Fox News: How to Ignore Jan. 6th - Bring up AOC, Hunter Biden and Call President Biden Old.
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 7-17-22
A typical Fox News viewer last week might believe U.S. foreign policy is based on protecting the business interests of the drug addled son of Pres. Joe Biden. They could also think that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most influential legislator in Washington and that Pres. Joe Biden is doped up by his handlers to make him appear alert and lucid.
Tucker Carlson started the week with a 26-minute uninterrupted monologue that was a tapestry of bizarre conspiracy theories that wove threads of the origins of COVID-19 into alleged ties to Hunter Biden and various Chinese companies ultimately to point back to every foreign policy directive issued by President Joe Biden.
Basically Carlson was promoting the idea that President Biden was more concerned about the plight of his son than the American people.
As he has done before, Carlson made claims that the COVID-19 virus was created as a bio weapon by the Chinese government but offered no evidence or proof.
Before I go into last week’s coverage I wanted to share this subtle nod to white nationalism via Tucker Carlson.
Carlson slipped this into a much longer monologue. The line, “Not since a president aligned himself with the liked of Joesph Stalin” gave me pause.
Carlson is right of course as the U.S. did align with Joseph Stalin to help defeat the Nazis in World War II. I have no doubt that Carlson’s extremist fans caught the reference and were emboldened by it.
A not so subtle Nazi reference
Clip of the Week
This is a condensed edit of Carlson’s 26-minute monologue condensed down to roughly a minute and half. This edit makes about as much sense as the full monologue. I can’t imagine most of Carlson’s devoted followers could follow this.
On Tuesday Carlson started off by discussing Rep. Ocasio-Cortez but his real target were green energy policies which he claimed were destroying entire economies.
This clip is a montage of all the times Carlson mentioned Ocasio-Cortez in one episode. A viewer might think she was the basis of at least one story during Tuesday night’s episode but she was nothing more than a launching pad for other misleading stories throughout the program.
Tucker Carlson is Basically AOC’s Stalker
Green Energy Policies have lead to calamity in Sri Lanka except they haven’t.
Hannity, Carlson and Watters blamed the collapse of the Sri Lankan government on poorly executed green energy policies.
In stark contrast to how the Fox News primetime shows covered the crisis, PBS NewsHour went into detail about the corruption of the ruling Rajapaksa family that has dominated several senior government positions in Sri Lanka for nearly two decades.
In 2019, President Rajapaksa came to power months after the chaos of Easter suicide bombings at churches and hotels that killed 290 people. The terrorist attacks damaged tourism which is one of the primary sources of foreign exchange.
Rajapaksa had plan to turn things around for Sri Lanka which included slashing taxes to the lowest level in the history of the country.
International creditors punished Sri Lanka for what they perceived as fiscal recklessness and downgraded the countries credit ratings. This blocked Sri Lanka from borrowing more money as its foreign reserves dried up. Sri Lanka has been burdened with crushing foreign debt for decades.
The situation got even worse when the COVID-19 decimated tourism and the war in Ukraine sharply increased prices for food and energy.
The country is also recently recovering from a 30-year civil war against ethnic Tamil rebels that ended in 2009.
Hannity and Carlson left out all of those details and blamed the collapse on a policy that forced farmers to stop using chemical fertilizer. PBS NewsHour didn’t even mention any green energy policies as a factor that led to the collapse of the government.
This was a classic case of how Fox News cherry picks details to mislead their viewers.
Biden has Dementia, Cognitive Decline, He’s Barely Functioning….
Pres. Biden’s alleged mental collapse was the main thrust of both “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” last week. Sean Hannity even featured Fox News host, Piers Morgan, to advocate for removal of the president via the 25th amendment based on what he claimed was his mental incapacitation.
I don’t have any media on this subject as most of the segments weren’t compelling and both Hannity, Carlson, and Watters used the same recycled clips of Biden’s gaffes and stumbles from past months.
Of course none of them commented on former President Trump’s many gaffes when he was in office or that he’s only three years younger than Biden.
Biden was mentioned 490 times in 15 hours last week which is the most he’s ever been discussed on the network since I started this project in mid-February.
Tucker Carlson even made the following accusation without providing any proof or naming his source.
Well, it turned out we learned later his staff supervised by Dr. Jill, his wife was giving him pills before every public appearance check in the time and at a certain hour giving him a dose of something now it's not a guest aren't making that up. We spoken directly to someone who was there and saw it happen multiple times. Now, before taking the medication, this person said Biden was quote, like a small child, you could not communicate with him. He changed completely because he was on drugs.
Jayland Walker - Fox News refuses to accurately report on this story.
Since last week Fox News has repeatedly reduced the story of Jayland Walker, a Black motorist who was shot by police during a traffic stop to brief 30-second segments. Every time they include a segment about the shooting they leave out the crucial detail that Walker was unarmed.
I’m surprised they are even covering it as I’ve already documented how the network tends to ignore stores that involve Black Americans who are victimized by law enforcement.
Stories Fox News Ignored
A mass shooting in South Africa
The collapse of the Sri Lankan government - Fox News blamed the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy due to green energy and environmentally friendly farming policies. PBS went into detail about the corruption of the ruling family inside the government, the crushing foreign debt, a civil war and general mismanagement by the government. PBS didn’t even mention any of the environmental reforms.
Extreme flooding in Pakistan due to excessive rain
The war in Ukraine - Although the Fox News hosts briefly mentioned the war there were no segments dedicated to it.
French company seeking FDA approval for over the counter birth control pill.
A whistleblower leaked documents that revealed how the ride sharing company Uber used aggressive tactics to expand their company.
The Senate narrowly confirmed Steven M. Dettelbach as the new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. This makes him the first permanent leader for the agency in seven years.
U.S. attorney general, Merrick Garland, names Colette Peters to lead Bureau of Prisons
Detroit's 36th District Court to limit the use of cash bail after settling a lawsuit with the ACLU
Ada Limon named by the Library of Congress new US poet laureate. This would make her the nation’s 24th poet laureate.
NASA’s James Webb telescope delivered the deepest infrared images of the universe
COVID-19 - While PBS discussed the new variant of the disease and the challenges it brings, Fox News just promoted more conspiracy theories about the disease and the vaccines.
A statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, a Black educator and education advocate, replaced a Confederate general in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. The statue is one of two that represent the State of Florida.
During a segment about Biden in the Middle East, PBS brought up a segment about the death of Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh - Fox has completely ignored this story since Akleh was killed on May 11th.
The Secret Service deleted text messages from January 6th.
Hate crime charges brought against mass shooter in Buffalo, NY
Bogus Expert of the Week
This week the bogus expert was a repeat offender - Marc Morano. Morano is a right wing propagandist who has a long history of working for Breitbart News and Rush Limbaugh.
Morano founded and became the executive editor of ClimateDepot.com, a website dedicated to climate change denialism. Morano has also published several books on the subject of climate science despite having no training or education in any scientific related field.
He’s also known for mocking and harassing scientists who dare challenge him on his baseless theories.
In this clip Tucker Carlson basically describes Morano even though Carlson’s rant is directed at elected officials.
“If I started lecturing anybody at heart surgery, here's how you do a stent. They say you don't know anything about it. You've never performed a heart surgery. How do we allow people like Cortez and Biden who don't want a carburetor is to lecture us about something as complex but as energy policy like this is insane,” said Carlson.
Clutch Your Pearls!
Fox News is outraged that President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) expresses his frustration that President Biden isn’t being hard enough on a Saudi Arabia over a terrorist attack that occurred in Florida in 2019 that involved a Saudi national.
Ironically President Donald J. Trump was widely criticized about how he handled the attack.
A bit of Monica Crowley Crazy
Monica Crowley, former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Public Affairs tends to bring the crazy every time she appears on Fox News. This week she did not disappoint.
By the Numbers
This is how slanted Fox News was last week. The main topic was simply rants and tirades about how President Joe Biden allegedly has dementia and is unfit to be the president of the United States.
The second target was Hunter Biden. Segment after segment featured the same short clip of Hunter smoking crack at a rehab facility. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was also woven into stories when she was not relevant.
PBS NewsHour had far more balanced coverage for the week. They discussed the various countries Biden visited as well as the complex diplomacy the United States has with countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia. PBS featured current and former diplomats as well as experts and advocates about various issues facing the Middle East.
The category labeled “Debate-Graphic images shootings” refers to a new debate over publishing graphic images of violence from mass shootings.
PBS invited Ed Wasserman a retired Dean of a journalism program at University of California at Berkley and Sandy Phillips, the mother of a shooting victim, to discuss the pros and cons of using horrific images of dead children in the media.
Some media professionals think that if the general public sees the un-filtered reality of children brutally torn apart by assault weapons they’ll be more call to action. The argument against the use of the images is that they will be manipulated and exploited by conspiracy theorists and proliferate for years after the event in an untold number of social media platforms. Even innocuous images from various shootings are used to promote false flag narratives and have led to the harassment of families of shooting victims.
Biden completely dominated the entire week. AOC was mentioned quite a bit even though there was no major news story about her last week.
Coming up…
I am planning on dedicating my next newsletter/podcast to how Jesse Watters Primetime handled the story about the 10-year-old in Ohio who received an abortion after being raped.
I decided to pick this up at the very end of the week since it was a huge story last week. Watters was not on my schedule last week so I captured and analyzed all five hours from his show this weekend. I didn’t want to cram it into the weekly newsletter as the story is too complex and layered. It should be published tomorrow.
This week since another segment of the January 6th Committee Hearing is scheduled for Thursday evening I will only be covering “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in addition to covering the hearing.
14 year Fox contributor and guest anchor FBN until it became the Trump Network. I’d love to send you a copy of my book FOXOCRACY Inside The Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare”— I dig very deep into the psychology of televised hyperpartisan TV production and some stories I bet you would like! Please send your mailing address to tsmith@transformityresearch.com
14 year Fox contributor and guest anchor FBN until it became the Trump Network. I’d love to send you a copy of my book FOXOCRACY Inside The Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare”— I dig very deep into the psychology of televised hyperpartisan TV production and some stories I bet you would like! Please send your mailing address to tsmith@transformityresearch.com