Fox News: Gun Violence and the Gaslighting of America.
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News media for the week ending 5/29/22
A typical Fox News viewer last week might think any mention of gun control is a craven attempt by Democrats to politicize a mass shooting. They would probably also think the solution to mass shootings is to turn schools and most public buildings into mini-fortresses complete with armed guards, metal detectors, sealed doors and windows despite fire code considerations.
What they wouldn’t know is that mass shootings really only happen in the United States. That part of the puzzle wasn’t discussed once on Fox News in the 15 hours I analyzed.
On Tuesday the entire broadcast of “The Five” was interrupted by live coverage of a mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
The cast remained on camera but mostly sat slack-jawed as the producers kept cutting back to coverage from the scene of the massacre. To their credit most of the cast didn’t use the tragedy to discuss anything political. Even the more outspoken Greg Gutfeld and Judge Jeanine Pirro simply expressed sympathy for the families.
The only outlier was guest host Kellyanne Conway who brought up both foreign aid given to Ukraine and her general disdain for President Joe Biden.
This was after Conway declared that is was disgraceful for anyone to bring up politics immediately after such a tragedy.
Clip of the Week
Conway’s reaction set the tone for the remaining Fox News coverage of the tragedy. Federal spending on the war in Ukraine was brought up by several anchors as were the usual excuses:
Broken homes
Lack of parental guidance
Video games
Social media
Lack of security at school buildings
A decline of religious worship
COVID-19 lockdowns
Lack of Mental Healthcare
Fox News continued to “gaslight” their audience by creating a false reality about the true causes of mass shootings.
Gaslighting - To manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity. A person who gaslights denies reality even when faced with rock solid evidence.
How Dare you Bring Up Politics! That’s our Job!
Not one guest or Fox News employee ever mentioned the fact that mass shootings are uniquely American phenomena. The source of the problem kept shifting.
We’ve Cracked the Code, the Problem is Young Men!
Immediately after the shooting, Fox News tried to pivot to a frequent far right talking point - mass shootings are due to the plight of neglected young males in our society. These clips are all from the same day. Each anchor seemingly comes up with this idea spontaneously.
This notion is pushed heavily in the MRA community (Men’s rights groups) and at first glance it does make some sense. Young men do face unique obstacles and many of them aren’t getting the help or support they need. The problem with this logic is that criminal violence among young men is nothing new.
To quote the entry for “Gender and crime” from encyclopedia.com.
Gender is the single best predictor of criminal behavior: men commit more crime, and women commit less. This distinction holds throughout history, for all societies, for all groups, and for nearly every crime category. The universality of this fact is really quite remarkable, even though many tend to take it for granted.
Nearly all violent crime is committed by men, mostly young men. The peak age for violent offenses with firearms is 18 - 21.
Pointing out the gender of the vast majority of mass shooters is not even beginning to scratch the surface to this problem. Male aggression and violence is also present in other primate species.
Once the story of the Uvalde mass shooting shifted to the incompetence of the local police force Fox News immediately pivoted to criticism of law enforcement and the topic of young men was dropped completely.
The Usual Reasons
Newt Gingrich - Let’s Arm the Teachers!
Things really got absurd when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested arming teachers and school personnel to prevent another tragedy.
As usual the Republican response to gun violence is more guns.
Nothing is going to change.
Neither Ingraham or Conway seemingly have much of anything to offer towards real change.
Fox News continues to make excuses for the gun lobby. They ignore the obvious and overwhelming fact that mass shootings remain an American problem. They feign outrage when anyone even brings up the topic of gun control or minimal standards on gun ownership.
The heated rhetoric and constant swirling outrage hurricane generated daily on the Fox News platform is also part of the problem. Until we address the core of the crisis - too many guns and too many angry people - the bodies will continue to stack up.
In one of the worst examples of gaslighting from last week Laura Ingraham even taunted Democrats by staring directly into the camera and declaring,
“And now Democrats have the house, they have the Senate and they have the presidency. So at this point, put up or shut up and let the political and legal chips fall where they may.”
Democrats have passed multiple bills in the House of Representatives that have been blocked by Republicans in the Senate. In order to overrule a filibuster on any legislation Democrats would need sixty votes in the senate far more than their current razor thin majority.
Sources
The Contagion Effect: From Buffalo to Uvalde, 16 Mass Shootings in Just 10 Days - The 74million.org
Opinion - Police mistakes in Uvalde should not take focus off the real issue: guns - Washington Post
12 Stats to help inform the gun control debate - NPR.org
What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. - Pew Research Center
The Long, Failed History of Gun Control Legislation - BU Today
The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Gun Control - The Atlantic
From Sandy Hook to Buffalo an Uvalde: Ten years of failure on gun control - Washington Post
It’s difficult to find a short article that explains the link to aggression and gender in primates but if you want to read more about the subject I would strongly recommend “The Trouble With Testosterone: And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament” by Dr. Robert Saplosky. Saplosky has several books about the parallels between primate (baboon) behavior and human beings.
Gun Violence in the United States
Firearms were the leading cause of death for American children and teens in 2020. - CDC.gov
When an assault weapon is used in a mass shooting, it results in six times as many people shot than when other guns are used. - Everytownresearch.org
An average of 4,500 veterans die by firearm suicide every year - about 12 veterans each day. - MentalHealth.va.gov
Access to a gun triples the risk of death by suicide. - acpjounrals.org
About 4.5 million women in the US today report having been threatened with a gun by an intimate partner. - PubMed.gov
Each year, more than 4,100 Latino people die from gun violence in the U.S. and 13,300 are shot and wounded. - CDC.gov
Every three hours, a young Black man dies by gun homicide. - CDC.gov
Every day, more than 110 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and injured. - CDC.gov
58% of American adults or someone they care for have experienced gun violence. - SurveyUSA
Brian Kilmeade has absolutely No Clue how the Commodities Market Works
There were other stories covered last week. This clip just shows the profound lack of understanding on how the price of oil is determined.
Bogus Expert of the Week
Lara Trump manages to get out that she’s a mom in the unedited version of this clip. Being a mother doesn’t make her an expert on school safety. She’s used as a contributor to promote her father-in-law.
Stories Not Covered on Fox News
Sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention - An independent firm, Guidepost Solutions, included it in its bombshell report detailing how the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee mishandled allegations of sex abuse, stonewalled multiple survivors and prioritized protecting the SBC from liability. The report included a 205-database of 700 entries from 2000 to 2019. - I searched through every transcript to see if I somehow missed this but Fox News did not mention it once in the 15 hours I surveyed.
Steve Kerr’s impassioned statement about gun control - Fox News showed moment of silence at basketball game but left out a statement by Golden Gate Warriors coach Steve Kerr. They mentioned that players were thankful for his leadership but did not include one second of his statement advocating for gun control.
The second anniversary of the George Floyd murder - Fox News did mention this but spent very little time on the story. It was not given it’s own segment, or even a 30 second headline news piece. A few anchors mentioned it in passing. PBS had am extended segment that featured the authors of a biography about George Floyd’s life.
North Korea missile tests – The U.S. tried to sanction North Korea and Russia and China vetoed the attempt saying it would just harm the people of North Korea. – this was not mentioned on Fox. PBS did an extended segment on it. Also included the COVID-19 crisis in North Korea – the North Korean government has rejected any help with vaccines. This was not mentioned in the 15 hours of Fox News I surveyed from last week.
By the Numbers
The school shooting in Uvalde dominated coverage on both networks yet even though Fox News dedicated more airtime to the story the coverage on PBS was far more comprehensive.
Fox & Friends featured live coverage from political commentator and news presenter Lawrence B. Jones from Uvalde on Thursday and Friday. Jones openly sparred with the on-air hosts as he continually showed deference for the local police force.
His coverage was sloppy and rambling as he would use excuses like “they live here” or “they had kids in the school too.” to cover for the bungled police response.
The segments from Uvalde that featured Jones offered very little new information about the tragic event.
On “The Ingraham Angle” guest host Jason Chaffetz featured a five and half minute segment produced by independent journalist Ali Bradley, about the family life and background of the alleged shooter. It included a brief interview with the shooter’s grandfather and some details about the shooter’s upbringing.
The segment felt exploitative and inappropriate. I’m not sure what good it does to elevate yet another troubled young man who decided to murder innocent children because he was mad at the world. We’ve seen this story before. This murderer does not need to become a household name.
The mass shooter in Buffalo New York openly admitted to studying the methods of past shooters. Bradley’s segment seemed like fuel for the next deranged young would be shooter.
Next week I’m switching back to Tucker Carlson Tonight. He’s my least favorite show to analyze but his show yields the most influence so its important to cover him. I will be dropping a podcast version of my review/breakdown of the film “2000 Mules” on Wednesday.