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Among this week’s harvest of factoids that I unearthed in search of other factoids, next month – October 7 to be precise – marks the 25th anniversary of the birth of Fox News.
As for gifts, what should we offer the network to mark such an important milestone?
I do not know. What did it do for us, other than killed, I mean.
Look, this won’t exactly be the first essay suggesting Fox News is killing people with its misinformation about the vaccine, the masks, the science, the virus, all pumped 24/7 through the Fox’s founding father’s distorted prism Rupert Murdoch thinks the media should do.
And Fox News knows it gets people killed, which is why its audiences are suddenly seeing a sharp about-face from some of its most prominent personalities.
“Please take COVID seriously; I can’t say it enough, ”said Sean Hannity, the prime-time blatherer who has been described as Donald Trump’s Svengali. “Enough people have died. We don’t need death anymore. … Take this seriously. It makes perfect sense that many Americans get vaccinated. “
Morning show co-host Steve Doocy, suddenly aware that his network’s endless anti-vax messages were indeed killing his own audience, said, “Look, the pandemic right now is really only about people who don’t. ‘have not been vaccinated. Ninety-nine percent of those who died were not vaccinated. … If you have the chance, get vaccinated, it will save your life.
Monday afternoon, with many of their usual stars on vacation, cable news channels were short of JV crews. I decided to return to Fox to see if they were still stuck on critical outrage over racial theory, the open borders scandal, or the dereliction of Afghanistan, but COVID had the scene for now. My main rule for watching Fox was in play: watch until someone says something that is just plain wrong, overly stupid, or inflammatory (typical stay: 30-45 seconds).
The anchor featured a reporter for a story on the confusion over COVID booster shots saying that when it comes to the vaccine, the White House message is still unclear.
I guess when the President of the United States is on TV and says, “Please, please, please get vaccinated,” it’s sort of not clear. I was gone in 16 seconds.
For perfectly clear COVID advice, one might assume that you would have to tune in to Tucker Carlson, Fox’s highest rated host. No one sows more distrust of the vaccine or ousted public health policy on masks than the man to whom Variety awarded the media label “heir to frozen foods turned paleo-conservative expert of the brand of fire”. If there is an origin story as to why nearly half of Republicans are unlikely to get the vaccine, Tucker Carlson led it.
The irony is that it was Carlson who, in March 2020, left his Gulf Coast mansion to cross Florida, out of a deep sense of “moral obligation,” to meet Trump in Mar-a -Lago for the express purpose of convincing him. to take the novel coronavirus more seriously. Without this two-hour meeting, there may never have been Operation Warp Speed.
Trump, Murdoch, Hannity, all vaccinated. Carlson, who asked him if he had been vaccinated by Time’s Gillian Laub, called the question “super vulgar,” then asked Laub, “What is your favorite sex position and when did you commit to it?” the last time ? “
Fox’s blatantly irresponsible COVID coverage has long caught the attention of people who love to count things. Media Matters, for example, released a report in August that said between June 28 and July 11, less than two weeks, “Fox personalities have made 216 claims that undermine or downplay vaccines or vaccination campaigns. Of these, 151 complaints came from network experts, which represented 70% of the total. Fox experts have described the vaccination efforts as coercive or dangerous 75 times. “
So, if you think about it, take a moment on October 7 to reflect on Fox News, 25, who as a child was just Dick Cheney’s favorite channel, then a lascivious post-pubescent entity still being sued for sexual harassment. Who knew he would become a serial killer?
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