Fox News: The Queen is Dead, Let's Worship the Monarchy!
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 9/11/22
A typical Fox viewer might think that Queen Elizabeth II was not just the Queen of England but the monarch for all humanity. They could also believe that California’s heat wave was caused by green energy policies gone wrong and that the solution for homelessness was just a large pair of bootstraps and a positive outlook on life.
Anyone who consumed a lot of Fox News media last week may not realize that Steve Bannon, a top advisor for former President Donald J. Trump had surrendered himself to authorities in New York State on fraud charges. They wouldn’t know that Gov. Gavin Newsom just passed a law in California that could help improve working conditions for more than a half a million fast food workers or that a Ukrainian nuclear power plant is still very much in jeopardy of a meltdown or leak due to Russian shelling.
Fox started the week by going after Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez then shifted abruptly to non-stop fawning coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the British monarchy.
It was a bit much. On Friday “Fox & Friends” dedicated their entire first hour to the story while Ainsley Earhardt evoked Jesus Christ.
“Now she (Queen Elizabeth II) can relax. Now, she's with Jesus. She had a strong faith in the Lord and, and now she's with her husband and her family and no camera, no press, so she can be free,” said Earhardt.
British-American, Stuart Varney, of Fox Business, praised the concept of the monarchy,
“Well, it's (the monarchy) a system that works, isn't it? You can be a Republican and be in favor of no monarchy at all. But that monarchial system works,” said Varney.
Varney didn’t elaborate. How does a monarchy benefit anything? Why would having an apolitical figurehead be so important for any given nation?
Fox also seemed to rewrite history and completely gloss over the many atrocities carried out by the British empire.
During a montage about the Queen’s life the U.K.’s relationship with Ireland was mentioned,
“That same year, the Queen made an historic visit to the Republic of Ireland, the first British monarch to do so in almost a century, a step towards healing a deep historical rift,” said the narrator.
The strained relations between Ireland and the U.K. aren’t so much a rift as it is deep resentment due to 800 years of British oppression. Many Irish are also not exactly thrilled that Northern Ireland is part of the U.K.
The British treatment of the Irish during the Potato Famine alone would be enough to create bad blood between the two countries.
Jesse Watters gave some lip service to some of the British Empire’s abuses,
“In the early age of exploration, horrific atrocities were committed against indigenous populations, not to mention the fact that Britain became the largest slave owning state in the world,” said Watters.
Then Watters wove a tapestry of praise and whitewashed history that would put a Mel Gibson’s jingoistic historical Hollywood blockbuster to shame.
“Unlike other empires in history, who strictly ruled with an iron fist, the British strategy of indirect rule was more gentle,” said Watters . . . “And where the British people themselves emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. These countries formed like a constellation of civilization. . . And most of Great Britain's wealth was not derived from colonial servitude,” said Watters.
Watters continued,
“Britain became the largest slave owning state in the world. That was at the time when all nations in all continents had slaves, but Great Britain was the single force behind the destruction of the international slave trade,” said Watters.
I’ve seen this exact same claim on far-right media. Extremists claim the United States was the main drive behind the abolition of slavery. The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1808 but didn’t not ban slavery outright until much later.
The first European country to ban the African slave trade was Denmark-Norway in 1803. Vermont, then an independent Republic after the American Revolution, banned slavery in 1777.
From Reuters, “CHRONOLOGY-Who banned slavery when?” March 22, 2007
1811 - Spain abolishes slavery, including in its colonies, though Cuba rejects the ban and continues to deal in slaves.
1813 - Sweden bans slave trading.
1814 - Netherlands bans slave trading.
1817 - France bans slave trading, but ban not effective until 1826.
1823 - Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society formed. Members include William Wilberforce.
1833 - Britain passes Abolition of Slavery Act, ordering gradual abolition of slavery in all British colonies. Plantation owners in the West Indies receive 20 million pounds in compensation.
1862 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln proclaims emancipation of slaves with effect from January 1, 1863; 13th Amendment of U.S. Constitution follows in 1865 banning slavery.
Slavery was such a contentious issue in the United States the debate over it eventually resulted in war that spanned four years, split the country in half and cost the lives of 620,000.
To call Great Britain the “single force behind the destruction of the international slave trade,” as Watters did, is simply disingenuous.
There are too many human rights abuses and atrocities committed by the British empire to list here from the Pakistan/Indian partition, the concentration camps in South Africa and the Opium Wars in China.
Much like the U.S. the history of the U.K. is full of contradictions. The U.K. governments actions during World War II for instance was absolutely heroic. The citizens of Great Britain were defiant towards Nazi aggression despite repeat Luftwaffe air raids. This doesn’t discount the many abuses and atrocities committed by the British Empire.
The U.K. also made attempts to mitigate some of the damage they’ve done in the past.
Of course Queen Elizabeth II had nothing to do with any of these human rights abuses as they occurred before she was monarch. She was also not allowed to meddle with the politics of the freely elected government.
The Queen was a representation of something much larger than herself. There’s nothing wrong with honoring her life but Fox News took it to a very dark place when they weaved in a completely sanitized history of British colonialism.
The following video is montage of how Fox News covered the death of the Queen on Friday.
Stephen Miller saw what Jesse Watters said about the Queen and said ‘Hold My Beer’
Miller starts off by calling anyone who is critical of the queen “idiots,” then he called the fall of the British Empire a tragedy. Then he continued to promote a completely warped account of the British Empire, .
“The British Empire has been such a benevolent force for good in the world,” said Miller.
Miller echoed language that is commonly promoted in far-right wing extremist media.
“So really, I think that a lot of this just has to do with the same old thing we've seen for years from the left, which is they hate Western civilization. They hate Western thought. They hate Western culture, they hate Western philosophy. They want some sort of Marxist hellhole to take its place. And that's I think what we're seeing right now,” said Miller.
Miller repeatedly used the term Western, which many on the far-right substitute for white Europeans. Then Miller pivoted to Marxists which is absolutely absurd, as there is no viable Marxist movement in the U.S. or really anywhere.
Marxism is at best an antiquated philosophy touted by a few intellectuals.
Also Miller might want to pick up a history book or a stack of them.
The British government set up concentration camps in South Africa forty years before the Nazis. The camps were not death camps, they were intended to house refugees, but approximately 25,000 people died after being forced to live in terrible and crowded conditions. More people, including children, died from starvation and disease in the camps then during combat in the Second Boer War of 1899 to 1902.
British merchants also essentially became state sanctioned drug pushers in China during the Opium Wars.
As late as 1953 the British government along with the U.S. helped lead a coup against the freely elected leader of Iran, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The democratically elected Mossadegh was replaced by a the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who ruled with absolute power.
This started a chain of events that lead to the 1979 Iranian revolution and sowed the seeds of distrust and resentment towards the U.S. and Great Britain that still exists in Iran to this day.
I could keep going. I won’t.
How Fox News Spins a story about a Heat Wave to Bash Green Energy
Fox News consistently ignores stories about climate disasters. If they do include a segment about a flood, violent storm or heat wave its folded in as a short segment in their weather segment on “Fox & Friends.”
Fox also only reports on domestic disasters. A regular Fox viewer might not realize Europe has had recording breaking droughts and heat this summer or that Pakistan was devastated by flooding.
In this edit of a larger segment Steve Doocy manages to pivot from news of the extreme heat in California to a impassioned critique of green energy politics
Watters Promotes Misinformation about Biden’s Loan Forgiveness Proposal
Jesse Watters gets so many things wrong that I honestly don’t know if he knows he’s lying or just never bothers to check basic facts before he says something.
In this clip he claims borrowers will get checks from the government to help pay their loans. This is blatantly false. No one who applies for student loan forgiveness will receive a check they will simply have $10,000 - $20,000 taken off the amount of money they owe in the federal student loan program.
Jesse Watters Addresses Homeless Men in a Tone Deaf Segment
In this clip Watters urges homeless men to simply go get a hotel room and get a job. He discounts the fact that a hotel room would cost money and that many men on the street also suffer from mental illness and or addiction problems. Homeless men might not have a family or any form of support system.
Bogus Expert
Repeat offender - Bjorn Lomborg, a climate change denialist.
I do not have a media clip of this man this week because I didn’t want to elevate his message by posting it on YouTube.
This week Jesse Watters featured a climate change denialist and repeat offender for this category - Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish author who has no background in climate science.
Lomborg has never published any peer-reviewed research on environmental or climate policy. He has documented errors and misrepresentations specifically to a non-scientific lay audience.
His focus is to minimize the problems caused by carbon emissions by arguing that fewer people die from climate disasters today than in the past. It’s a weak and strange argument to make as some studies point to as many as 85% of the world’s population has been negatively affected by climate change.
Overall death rates, including child mortality, were much higher 100 years ago. That means very little after a hurricane, flood or wildfire wipes out an entire community.
Stories that Fox News thought were newsworthy that were NOT newsworthy.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on the cover of GQ magazine. The publication also featured a story about the congresswoman that seemed to focus on her personal life and how she viewed her job in Washington.
Fox News dedicated 11.5 minutes to the story across three programs on Wednesday.
There are 435 voting members in the House of Representatives. Anyone watching Fox News would think AOC is the Queen of the Democratic Party.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Each week I compare 15 hours of Fox News programming to five hours of PBS NewsHour. The following list are stories that were covered on PBS that Fox News ignored.
Kenyan Supreme Court upholds the outcome of the Presidential election. The election was contested by the losing candidate. There was no evidence of fraud.
Voters rejected a new more progressive constitution in Chile.
The Israeli army said that there was a high probability that Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed by an Israeli soldier.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that granted new protections for more than half a million fast food workers in California.
Former New Orleans mayor Moon Landrieu died.
The War in Ukraine - Ukraine has gained territory that was lost to Russia months ago. A nuclear power plant is still in jeopardy due to Russian shelling.
New booster vaccines available for COVID-19
Judge in New Mexico disqualified a county commissioner, Couy Griffin, from holding office due to his involvement with the riot on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
Children in Uvalde, Texas returned to school after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in May. Robb Elementary will not reopen.
Steve Bannon surrendered to authorities in New York on fraud charges.
North Korea leader vowed to never give up his nuclear weapons.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, vowed to financially support Pakistan due to massive flooding.
Major League Baseball passes major changes for the 2023 season
Disabled voters sued the State of Wisconsin over changes in the law that would make it impossible for voters with disabilities to vote. The judge ruled in favor of the disabled voters.
By the Numbers
This past week included Labor Day which explains the two categories “Jesse Watters clip show” and “Back to School Special”. Watters aired old clips from past shows on the holiday while “The Five” turned their show into an back to school special.
PBS dedicated a nearly equal percentage of their airtime to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The coverage on PBS though was much more comprehensive. The network largely praised the Queen and her long life of service to the British people. PBS also included media clips of the Queen speaking directly to the British public and gave more context about her role as monarch.
The Network also included background on an a disaster when a fire broke out in Windsor Castle and another incident where a drunk intruder managed to break into Buckingham Palace and confront the Queen in her bedroom. The Queen was not harmed and handled the incident remarkably well.
Overall PBS humanized the Queen rather than praising her like some sort of infallible mythic figure. There was far more information about the Queens life in the segments on PBS than what Fox News presented.
Coming up…
This week I’ll be covering the first hour of “Fox & Friends” along with “The Five” and I’ll return to my “favorite” Prime time Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
I should also have the second installment of my series on how Fox News is spinning the Hillary Clinton email scandal to deflect from Trump’s theft of classified documents.