Fox News: Pay no Attention to those Falling Gas Prices - Here's Hunter Biden with a Crack Pipe AGAIN.
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 7-10-22
A typical Fox News viewer might think that Hunter Biden was about to be arrested for several crimes, that Pres. Joe Biden lied about the U.S. Border Patrol’s Horse Unit, and that red flag laws should be abolished since they didn’t seem to stop a mentally unstable suicidal mass shooter in Highland Park. A Fox viewer might not realize that gas prices have fallen for 25 straight days, the latest jobs report was excellent and that climate change fueled disasters were occurring all over the world including in the U.S.
The main topic discussed last week was the July 4th mass shooting in Highland Park, IL. On July 4th instead of showing “The Five” Fox News just had a solid hour of breaking news about the massacre. It was the leading story across all media platforms.
Besides the tragedy in Highland Park, Fox News wanted to talk about anything but falling gas prices that have steadily declined for 27 straight days. Media Matters also noticed this glaring omission.
The week started with the July 4th holiday which meant my only primetime option to survey for the week was “Primetime with Jesse Watters.” All of the other primetime shows were replaced by a special July 4th celebration.
“Jesse Watters Primetime” is one of the most highly rated shows on the network which is mind-blowing since it makes “The Five” look like an advanced graduate level class in political discourse.
Stories featured on Primetime with Jesse Watters last week:
Celebrities who lack patriotism
Americans are losing trust in institutions
Cartoons are going woke - Popeye the Sailor Man is becoming gender fluid and bisexual.
Workers are getting fired from companies for being woke.
An interview with a woman Watters claimed identified as an actual mermaid - The first thing she said in her interview was basically, “I’m a performer, I don’t think I’m a mermaid.”
A recycled story from February that Watters tried to pass off as current.
This week ending 7/10/22 was one of the most dramatic examples of Fox News ignoring major stories.
The network chose to put a lot of focus on a story that involved border patrol agents who were accused of whipping Haitian migrants at the border. The agents were cleared of abusing migrants with whips after a 10-month investigation conducted by Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility which resulted in a more than 500 page report.
The agency did find that the horse patrol agents improperly used force or the threat of force to drive migrants back into the Rio Grande. The report also noted problems in how the horse patrol unit was deployed - they were acting on a request from the Texas Department of Public Safety, rather than the Border Patrol senior leadership.
In total four horse patrol agents are facing discipline.
Fox News made this a major story on all three shows I surveyed last week. They portrayed the border patrol agents as being perfectly innocent of any wrong doing. I categorized the segments as “Border Crisis” as the story about the horse patrol was often interwoven with other incidents at the border.
Fox spun this as the Biden administration and other members of the media purposefully lying about the actions of the agents on horseback. Fox News created a montage of various reporters on other networks saying the images appeared to show agents whipping Haitian migrants.
It doesn’t appear that the reporters or any official in the Biden administration purposefully lied about the event. The photographs are incredibly disturbing and it would appear to most non-experts that the agents might be using whips on unarmed migrants. Most Americans in 2022 aren’t exactly experts on horses and wouldn’t be able to differentiate that the reins in the photographs were not in fact whips.
Photo via Fox News
There’s a big difference between being mistaken about something and blatantly lying about it. Fox made the leap that every single journalist and government official knew the agents did not use whips but decided to mislead the American public.
In the grand scheme of things it did seem odd to put that much emphasis on a fairly old story.
Sam Brinton Story
Another odd thing that Jesse Watters included last week was a story about a nonbinary person, Sam Brinton, who was hired by the Department of Energy. Brinton, the new deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition in the office of nuclear energy, was hired in February.
Watters cited an “whistle blower” account which was actually a letter to the Deputy Inspector General Vint Exchange Monitor from February where someone complained that they thought Brinton was being hired based more on their gender identity than their merit or qualifications.
Fox News didn’t hide the fact that the letter was dated February 2nd, 2022. A quote that appeared on the screen from the letter was captioned with “February 2.”
Watters also tried to imply that Brinton was somehow advocating for sex with minor aged boys when Watters noted an editorial Brinton had written about a crackdown on the sex worker site “Rentboy.com” in 2015. The website was shutdown in part due to allegations that it was promoting underage sex workers.
Ultimately six of the seven charges against Rentboy employees were dropped in 2016. Only one employee was ultimately charged with money laundering and promoting prostitution. There were no criminal charges that related to sex trafficking or any sexual abuse of minors.
The only person convicted in the Rentboy investigation was the owner of the site, Jeffrey Hurant, who was sentenced to six months in prison. Hurant testified that he offered escorts classes in financial management and safe-sex practices. He also made large donations to HIV and AIDS related charities and even worked with the New York City Department of Health and Human Services.
The case had so many layers that even at the time of sentencing the judge, Margo K. Brodie, conceded that Hurant had done enormous good for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
What Watters also did not include is that Briton was advocating for adult-aged sex workers throughout his editorial, not for sex with underage boys. Briton used the terms “young adult” or “man” throughout the op-ed.
Watters also neglected to tell his audience that Briton had two Master’s degrees in nuclear engineering from the prestigious MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology and relevant experience in his field.
Hunter Biden
Fox continues to beat the drum of the Hunter Biden scandal that still doesn’t seem to be much of a scandal except that it reveals Hunter Biden is an addict with a lot of personal problems. Despite their insistence, absolutely nothing has linked either Hunter Biden or Pres. Joe Biden to any crime. That’s not stopped Fox News from insisting that authorities are a breath away from arresting Hunter for any number of crimes.
Fox News included more footage of Hunter Biden smoking a crack pipe. It’s just what this country needs now.
Jayland Walker - A study in how two networks covered this story.
Fox News included three short 30-second clips about the protests in Ohio over the death of Jayland Walker at the hands of the police. Fox never once used the term “unarmed” to describe Walker. In contrast PBS used it every time they spoke about the case including during an extended segment.
The Return of Sarah Palin - The best Tossed World Salad in Politics!
Fox News loves to criticize Vice Pres. Kamala Harris for what they call her “word salad moments” but here’s the original jumbled of words, the one, the only, Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska.
PBS NewsHour answers the Ectopic Pregnancy Debate on Fox News “The Five.”
Although Greg Gutfeld cackles at the end of a discussion about ectopic pregnancies, an OB/GYN Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, board member, Physicians for Reproductive Health, explains how women with pregnancy complications are at greater risk due to severe restrictions on abortion services.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Jayland Walker, an unarmed Black man shot by police 60 times during a traffic stop - PBS did a full segment on the story. Fox News broke it up into three 30-second segments over three days. Fox News focused on the protests that followed his murder and never included the phrase - “unarmed.”
UN Report on Global Hunger - The number of people affected by hunger and food insecurity rose as much as 828 million in 2021, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of COVID-19.
An independent commission overseen by U.S. found the death of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was likely unintentional. The bullet that ended her life was badly damaged which prevented a clear conclusion. - This story has played out since May 11, 2022 and Fox News has largely ignored it, even on their more legitimate news programs.
Extreme flooding in Australia - About 50,000 people have been forced to evacuate the Sydney region due to unprecedented flooding caused by excessive rainfall.
Extreme flooding in Pakistan - So far 57 people have been killed and hundreds left homeless.
Avalanche in Italy Eleven hikers were killed after a glacier avalanche in Italy.
Wildfire in California threatens giant sequoia trees in Yosemite National Park.
Extreme heat in Arizona - The extreme heat this summer and past summers has lead to a high death toll in the homeless population in Phoenix. The segment focused on solutions to help get people out of the dangerous heat.
Russia Votes to Shut Down Last U.N. Aid Route Into Syria - As many as four million refugees live in the area which is outside of the Syrian government’s control. This will most likely lead to mass starvation in the area and a flood of more refugees into Turkey and other surrounding countries. Russia views the area as a threat to the sovereignty of the oppressive Al-Assad regime which it has supported for years.
Shooting in Copenhagen, Denmark - A man opened fire in a shopping center killing three. The man had known mental health problems and authorities don’t think it was an act of terrorism.
Derek Chauvin sentenced to 21 years in prison on federal charges surrounding the murder of George Floyd. Chauvin is the police officer who kneeled on a handcuffed Floyd’s neck until he was dead. Chauvin has already been sentenced on state charges involving the murder.
Election interference investigations in Georgia and Arizona - Prosecutors are looking into possible interference in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Various advocacy groups are also legally challenging new voter restrictions.
Bogus Expert of the Week
Glenn Greenwald appears so often on Fox News I have no doubt that he receives a salary just like any other regular Fox News contributor. Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who helped exposing government surveillance programs in the United States and U.K..
In recent years Greenwald had descended to a propagandist who defends dictators, and championed conspiracy theories. I saw him once call a moderate liberal Black woman a Nazi on Twitter.
I could write a lot more about Greenwald but I this project is ultimately dedicated to Fox News.
This clip is from late April 2022. In it Greenwald predicts Elon Musk will be absolutely destroyed and tormented if he tried Twitter. Musk did of course attempt to purchase the social media network but announced last Friday that he was backing out of the deal.
Other than a couple of sexual harassment scandals that probably would have come out anyway Musk has largely remained unscathed. Any damage he’s done to his brand or companies has been self-inflicted.
By the Numbers
Although the main topic discussed last week was the mass shooting in Highland Park, IL, gun control was only brought up once whereas the second amendment was mentioned six times. As usual Fox News mentioned their favorite female Democratic lawmakers for no real reason.
Coming up…
The January 6th Committee has scheduled another television hearing for July 14th, Thursday morning. I’m planning on covering Fox News coverage of the event so that means I will only survey and analyze “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” next week.
Fox Nation also announced they’ve added additional episodes to their “Who is Hunter Biden” documentary series. I’m not sure if I will dedicate a newsletter or podcast to it but I’m going to at least check it out. I’ve watched the original series twice and did not find any of the evidence compelling, it’s mostly embarrassing video of Hunter Biden under the influence of drugs and alcohol and a lot of homemade porn.