Fox News - Day 1-3 of the January 6th Committee Hearings and how Primetime reacted.
A condensed overview of both Day 2 and 3 of the January 6th Committee Hearings and ten hours of Fox Primetime for week ending 6-19-22
A typical Fox News viewer might have thought the arrest of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the diary of Ashley Biden were the biggest news stories from last week. President Joe Biden was the cause of every calamity in the world, a re-opening of the Keystone XL Pipeline would turn inflation around and the January 6th Committee Hearings were a partisan hack job run by bitter Democrats who were hypocrites to their core.
Last week I did a deep dive into the 1st through 3rd hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. I also captured and analyzed a week’s worth of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity.”
I chose both shows because both Carlson and Hannity have promoted their own conspiracy theories surrounding the riot.
Tucker Carlson picked up a conspiracy theory that was first mentioned on the far-right-wing website Revolver News. Revolver’s editor in chief, Warren Beattie, also joined Carlson to produce a Tucker Carlson Original film for Fox Nation called, “Patriot Purge.”
The film is based on a misunderstanding between the difference between an FBI informant and a FBI agent. Beattie and Carlson assume anyone cooperating with the FBI is actually a government employee secretly embedded with extremist groups in order to incite violence and criminal activity. “Patriot Purge” is filled with complete and utter nonsense.
Sean Hannity also promotes the idea that the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, somehow barred former President Donald J. Trump from reserving additional National Guard troops to act as a buffer for the USCP force that day. There is absolutely no truth to his claims as multiple sources have debunked it.
Last week neither theory won out. Instead both Hannity and Carlson thought they’d struck gold with a story about the arrest of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the U.S. Capitol.
Clip of the week
Both shows seemed a bit desperate. Tucker Carlson even reintroduced a fairly disgusting story about Pres. Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley and implied that Pres. Biden had molested his daughter. I didn’t make a clip out of his remarks because they were absolutely repugnant and the story is months old.
Carlson even brought up Tara Reade, a woman who briefly worked for then Sen. Joe Biden who accused him of sexual assault. Her accusations were given some credence until major problems with her story and overall credibility cropped up. Reade has now made a bit of a career out of appearing on far-right-wing media outlets.
Hannity and Carlson both hammered hard on the high rate of inflation and made a festival out of trashing Pres. Joe Biden for being senile, incompetent, radical, and generally inept.
Tucker Carlson - Either Obama was White or Tucker Forgot he was President
By the Numbers
“Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” were both absolute dumpster fires of non-stop takedowns of Joe Biden. The graph speaks for itself.
It’s sometimes hard to categorize an anti-Biden screed as the hosts will weave several different topics into their angry rants. This past week it was easy to figure out their focus. When Tucker Carlson decided to resurrect the “Ashely Biden Diary” story I just wanted to chuck my laptop out the window.
The 6th most talked about topic last week was Hunter Biden.
There’s something about trashing adult children with addiction problems that just reeks like a New York City subway station soaked in urine and vomit in mid-August.
It’s also not difficult to point the finger at Donald Trump Jr. who appears loaded to his gills on some sort of stimulant every time he appears on screen.
He might be sober.
PBS NewsHour by comparison appeared to have its finger on the pulse of actual news.
This is what Fox News was actually trying to avoid all last week.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol - Day 1
Duration of hearing without commentary or commercials - 1 hour 43 minutes
Sean Hannity - mentioned twice
Duration of commentary - 15 minutes
Members on Fox Business panel
Martha MacCallum, Fox News anchor
Bret Baier, Fox News anchor
Trey Gowdy, former U.S. Representative - Republican
Johnathan Turley - Fox News legal analyst
Jessica Tarlov - Fox News, liberal anchor on “The Five”
Marc Short - former counsel to Vice President Mike Pence
Commentators Fox News stalwarts, Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier’s first concern was the “made for television” quality to the event. It was somehow wrong that the government might try to make the proceeding more palatable for the average American viewer.
Instead of actually looking at the evidence or testimony they mostly complained about the lack bipartisanship with the investigation.
They seemingly forgot that two republicans, Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL) are part of the committee.
For the brief commentary after the hearing the panel invited on Marc Short, former counsel to VP Mike Pence. Short mostly talked about his experience fleeing the angry mob at the capitol although he did manage to destroy Tucker Carlson’s conspiracy theory when he said,
“The notion that this is a false flag operation is frankly propaganda.”
PBS Coverage - Day 1
By contrast PBS NewsHour had 16 and one-half minutes worth of commentary.
Members of the PBS NewsHour panel:
Judy Woodruff - PBS NewsHour
Donell Harvin - Senior policy researcher, Rand Corp. formally Chief of DHS for Washington D.C.
Mary McCord - Former Department of Justice official, former prosecutor
Paul Rosenzweig - Former Department of Homeland Security officer, cybersecurity consultant
Lisa Desjardins - PBS NewsHour
Geoff Bennett - PBS NewsHour
They used words such as “stunning, remarkable, exceedingly powerful and riveting” to describe the testimony and video evidence.
Judy Woodruff called it a “hold your breath” hour.
Paul Rosenzweig set the tone when he said,
“I think it was exceedingly powerful. The arc of the story we sort of knew already, but what stands out to me was the way in which Congresswoman Cheney weaved in details previously unknown that lend power and credence to the story in ways that want to at least break through to the American people that Bill Barr called the allegations of of election fraud,” said Rosenzweig.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol - Day 2
Day two of the hearings started after an extended delay when the wife of a witness, Bill Stepien, went into labor. Both networks adjusted by adding more commentary to their broadcasts. Fox went ahead and moved the broadcast from Fox Business to Fox News.
Duration of hearing without commentary or commercials - 1 hour 53 minutes
Duration of commentary - 36 minutes
Three clips from Fox News were used as evidence during the hearing:
Fox News calling Arizona for Biden during their 2020 presidential election coverage
Rudy Giuliani on “Hannity” spreading disinformation about voter fraud and the 2020 presidential election.
Donald J. Trump also promoting voter fraud claims when he called into Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” hosted by Maria Bartiromo.
Members on Fox News panel:
Martha MacCallum, Fox News anchor
Dana Perino, Fox News anchor
Bill Hemmer, Fox News anchor
Katie Pavlich - Fox News anchor
Marie Harf - Former State Dept. spokesperson, liberal
Johnathan Turley - Fox News legal analyst
Andy McCarthy - Fox News legal analyst
I was blinded a bit by the lack of melanin. Fox News tends to feature white anchors and guests but this was a bit overwhelming even for Fox.
A Condensed edit of the commentary on Fox News during and after day two of the Jan. 6th Committee Hearing.
PBS Coverage - Day 2
PBS NewsHour also had about 36 minutes worth of commentary.
Members of the PBS NewsHour panel:
Amna Nawaz - PBS NewsHour
Nicole Ellis - PBS NewsHour
Judy Woodruff - PBS NewsHour
Lisa Desjardins - PBS NewsHour
Trey Grayson - National Association of Secretaries of State (Former Sec. of State for Kentucky)
Peniel Joseph, Assoc. Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Professor of Public Affairs at University of Texas at Austin
PBS correspondent Amna Nawaz spoke at length about the overlap between Fox News and the Trump White House.
“That relationship between certain hosts at Fox and the Trump White House specifically have seen in the past leaked messages between Fox host Bill Hannity and Trump's then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, not only on election night and after election night, but then leading up to January 6, then during the January 6 attack, and afterwards as well,” said Nawaz
After the hearing Peniel Joseph, of the University of Texas, compared the hearings to the time of reconstruction when voter fraud claims were leveed at Black Americans who tried to vote.
“I love the testimony about Detroit, Atlanta, places where there was predominantly black votes that it put Biden over the top, and that's very similar to the period of reconstruction. . .And these efforts by then Democrats to say that black Republican were fraudulently voting in places like Georgia and Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, the entire Old Confederacy,” said Joseph.
Lisa Desjardins also noted the use of Republican witnesses as a means to try to convince voters and lawmakers that Trump’s voter fraud claims were bogus.
“Look at the witnesses and voices we heard today, I counted 30, video clips, some of them audio clips, with 30 clips that replay today, three witnesses live, what do all of those voices had in common, all of them Republicans,” said Desjardins.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol - Day 3
Duration of hearing without commentary or commercials - 2 hours and 31 minutes
Duration of commentary - 22 minutes
Members on Fox News panel:
Martha MacCallum, Fox News anchor
John Roberts, Fox News anchor
Sandra Smith, Fox News anchor
Johnathan Turley - Fox News legal analyst
Andy McCarthy - Fox News legal analyst
The commentary was more of the same from the previous two hearings. Panel members complained about the lack of opposing voices. They claimed the committee was too partisan and tried to play the whole investigation as an overreaction.
At one point legal analyst, Andy McCarthy emphasized that an attempted quo wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the military. He made several valid points but seemed to miss that more people, including elected officials could easily have been injured or killed.
PBS Coverage - Day 3
PBS NewsHour had just shy of 22 minutes of commentary.
Members of the PBS NewsHour panel:
Judy Woodruff - PBS NewsHour
Derek Muller - Law professor, University of Iowa, expert on election law
Jessica Huseman - Journalist, Votebeat
Lisa Desjardins - PBS NewsHour
Laura Barron-Lopez - PBS NewsHour
PBS spent most of their time exploring the insanity of the theory that was promoted by legal adviser to the president, John Eastman.
Laura Barron-Lopez pointed out the intensity of the hearing,
“Judge Luttig is, as we know, a very staunchly conservative, he's a conservative hero. And so to hear someone like that, say before the committee say before the American public, he said, quote, that, that he believes Trump and his supporters are a clear and present danger to our democracy,” said Barron-Lopez.
Coming up…
This upcoming week I’ll be covering the rest of the January 6th Committee Hearings along with “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity”. My focus is going to be more on the hearings than the primetime shows. I’m also planning on doing another podcast this week if I don’t collapse after this monster….this one was a doozy.