouldn’t have known about extreme rainstorms in Brazil or the escalating violence and political unrest in Israel-Palestine.
Shows I covered last week
Fox & Friends - 1st hour
The Five
The Ingraham Angle
Hannity - Tues. - watched to catch Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Tucker Carlson Tonight - Thurs. - watched to catch Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Jessica Tarlov Brought Up Things about East Palestine that No One Else on Fox Bothered to Mention
“I'm a little confused about how the narrative has gone, because when this what we initially found out about this, which was ten days too late right after this had happened, Governor DeWine and I believe his name was Bill Johnson, as the local congressman, both said that they had turned down administration help. DeWine said, we don't need FEMA. And the congressman was in excuse me, was interviewed and said we don't need it.
It's been offered the administration has done everything that they were supposed to do. So I don't know how we now got to the point that FEMA has been derelict in their duty and Mayor Pete is the worst transportation secretary, you know. But they don't know about it until it showed up that later taking Will's point. We've been talking about this for a few days.
There is so much blame to go around on every level here. And it is these 5000 people it's looking at up there. An average income for the household here is $45,000. And when you think that the average family in America doesn't have enough for an ER visit, Right. If a kid gets sick and they have to go in to an emergency room and they don't have insurance, they can't pay for that.
There's no way that these people without significant aid can do that and that thousand dollars per household that Norfolk Southern is offering. What if they can never go home? Right. What if they go and we find out that this is a permanent water contamination problem? Or, God forbid someone gets sick? $1,000 doesn't last you very long in a doctor's office,” said Tarlov.
Everything Fox News didn’t Tell Their Viewers about the Derailment
As much as Fox hosts expressed anger that President Biden would go to Ukraine over East Palestine, Ohio the network spent twice as much airtime on the war in Ukraine than it did on the train derailment.
In terms of words the term Ukraine was used 272 times whereas East Palestine only showed up 71 times in the transcripts. Russia was mentioned 239 times and Pete Buttigieg was only uttered 91 times with the term ‘Pothole Pete’ appearing five times.
Fox News was as guilty as the president in terms of throwing their focus towards Ukraine over Ohio.
Fox also continued to frame the disaster in East Palestine as simply - Pete Buttigieg and the federal government did not do enough to help clean up the mess.
The network conveniently left out some key details about the company that caused the disaster - Northfolk Southern.
Norfolk Southern by the Numbers
The rail company’s annual gross profit for 2022 was $8.6 billion, a 7.2% increase from 2021, the company’s profit after expenses was more than $3 billion. The company itself is worth an estimated $53 billion.
Over the past five years, the company paid shareholders nearly $18 billion in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. This was twice as much as it invested in operations and railways. The rate of accidents for the railroad company increased for the past four years.
Details Fox News Left Out
No one at Fox News addressed the fact that FEMA normally doesn’t pay for damages caused by corporate accidents. If the federal government shouldered the costs of corporations harming people and property there would be absolutely no incentive for companies to improve safety measures or prevent future accidents.
Another misconception that Fox has helped perpetuate is that absolutely no one from the federal government went to East Palestine. Representatives from the EPA have been in East Palestine since February 4th the day after the derailment. By February 21st, the EPA said that it would take control of the cleanup and that Norfolk Southern will pay for all costs involved.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent healthcare workers, including toxicologists, to East Palestine to help the Ohio Department of Health operate a clinic. Residents can go to the clinic for health evaluations and anything they think might be related to the train derailment.
As Angry as Fox News was about U.S. Aid to Ukraine they Didn’t seem to Know the Right Amount
In this next clip Fox News hosts make claims that U.S. aid to Ukraine is as high as $200 billion and as low as $30 billion.
Some hosts used terms such as allocated or pledged while other Fox News personalities claimed every dime we’ve sent to Ukraine has already been spent.
Aid to Ukraine is complicated. Fox likes to frame the Ukraine War as the United States fighting a proxy war with Russia with no other foreign involvement. Ukraine is supported by 45 nations, some of which have taken in roughly 8 million refugees that are largely scattered across Europe.
The Council on Foreign Relations included this chart that shows the percentage of GDP each country supporting Ukraine has dedicated to the cause.
As the chart indicates three countries that closely border Russia - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania along with Poland all give a much larger portion of their GDP than the U.S. does. This is not surprising since all four countries have faced aggression by Russia in the past.
These countries are quite small so their overall contribution would not come close to the amount the U.S. has pledged but they are sacrificing a greater share of their budget.
Another easily accessible source for this topic is USAFacts.org which included the total of U.S. aid for Ukraine at $115 billion which is the same amount I found on other sites. The funds are meant to be paid out over the course of several years until 2032.
Some of this aid is a land lease program that will be paid back with some interest after the war. Most of it has not been spent yet.
Roughly $20 billion has been allocated for European Command operations, which involves deploying U.S. military personnel throughout Eastern Europe, subsequent intelligence support operations and additional assistance to friendly foreign nations.
Some of the money is spent to replenish the weapons the U.S. has given Ukraine so the funds would actually come back to the U.S. An argument can me made of course that this is just fueling the military industrial complex and enriching defense contractors but the money is going right back into the U.S. economy.
The spending that we've given Ukraine today would be the equivalent of approximately 2% of the U.S. budget.
Fox Can’t Make Up it’s Mind About the War in Ukraine
In the past year fissures have erupted throughout the Fox News network over the issue of how the U.S. should handle the war.
Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin are incredibly critical of President Biden’s handling of the war but remain dedicated to defending democracy and preventing Putin’s worst imperial ambitions.
Most Fox News hosts seem to be wavering for a more isolationist approach while Tucker Carlson remains the lone cheerleader for Russia.
I put together a short montage from the shows I covered last week to show the myriad of opinions.
On “Fox & Friends” Brian Kilmeade openly sparred with his fellow co-hosts along with experts. Friday he made an impassioned plea for continued military support for the war-torn nation while criticizing China’s attempt at a peace treaty.
“After you take half the country, then you say, okay, let's stop fighting. That's the whole point. How can you have peace when an aggressor nation has already taken and killed and tried to wipe you out? But all right, so this is why China should not be praised. This is anybody clever thinking person knows this is not a realist,” said Kilmeade.
His co-host Steve Doocy pushed back a bit.
“Well, Brian, it's my opinion. It would be a great thing if it happened. Right? Don't you think,” asked Doocy.
Kilmeade disagreed.
“What happened? Peace. How could you? Because you're rewarding a country, that invaded another country. Can we put up a map of what Russia has done to Ukraine. No, we undertaken a third of the country,” said Kilmeade.
On “The Five” things were also heated.
Judge Jeanine Pirro lamented the fact that Putin declared he was leaving the START nuclear treaty.
“Things are ramping up, for what reason,” Pirro asked.
Piers Morgan responded.
“For what reason? Well, because a dictator invaded a sovereign democratic country and he needs to be beaten. That's the reason. . . (We stay there) until the Ukrainians get the job done, because it seems to me that prevailing a lot longer than anybody thought,” said Morgan.
Greg Gutfled, who has been a critic of U.S. involvement in the war since day one, countered Morgan.
“But but we all we know the ugly reality. The moment we pull the money out of there, they are dust,” said Gutfeld.
Tucker Carlson openly mocked President Biden while also spreading misinformation about the country of Ukraine and the war.
“Joe Biden once again playing Churchill to Putin's Hitler . . .Then without fanfare or even official notice, the goal changed and became taking the Russian port of Crimea just because would be nice to have that . . .Always wanted it. Why don't take it now?. . . Then the goal became overthrowing Putin and putting American tanks in Red Square because sure, we could manage Russia once we overthrow the dictator. We're good at that. We did it in Iraq. We did it in Libya that we should send the contents of the U.S. Treasury to a corrupt Eastern European country to facilitate World War three. We're on Putin’s side,” as Carlson cackled.
Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson Take a Biden Speech Out of Context
Two weeks ago President Biden hosted a White House screening of the movie "Till" for Black history month. The movie "Till" is based on the life and death of Emmett Till a 14-year-old boy who was tortured and lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
Ingraham and Carlson both took excerpts from Biden's short speech introducing the film out of context. The Fox News hosts acted as if Biden just causally brought up the lynching of African Americans. Carlson even posed the question "Who wants to lynch Black Americans?" I provided the most recent example of racially motivated mass murder directed at Black Americans.
Even though this clip doesn’t involve Ukraine or the train derailment I wanted to include it to really show how brazenly Fox will manipulate a media clip.
DeSantis, DeSantis, DeSantis
Last Monday on both “Fox & Friends” and “The Five” every Fox personality took great lengths to praise Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. This is a montage of almost every time they uttered his name. They were careful to always include his full name.
Former President Donald J. Trump is known to be a huge fan of “Fox & Friends” so there’s a good chance he saw this.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare my Fox News coverage to five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.
Severe rains in Brazil’s North Sao Paulo state led to flooding and mudslides killing at least 44 with many more missing. More than 750 people lost their homes due to falling earth and rock from surrounding hillsides.
Violence and political unrest continued in Israel-Palestine - On Wednesday Israeli troops staged a rare daytime raid in a Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank killing 11 and injuring several others. On Thursday Gaza area Palestinians fired rockets into Israel as a form of retaliation. No one was injured. The hard-right Israeli government moved forward with its plans to limit the power of the Supreme Court amid protests against the changes. Critics fear a limited court could weaken democracy in Israel.
In a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll President Biden’s approval numbers increased to 46% with all respondents and an even higher to 49% with registered voters.
President Joe Biden nominated Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard, to head the World Bank.
Classes resume at Michigan State after an on-campus shooting left three dead and five injured.
PBS did an extended segment on the CDC’s study that showed increases in sadness and exposure to violence among teenage girls.
Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison in Los Angeles for one count of rape and two sexual assault counts. The sentence will be added to his current 23-year sentence for related crimes in New York.
R. Kelly was sentenced to 20 years for sex crimes in Chicago. All but one of those years will be served concurrently with his 30-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering.
Carlos Watson, founder of Ozy Media, was arrested on fraud charges related to his fledgling company.
A federal judge in Texas, appointed by former President Donald J. Trump, will rule whether or not to cut off access to a key medication used in medical abortions.
Neo Nazi protesters harassed theatergoers outside of the Broadway musical “Parade.” The musical includes themes about the hatred and persecution of Jewish people.
Mass killings linked to extremism have spiked dramatically in the past decade according to a new report by the Anti-defamation League (ADL). Last year 21 of the 25 murders that would met the criteria of an extremist killing were linked to white supremacists.
Carlos Media was arrested and charged in connection to the killing of Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell. Media’s wife worked as a housekeeper for the Bishop.
Ex-Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro Garcia Luna was convicted in U.S. federal court of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and taking millions in cash bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel.
PBS produced an extended segment about the Nicaraguan political prisoners released and deported to the United States. Fox not only has not mentioned the story but I’ve never seen anyone on the network bring up that the Nicaraguan government is run by an authoritarian who came to power as a leftist.
The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case that could radically change the internet. The case centers on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which was passed in 1996. Section 230 gives websites immunity from what users post on their sites.
The TSA intercepted 6,542 guns in airports last year the highest number on record. With the exception of the 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, the number of guns confiscated by the TSA has risen every year since 2010.
North Korea fired long-range missiles near Japan. The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) had sufficient range to hit the continental United States according to Japanese officials.
The job market remained strong as new state unemployment claims dropped to 192,000
Wisconsin voters headed to the polls to vote in a primary for a State Supreme Court Justice last week. The last vote narrowed the field from four candidates to a conservative and a liberal judge. If the liberal wins the 10-year-term it will give liberals a majority for the first time since 2008. Whomever wins the seat might restore abortion rights in the state and change gerrymandered districts. The race is on pace to be the most expensive in U.S. history.
A judge in NY barred victims of the 9/11 attack from suing Afghani banks
The possibly that the current strain of H5N1 bird flu could infect humans remains low even though a it has crossed over to other species.
Pets adopted during the pandemic are being returned at a higher rate than usual. Animal shelters across the country have a surplus of animals in need of homes.
Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) will resign from Congress on June 1st to run the Rhode Island Foundation
PBS NewsHour did not include any coverage of the Alex Murdaugh trial.
By the Numbers
America at a Crossroads is the new series produced by Judy Woodruff that explores the sharp political divide that exists across the country. PBS included an extended segment on the program to help promote it.
Coming up…
This week I’ll be covering the first hour of “Fox & Friends,” “The Five” and “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
You are so prolific! And insightful.