How Fox News has shifted its coronavirus rhetorichttps://t.co/iWGZqoprvY pic.twitter.com/L9nITMkV6F
— The Fix (@thefix) March 17, 2020
Fox News helped for weeks selling Donald Trump’s message that fear of coronavirus was a hoax to harm his re-election.
Now that something has prompted him — dangerously too late — to recognize the calamity, Fox News has changed its tune. Great video above from Washington Post of Fox talkers flip-flopping.
Medica critic Eric Boehlert’s Press Run newsletter has good commentary on Fox News today. Part of his opinion:
Since Fox News is a misinformation empire that revolves around hypocrisy, it was fitting in recent days that while Rupert Murdoch’s cable channel often downplayed and minimized the novel coronavirus and assured viewers it was likely a partisan Democratic, “Deep State” plot to take down Trump just like impeachment, network executives behind the scenes were cautioning employees about the looming dangers of the pandemic.
“Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and network president Jay Wallace warned employees about the risks of COVID-19, and announced steps the network will take to combat its spread, including telecommuting, reduced in-studio guest bookings, and enhanced office cleanings,” the Daily Beast reported.
The two-faced operation being run at Murdoch’s cable channel comes as the Fox News posts big profits while spreading blatant public health disinformation. And that’s why Murdoch and Fox News have clearly emerged as this generation’s merchants of death in the U.S., as the right-wing cabal puts its viewers directly at risk with an avalanche of falsehoods about the current pandemic. (“Merchants of death” was an epithet used by 1930’s critics in the U.S. to attack industries and banks that supplied and funded World War I.)
As has been noted in recent days, Fox’s viewers skew older. According to Nielsen Media Research, the median age of a Fox News viewer is 67, while the Centers for Disease Control has stressed that “older adults” are “at higher risk of getting very sick” from the coronavirus. And yes, red states are getting hit just as hard by the virus today.
People will die because of Fox News’ reckless misinformation, as the channel wallows in partisan conspiracies and ushers on non-experts to whip up paranoia. On Friday, Jerry Falwell Jr, told the “Fox & Friends”: “You just didn’t see it on the news 24/7 and it makes you wonder if there’s a political reason for that. Impeachment didn’t work and the Mueller report didn’t work and Article 25 [the 25th amendment to the constitution] didn’t work so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.”
“Watch the Democrats, watch the media, you start to feel like they are rooting for coronavirus to spread,” warned “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth.