Fox News Ignores a Mass Shooting While Decrying Gun Control.
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News week ending 6/5/22
Viewers of Fox News last week probably thought a government agent was about to bust in their door and confiscate their guns. They also might not realize a mass shooting happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma Wednesday night. Unlike their competitors Fox News just blatantly ignored the tragedy. It didn’t mix well with their push against any sensible gun control laws.
Normally I include the section about stories Fox News didn’t cover later in the newsletter. This week it’s the main story.
Wednesday night, June 1st 2022, nearly every major news channel interrupted their programming with a breaking news story about a mass shooting in Tulsa, OK. At the time I was capturing a live episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” While my phone blew up with multiple updates about the shooting from various news sources “Tucker Carlson Tonight” was not interrupted with any information about the shooting.
I turned to Twitter to see if other researchers noticed if Fox News was covering the story and several commented that the network was ignoring it. As nearly every other major media company reported on the carnage in Tulsa, Carlson railed against gun control.
The shooting in Tulsa was mentioned once on “The Five” on Friday by Harold Ford Jr. the lone liberal voice on the panel.
“They're your kids being killed people in Tulsa, Oklahoma Yetta. Hospital, frontline workers be shot by a patient who was upset by the care and treatment that he got,” said Ford.
Ford’s statement was the only reference to the shooting for the entire week in the four programs I surveyed.
Fox News treated last week a bit like a mini vacation.
On Monday Fox News didn’t even bother to provide timely coverage. “Fox & Friends” had a typical broadcast with some segments on the Memorial Day holiday. “The Five” invited a comedian and a former professional wrestler to the panel instead of Gutfeld and Watters. The Fox News personalities discussed viewer mail and nothing else. Tucker Carlson showed edited segments from his Fox Nation interview show “Tucker Carlson Today.”
Since I’ve covered Fox News while I was in graduate school I wasn’t surprised. Fox News tends to air recycled material on major holidays. They realize their ratings will be lower for the day so they don’t bother offering their viewers much of anything.
For the rest of the week the network’s main focus was gun control.
Tucker Carlson offered the most paranoid take on any attempt at gun control. He referred to gun control as a “power grab” three times in his extended opening monologues. He also referred to an AR-15 as a defensive weapon. In the four monologues Carlson had this week he mentioned guns 54 times, rifles 19 times and weapons 49 times.
Clip of the Week
Tucker Carlson is very concerned about changes in gun laws in Canada. Canada of course has its own constitution that does not include the 2nd amendment. Canada is a sovereign nation with autonomy and its freely elected government. Carlson acts as if it’s a dictatorship with a power hungry despot.
Tucker Carlson goes full Tin Foil hat regarding Gun Control
Tucker Carlson invited a former NHL player and conspiracy theorist Theo Fleury on to discuss the recent gun control laws passed in Canada. Fleury inexplicably brings up communism, the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset and the globalist agenda.
Tucker Carlson uses Statistics about Guns in a Completely Misleading way.
Carlson claims rifles kill fewer people than fists or knives but he leaves out that handguns caused more deaths than any other weapon. Here are the actual totals via statista.com.
For the year 2020 murders committed by type of weapon
8029 - handgun
4863 - type of firearm, not stated
455 - rifle
1739 - knives
662 - fists
For a grand total of 13,347 by some type of firearm and 2,407 with a knife or fist.
Some statistics on gun violence.
I have warned about dubious and misleading polls in the past. Several highly partisan groups will use highly manipulated polls to push any number of agendas. The following polling organizations are generally solid. This short list includes polling groups that are consistently reliable and non-partisan.
Axios/Ipsos - anything with Ipsos in the title so if it’s CBS/Ipsos, ABC/Ipsos its far more reliable than a random poll.
This data comes from ABC News/Ipsos poll that came out this Sunday.
70% of Americans think enacting new gun control laws should take precedence over protecting ownership.
29% believe protecting the right to own a wide variety of guns should be a higher priority than enacting new gun control laws.
The gap between these two positions has widened by 9 points since March 2021.
The split is along party lines.
90% of Democrats and 75% of Independents thought new gun laws should be a priority
56% of Republicans thought protecting gun ownership should take priority.
Both parents and children are concerned about gun violence in schools
72% of parents of school-aged children described themselves as very or somewhat concerned about the possibility of gun violence at their children’s schools.
A large majority of parents of school-aged children described themselves as sad, scared, nervous and angry in the wake of the Uvalde mass shooting.
Nearly 1/3 of worry “a lot” about gun violence at school
More than half of parents surveyed said their children felt scared and sad in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.
Some ammo against the argument that more guns = less gun violence (pun intended)
My source for these stats have largely been pulled from “States with the Most Gun Violence Share One Trait” by Zachary B. Wolf of CNN. I highly recommend his article as it’s short, easy to read and well researched.
There are more gun deaths in Texas, by far, than in any other state, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Texas suffered 4,164 gun deaths in 2020, the most recent year for which the CDC has published data. Texas is also a state with a huge population at roughly 28.64 million so the best way to truly compare states is on a per capita basis.
That's a rate of 14.2 deaths per 100,000 Texans.
California, by comparison, saw 3,449 deaths, a gun death rate of 8.5.
Texas doesn’t have the highest gun death rate, however.
The top states by gun death rates are:
Mississippi -- 28.6.
Louisiana -- 26.3.
Wyoming -- 25.9.
Missouri -- 23.9.
Alabama -- 23.6.
Alaska -- 23.5.
It’s difficult to find federal data on gun deaths since the gun lobby essentially barred the government from gathering it due to something called “The Dickey amendment.” The RAND Corporation, a non-profit research organization, has published data on average gun ownership by state between 2007 and 2016.
All of those states with the highest gun death rates are among the ones with the highest gun ownership rates.
Mississippi -- 50% of adults live in a household with a gun.
Louisiana -- 48%.
Wyoming -- 59%.
Missouri -- 48%.
Alabama -- 50%.
Alaska -- 59%.
Where there are fewer guns, there are fewer gun deaths. The states with the lowest gun death rates in 2020, per the CDC (alongside the percentage of homes with a gun in 2007-2016, per RAND) were:
Hawaii -- 3.4 (8% of adults live in a household with a gun).
Massachusetts -- 3.7 (10%).
New Jersey -- 5 (8%).
Rhode Island -- 5.1 (11%).
New York -- 5.3 (14%).
The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which endorses stronger gun laws, takes the CDC data on gun deaths per 100,000 residents and compares it to each state's gun laws. The states with lower gun violence rates are mostly among the states with the strongest gun laws.
Conversely, with the exception of Louisiana, the states with the highest gun death rates and highest gun ownership rates are among the states Everytown says have the most lax gun laws.
Things get wonky when cities with strict gun laws are close to bordering states with weak gun laws the best example being Chicago which is right next to Indiana, a state with lax gun laws.
Sources
Poll: Americans overwhelmingly prioritize gun control over ownership rights - Axios/Ipsos.
States with the Most Gun Violence - CNN
Gun Right Groups Mobilizing to Counter Gun Control Bills, Either in the Senate or in the Courts - Time.com
History shows the push for gun control faces long odds - Washington Post
New York Tightens Its Strict Gun Laws in Democratic Show of Force - New York Times
Examining gun reform with x-ray vision - Brookings Institution
The most Depressing Reaction to the Depp/Heard Verdict
Regardless of how a person might react to the verdict in the Depp/Heard dual defamation trial Tucker Carlson manages to make it even sadder. He trashes The Washington Post and reduce the entire MeToo movement down to a power grab while seemingly gloating about the verdict.
The Cast of “The Five” blames the COVID-19 lockdowns on mass shootings.
Judge Jeanine Pirro blames the COVID-19 lockdowns for a rise in mass shootings but then mentions a the Parkland shooting from 2018. Will Cain then gives the usual excuses.
Craziest Clip of the Week - A Former Green Beret Accidentally Advocates for the Start of WWIII
Former Green Beret, Scott Mann, accidentally advocates for the start of World War III. If the U.S. did sent military advisors into Ukraine it could easily be seen as a sign of escalation. If the rest of NATO followed suit several nations would be directly at war with Russia.
The Durham Report is a Huge Bust
Fox really tried to make something out of the recent acquittal of Hillary Clinton’s former lawyer Michael Sussmann. The Durham Report has largely yielded no evidence of wrongdoing by anyone but Fox News won’t let go of the dream.
The only remaining case is against Russian expat Igor Danchenko, one of the sources for the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, a compilation of memos written in 2016 by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
Danchenko is also charged with five counts of lying to the FBI during interviews where investigators tried to corroborate claims from the Steele dossier. Much of the material in the dossier has been debunked or discredited by subsequent federal probes.
Stories Not Covered on Fox News
Admiral Linda Fagan becomes first woman to lead US armed forces branch - Fagan, who has been second-in-command at the coast guard, will serve as the 27th commandant
Severe megadrought in Southwestern United States - Several Western states, including Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and parts of Oregon and Colorado, are in the grips of a 23-year-long historic drought that has depleted major water sources to an alarming level as temperatures rise and wildfire risk increases. Many scientists are sounding the alarm that it could mark a tipping point in the water crisis that threatens life in the West as we know it, particularly agriculture.
Extreme weather in the Southeastern United States - Although the flooding in Miami didn’t happened until this weekend, PBS did feature a story about the approaching severe storms and the trend of increased extreme weather for the season due to climate change.
17 months of job growth in a row – Fox reported on this but downplayed the numbers. PBS included a long extended segment about the job growth including a breakdown in sectors and the increase of women coming back to the workforce.
100 Days into the Ukrainian war - Fox News dedicated 2% of their airtime to the war in Ukraine, in contrast PBS dedicated 21% of their coverage to the war. PBS NewsHour featured the Ukraine ambassador to the U.S. in their coverage.
Since the war started the network has invited heads of states, military experts, diplomats, historians and representatives from the U.N. and NATO to discuss the war. Fox News has largely focused on individual battles.
Fox News personalities also vary wildly in their reaction to the war. At the start of it Fox regularly promoted charity campaigns to help the people of Ukraine and encouraged their viewers to give. “Fox & Friends” still has a very pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian bias whereas Tucker Carlson seems to blatantly promote Russian propaganda. Sean Hannity is hawkish towards Russia and Laura Ingraham has focused on what is best for the U.S. in regards to the conflict.
By the Numbers
Most of the Fox numbers were thrown off by their lazy reporting on Monday. I listed the top category as “gun control paranoia” because most of their coverage was panic filled screeds about gun control bills that haven’t passed yet and fantasy scenarios of jackbooted government officials taking guns from private citizens by force.
This week I’ll be switching my focus back to Sean Hannity in addition to my usual hour of “Fox & Friends” and “The Five.” I’m also going to do a review of the Tucker Carlson Original on the Jan. 6th riots.