Fox News: An Exercise in Jury Intimidation, Trump Worship and Lies About Israel
A condensed overview of 20 hours of Fox News for the week ending 4/21/24
Last week the MAGA propaganda machine was in full swing as Fox hosts openly tried to scare jurors in Trump’s criminal hush money trial while promoting him as the savior of humanity. Sean Hannity created his own reality regarding the U.S. alliance with Israel.
The network openly mocked Google workers who protested their employer’s relationship with Israel. Fox News condemned NPR for suspending a hostile employee who trashed the organization in the press.
Fox News calling out any other news organization for bias, and poor journalistic standards is downright laughable as most programs on Fox are a sales pitch for the Republican Party mixed in with an emotional roller coaster of fear mongering, paranoia and hate towards multiple marginalized groups.
Not only did Fox News pay out the largest defamation settlement in history it doesn’t even get basic facts correct as in the example of hosts confusing the Haitian president for the prime minister.
Anyone watching Fox exclusively last week would have missed out on increasingly alarming evidence of the damage climate change is causing, updates in the war in Ukraine and the devastation in Sudan caused by a year-long civil war.
Shows I covered last week:
Fox & Friends - all three hours on Monday
The Five
Hannity
Jesse Watters Primetime - Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
Jesse Watters Nearly Doxxes a Juror
On Tuesday on his primetime show Watters presented every scrap of personal information his researchers could glean about the jurors selected for Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan.
Watters didn’t just present the information. He also openly criticized a private citizen who was performing her civic duty as a resident of Manhattan.
“Juror number two, a nurse from the Upper East Side with a master's degree. She's not married, has no kids, and lives with her fiancee, who works in finance. She gets her news from The New York Times, Google and CNN. She said two things that really stuck out. One quote, I don't really have an opinion of Trump and quote, No one is above the law,” said Watters.
He then shook his head disapprovingly and said,
“I'm not so sure about juror number two.”
Later on during the same broadcast Watters openly mocked the juror as he laughed about her advanced degree.
“The nurse on the Upper East Side with a master's degree,” Watters said as he laughed with his guest Charlie Hurt.
The next day on “The Five,” Watters promoted the idea that there was some sort of nefarious plot to convict Trump.
“There are trying to rig this jury. They are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge. They're saying, have you ever said anything on social media about Donald Trump?”
Watters didn’t single out juror number two but because he had singled her out the night before any audience member might think she was trying to get on the jury to ensure a conviction for Trump.
On Thursday Watters announced that the juror he had singled out and attacked dropped out because she was worried her identity would be revealed.
“Juror number two, the unmarried nurse dropped out because her friends asked her if she was one of the Trump jurors.”
Last week was a low point for many media companies who thought it was a good idea to publish articles that included personal information about the jurors selected for this trial.
The New York Times, Politico, Reuters, CBS News were just a few media companies who publish personal details about the jurors. The public doesn’t gain any useful knowledge about the trial from learning that one of men on the jury was born in Ireland or that another juror likes to dance.
I couldn’t help but think of the case of the Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss who were both falsely accused by Rudy Giuliani and others of smuggling in fake ballots to rig the election for Joe Biden.
According to reporting by the New York Times, Freeman and Moss both faced hundreds of death threats and vile racist and violent messages. They received hateful comments on multiple social media platforms and their business accounts. Freeman got so many hostile voicemail messages her phone crashed. A few enraged Trump supporters even showed up at a family member’s home.
The FBI warned her that she was no longer safe at her property and she had to move in with friends for months until law enforcement told her they arrested a person who had put her name on a death list.
Freeman and Moss testified about the harassment they received as part of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The two women also won a $148 million judgment against Rudy Giuliani in a defamation lawsuit. They are suing him a second time for his repeated lies about them.
Both Freeman and Moss were called out by name and identified in a low-quality video. This made it easier for Trump supporters to find their personal information online.
Jesse Watters openly attacked the second juror even though he had no evidence that she was doing anything unethical or was out to destroy Trump. Luckily the juror realized that if her friends recognized her from clues dropped about her in the media and decided to drop out of the trial.
If she hadn’t removed herself from the trial her identity most likely would have been revealed.
Sean Hannity also Revealed as Much As He Could About the Jurors
On Tuesday Sean Hannity went through each juror along with Kerri Kupec Urbahn a former Trump administration official and Fox News legal editor.
“All right. Here with reaction, Fox News legal editor will also be joined by Alan Dershowitz and Gregg Jarrett in a minute. Kerri, great to have you. I actually want to go over with you. There have been seven jurors that have now been selected for this trial. Jury selection is very important. The jury pool, I would argue, is not particularly favorable.”
Hannity also made the jurors into some type of villains in Trump’s never-ending victimhood saga.
“The venue is not particularly favorable for Donald Trump. So let's go I'll put it up on the screen if we can look at, for example, the first person to be picked, a male from West Harlem, originally from Ireland, likes anything outdoors, gets news from the New York Times, The Daily Mail, Fox News, MSN, DNC. Now, Fox News, by the way, could mean in New York, Fox Five, New York. It doesn't necessarily mean the Fox News Channel, which would be very different in my mind.”
Jury members in this case are Manhattan residents who received a jury summons and showed up to do fulfill their legally obligated civil duty. They shouldn’t be targeted for harassment or demonized.
Pam Bondi Attacks the Jury and Claims Trump Will Get Even More Support if He is Convicted
On Friday, while a guest on “Hannity,” Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general gave her opinion on Trump’s criminal trial.
“You know, I think people will see all of that, won't they? They should. And even if he had a good jury and he has a horrible jury, even if you had a good jury, it would be an uphill battle for him because it's New York and because of the media and because of what Mark said, they're going home every night and watching this on TV.
Sean, I've had plenty of trials that weren't nearly as high profile as this. And my jurors were sequestered as they should be because all the rights should belong to President Trump, yet none of them are in this case. And that's what's so frightening for our country. Do I want to see him in jail? Absolutely not. I wouldn't put it past this judge, though, and President Trump should be allowed to be out on the campaign trail every single day.
He shouldn't even be going until after the. Let me ask you. If they try to put the former president in jail, you know, 100 and some odd days before an election, you really believe that's going to happen. What do you think the country's reaction to that is? I think he'll win by even a bigger landslide than he's going to win by already.”
Most polling shows Trump losing support if he is convicted of any of the criminal charges he faces.
Hannity Claimed the U.S. Had Betrayed Israel
Last week Hannity repeatedly used the phrase, “The U.S. has thrown Israel under the bus.”
“And by the way, let's not forget Biden threw Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, under the bus,” said Hannity on Friday’s broadcast of his primetime show.
His criticism was aimed at President Biden’s increasingly fraught relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Fox host left out that the U.S. military helped Israel beat back an Iranian aerial bombardment.
Throughout the week “Fox & Friends,” accurately reported that on April 13th the U.S. military helped Israel shoot down 300 drones and missiles fired from Iran.
“Israeli military is vowing to retaliate against Iran's unprecedented missile and drone attack over the weekend. The action is said to be imminent. Iran fired 300 projectiles at the Jewish state, 99%, which were intercepted with the help of the U.S. and other allies,” said Ainsley Earhardt during a headline news segment on Wednesday.
Hannity was really twisting reality when he claimed the U.S. was abandoning Israel but relations between the two allies are strained.
On April 4th the U.S. president said during a call with Netanyahu,"we won't be able to support you," if Israel doesn't change course in Gaza. Biden’s statement came directly after seven humanitarian workers for World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed by the IDF.
The Israeli military admitted it made mistakes and reprimanded the officers involved with the attack on the WCK workers, but this was hardly the first incident that involved what Israel claimed was an unintentional killing of civilians.
Biden told Netanyahu that the U.S. would not support a counter attack on Iran and that Israel needed to open up more channels for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel did wage a counterattack against Iran, but it was a precision strike on a military target. Israel had planned a larger scale attack but decided to scale back after pressure from pressure from allies including the U.S..
Charlie Hurt Compared Trump to O.J. Simpson
On Monday, the first day of Trump’s criminal hush money trial, “Fox & Friends,” dedicated nearly 20 minutes to a drone shot of Trump’s motorcade weaving through Manhattan as it left the courthouse.
I’m not sure why this footage was necessary as no cars were being chased by police and absolutely nothing extraordinary happened. It was just a way to hype up the event.
Charlie Hurt seemed giddy about the trial as he spoke over footage of Trump’s motorcade.
“Assuming that Trump abides by the gag order, which I just assume that he's not going to. But assuming that he does, he the guy's a master because he walks out, and he sees a bank of cameras and he doesn't need to talk about the case. In fact, he can talk about whatever he wants to talk about and he's going to take advantage of that,” said Hurt.
“He's going to talk about the case, you know him,” said Brian Kilmeade as he laughed.
“And he'll talk about the case as well, or he'll talk about it like he'll do it in pig Latin, but then he'll talk about whatever else he wants to talk about. But he's going to take advantage of the cameras and people are going to tune in. This is going to be better than the O.J. trial. People are going to tune in just to hear whatever hilarious stuff he has to say.”
So far Trump has notably complained that the courthouse was too cold while journalists have reported that he appears to fall asleep during the proceedings. There’s also been reports of Trump’s flatulence and McDonald’s orders.
It’s not exactly as riveting as the O.J. Simpson double murder trial.
Tammy Bruce Said the World Has Ended But Only Trump Can Save it.
Fox News spent a lot of focus criticizing NPR after Uri Berliner, a business reporter who had been with National Public Radio for 25 years, openly criticized his employer.
Berliner called out NPR for what he claimed was a lack of diversity at the network. Many of his co-workers pushed back against his criticism while management said it would add monthly meetings to review coverage.
Fox News and other right-wing media outlets and pundits took Berliner’s criticism as an opportunity to wage an all out assault on the publicly funded media. “Defund NPR,” became the rallying cry across several programs I covered on Fox.
According to NPR, public funds only make up a tiny percentage of its total operating budget.
Fox News hosts bashed NPR for what it claimed was a left-wing bias. This is outrageous of course because Fox doesn’t just have a right-wing bias it produces full blown propaganda.
On Friday, while a guest on “Hannity,” Tammy Bruce didn’t just endorse Donald J. Trump for president she presented him as a savior of humanity. Bruce is a paid contributor for Fox News and has often sub-hosted for Sean Hannity.
“Today. This guy has got to work at, and his handlers, have got to work at being wrong all the time. So now you've got of course, we see this war between Israel and Iran, Russia and Ukraine and North Korea's looking for some attention. God help us. China is eating our lunch. It's just a remarkable dynamic. And I think there is now more and more people saying that they feel dumb and embarrassed for having voted for Joe Biden.
But that's what fear does to you. This is why it was this demonizing of Donald Trump and trying to make you think that the world is going to end. And lo and behold, the world did end because of Joe Biden. And now we've got a chance to make a difference here. And this is what the bad guys also know.
This is why this the rest of this year as Donald Trump is, they try to put him in a cage, the one guy that can save this nation and the world at this point, I never thought I thought Donald Trump, of course, was great and a great president. He's now the guy that can save the world. Who knew?
But that's what we've got. And they've caged him and we've got bad guys around the world knowing they've got about six months to do as much damage as possible. That is how influential Joe Biden is right now.”
Her statement is not exactly unbiased or impartial.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox New to five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following list are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.
Updates in the Israel-Hamas War
A U.N. report published last week by the UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees, accused Israeli forces of physically abusing staff and detainees. Israel has not yet publicly responded to the report but did say it acts according to Israeli and international law and those it arrests get access to food, water, medication and proper clothing.
Biden announced new sanctions for extremist Israeli settlers who commit violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Updates in the war in Ukraine
Russian forces continue to attack the Ukrainian power grid and power plants. Ukrainians have struggled with power outages as a result.
Ukraine said it shot down a Russian bomber, but Russia said the plane crashed due to an accident.
Russian airstrikes killed at least eight including two children in Central Ukraine.
Climate disasters
The United Arab Emirates’ city of Dubai experienced extreme flooding last week after the normally aired region received more than 10 inches of rain.
Scientists issued a warning due to record-breaking temperatures in 2023 which accelerated the speed of the second-largest mass coral bleaching event across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. So far this year ocean temperatures are even higher.
Video evidence shows that the cargo ship that caused the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse had electrical problems before the accident. Lights on the ship flickered on and off before it hit the bridge.
The Supreme Court decided to not intervene in a lawsuit filed by a Louisiana police officer against a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest where the officer was injured.
The Supreme Court allowed Idaho to ban gender affirming care for minors. The ruling will hold while lawsuits against the law proceed through the lower court.
World donors pledged $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Sudan after a year-long civil war has caused widespread food insecurity and could lead to a famine. The aid will go to food, water, medicines and other urgent needs.
After reporting dismal first-quarter sales, Tesla will lay off more than 10% of its global workforce.
Federal regulators issued new regulations on silica dust aimed to protect miners’ from developing Black Lung.
A federal appeals court overturned a West Virginia law that banned transgender students from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity. The law includes sports in public middle schools, high schools, and universities.
The Old Stock Exchange in Denmark suffered damage after a fire broke out while the building was undergoing renovations. More than half of the 400-year-old building was destroyed during the fire.
The Library of Congress added 25 new titles to the Audio-Visual Conservation Center. Some of the artists included are from The Police, Jimmy Buffett, Mariah Carey, Koko Taylor, John Denver, Queen Latifah, the late great Burt Bacharach (along with his lyrical partner Hal David) and Madonna.
PBS produced a segment about a study by Tulane University that found higher rates of infertility, pre-term births and lower birth rates in an area of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley” that is surrounded by chemical plants.
President Biden pushed for higher tariffs on Chinese metal products. He also remains opposed to Japan’s Nippon Steel’s plan to buy U.S. Steel. Fox News has implied that Biden has supported the sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese company.
The U.S. Navy flew a Navy P-8A Poseidon jet over the Taiwan Strait a day after U.S.-China defense chiefs held talks in an effort to reduce regional tensions.
The U.S. restored oil sanctions against Venezuela after the Maduro administration limited which candidates and political parties can participate in elections while harassing and repressing political opposition.
Myanmar's jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave. Her supporters say she is imprisoned due to political reasons.
The Justice Department will pay millions to the victims of sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar. An internal investigation found that FBI agents mishandled sexual abuse allegations by women more than a year before Nassar was arrested in 2016.
Ethiopians face hunger and famine due to climate change and civil unrest in the Northern Tigray region. One in six people in the 120 million population need food aid.
A new report by the Bipartisan Policy Center reveals a historic amount of turnover within local elections offices due to harassment and intimidation.
Investigators found that a recent outage of 911 emergency call services in several states was caused when lines were accidentally cut during the installation of a new light pole in Kansas City, Missouri. The accidental outage lasted about two and a half hours.
A new U.N. report showed closing the gender gap in pay could help the world’s economy. Although it has been 40 years since the adoption of the Convention on all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979), discrimination remains commonplace in law and practice.
Maine lawmakers passed sweeping new gun reforms including background checks on private gun sales, waiting periods for gun purchases and criminalizing gun sales to prohibited people. The push for reform came after a mass shooting that killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine last October.
A man was arrested at the Iranian consulate in Paris, France after he threatened to blow himself up. He was not found to be carrying any explosives. A police source said it was the same man who had been suspected of attempted arson near the Iranian consulate in an incident last September.
President Biden announced new restrictions on oil drilling in the Alaska wilderness. The Biden admin. will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres (5.3 million hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife.
The FAA is increasing the rest times between shifts for air traffic controllers. The changes will take place within 90 days.
PBS produced a segment about the upcoming elections in India, the world’s largest democracy. Critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are concerned about the representation of the Muslim minority and the dismal state of press freedom in the country.
Bob Graham, former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator died at the age of 87. Mr. Graham, a Democrat, served two terms as governor (1979-87) and three terms in the Senate (1987-2005). He was an outspoken critic of George W. Bush’s handling of the 9/11 terrorist attack. He also voted against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Dickey Betts, a guitarist, singer and founding member of the rock group the Allman Brothers Band died at the age of 80. He was best known for writing the 1973 hit song ‘Ramblin’ Man.”
Whew…
You’re a maven in the decoding field.
Many thanks.
Only thing that caught my eye is that Trump Trial didn’t make Top 5 stories on PBS. I guess jury selection wasn’t prime material. Guessing that changes this week. Bigly.
What? No immigration hoards???