Fox News - What is Jan. 6th? Inflation, Inflation, Inflation!
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 6-12-22
A typical Fox News viewer might not even realize there was a Congressional Committee Hearing on the Jan. 6th riots because Fox News refused to broadcast it despite the fact that every other major news network aired it in its entirety. The network decided to show the hearing on their far less popular Fox Business channel instead.
In addition to ignoring the largest news story for the week, Fox made sure its viewers knew that the United States was the only country affected by high inflation and President Joe Biden and his socialist policies were the sole cause of rising prices. Of course this isn’t true as inflation is a global problem affecting nearly every major economy and is much higher in other countries.
Clip of the Week - Democrats WANT high Gas Prices.
This theme has been pushed on Fox for weeks now but has reached a crescendo of sorts. Nearly every time the January 6th investigation was brought up a Fox News personality would counter with “No one cares about it, inflation is out of control.”
Judge Pirro Cherry Picks Inflation Rates
Judge Jeanine Pirro rattles through a quick list of countries that have a lower inflation rate than the United States. What she leaves out of course is that most industrialized countries including most of Europe is experiencing high levels of inflation.
A great resource for up to date rates on inflation across the globe can be found at TradingEconomics.com
Fox News has been two myths about rising prices for months now. The first misconception,
Inflation could be solved quickly if the U.S. re-opened the Keystone XL pipeline and increased domestic oil production overall.
Starting with myth #1 the Keystone XL pipeline is a planned extension of a pre-existing pipeline that was designed to take fairly dirty Canadian oil through the United States for shipment outside of the country at the Gulf of Mexico.
The Keystone XL pipeline wouldn’t amount to much of anything in the total global commodities market for oil. Despite numerous experts debunking this idea Fox News continues to promote the pipeline extension as a sort of panacea for inflated gas prices.
Increasing domestic oil production through drilling or fracking would not bring any immediate change to the price of gasoline.
The U.S. is already the top producer of crude oil, extracting about 11.6 million of barrels of oil every day. The supply is increasing, not decreasing.
What Fox leaves out is that the U.S. is also the largest consumer of oil, as we go through about 21 million barrels per day or about 20% of the world’s total.
The other myth is something I’ve discussed on this newsletter multiple times - the concept of “energy independence.”
Energy independence simply means the U.S. exports slightly more fossil fuels than we import. Even when the U.S. was briefly “energy independent” the country was still importing oil and other fossil fuels.
There’s an estimated 38.2 billion barrels worth of proven oil reserves in the U.S. that are still untapped, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The problem with that oil is it tends to be the wrong type of oil that is most used in the United States.
Crude oil is not just crude oil, there are different types and grades and the kind of oil which one of many complexities in the global marketplace for energy.
Since Russia is the one of the largest producers of oil in the world the war it started in Ukraine has reeked havoc on oil prices. Gasoline isn’t just more expensive in the United States, its increased in price all over the world.
The second myth that has been pushed on Fox News since I started covering the network in mid-February.
President Joe Biden’s wild spending during the pandemic and his infrastructure bill is the main reason the inflation rate is so high.
Some economists have argued that Biden’s last COVID-19 stimulus package did exacerbate our inflation problem. It wouldn’t explain though why inflation has also risen in nearly every major economy.
Prices rose last year across multiple economies due to supply chain backlogs, shutdowns related to Covid-19 and rising energy costs.
To quote “How inflation became a global problem” by Patrica Cohen of The NY Times directly:
In seven eastern European nations, the inflation rate is now expected to surge past double digits. The estimated rate for the Netherlands this year nearly tripled to 9.2 percent; Australia’s doubled to 5.3 percent. And like the United States, where inflation rose 8.6 percent through May, Britain and Germany have seen inflation rates hit four-decade highs, well above previous forecasts.
And from that same article,
Central banks in the United States, Britain, Australia and India have all recently moved aggressively to contain rapidly rising prices by raising interest rates. Even the European Central Bank, which had been reluctant to raise rates for fear of triggering a recession, said Thursday that it would end asset purchases and raise its key interest rate by a quarter-point at its meeting next month, and possibly by even more in September.
There is no silver bullet for curtailing inflation rates and they aren’t caused by one spending package in the United States, despite how many times Fox News insists upon it.
No one is Going to Watch the January 6th Hearings.
Both Fox News hosts and guests alike predicted that few folks would tune into to what they called boring and dull hearings. Over 20 million people tuned in, which is on par with Sunday Night Football which regularly has one of the largest audiences for network television.
The Riots of 2020! Life was Hell Under Donald J. Trump
Sean Hannity and other Fox News personalities continue to remind their viewers about the horrors of the summer of 2020. They seem to forget the riots were in some ways a direct reaction to an unpopular and polarizing president - Donald J. Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard - A dream realized!
Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard finally got her wish. She wasn’t just a guest on Fox News they put her behind the desk on the highly rated show “The Five.” Even though Tulsi was in the chair normally reserved for the lone liberal on the panel, Tulsi agreed with the rest of the conservative panel.
I’m not sure why she still identifies as a Democrat as she constantly bashes both the party and President Joe Biden. President Vladimir Putin of Russia must be so proud!
Jessica Tarlov - All the NEW things revealed on Thursday - Jan. 6th Committee Hearing
I have no idea how Tarlov endures week after week on “The Five.” Here she rapidly fires off numerous new information gleaned from Thursday night’s January 6th Committee Hearing.
Stories not Covered on Fox
The police officer who shot and killed Patrick Lyoya during a traffic stop was charged with 2nd degree murder.
North Korea is firing test missiles again and South Korea fired missiles of its own in retaliation. - Fox routinely ignores most stories about North Korea.
A stalled bill in the House to protect SCOTUS Justices - Fox News mislead its viewers about a bill that is currently stalled in the House of Representatives that is meant to protect SCOTUS justices. The reason why the bill is stalled in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants to expand protections to other court employees. Pelosi has planned a vote in the House on the bill next week.
Proud Boys indictment for seditious conspiracy – Although the Proud Boys were mentioned a few times they didn’t formally report on this story.
World Bank slashes global growth forecast – lowered expectations for most economies due to the war in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine - Although the war in Ukraine was mentioned from time to time Fox News did not produce a single segment on the war last week. Although the war has moved down a bit in the news cycle most American media companies still cover it.
The collapse of Lebanon’s economy – The country in a free fall due to corruption and ineffective leadership. Citizens are facing sky-high inflation, rampant unemployment, and shortages of fuel, food and clean water.
Summit of the Americas – briefly mentioned on Fox but they didn’t spend much time on it. Three nations were barred – Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua – not democracies. Mexico refused to attend because the three countries were banned. Presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador also didn’t go. These Summits have been held since 1994 under President Bill Clinton.
Gymnasts suing FBI due to sexual abuse by Dr. Larry Nassar - The gymnasts are suing the FBI on the grounds that the agency knew Dr. Nassar was sexually abusing athletes and failed to act.
By the Numbers
Fox did spend at lot of time and focus on the man who was arrested for attempted murder near the home of Justice Kavanaugh early Wednesday morning. The story is alarming and disturbing and wasn’t given much coverage on other networks.
I can’t read the mind of other media companies by they might have downplayed the story as to avoid a copycat event. The man didn’t harm anyone or himself and surrendered to police almost immediately after arriving near the Justice’s home.
As always without fail, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) made this list. Surprisingly Hillary Clinton did not but that vacuum of misogyny was replaced by 66 mentions of the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Miranda Devine, of the New York Post, stopped by more than one show to insist without any evidence that President Joe Biden considers Hunter Biden his primary advisor.
The riots of the summer of 2020 were mentioned quite a bit across all shows. Fox News personalities somehow missed that Donald J. Trump was president when those riots happened. Trump was after all the top leadership in the country while several U.S. cities burned.
Coming up…
Because the Fox Business coverage and the Fox News primetime reaction was so overwhelming I decided to dedicate an entire podcast and newsletter just to Thursday night. That should be published tomorrow.
This week my primary focus will be on the January 6th Committee Hearings and the reaction of just Hannity and Tucker Carlson. Since both Fox hosts have promoted different conspiracy theories about the riot it should be interesting to see how they respond to anything revealed in the hearings.