Fox News has sent conflicting messaging urging mask-wearing as its contributors denounce "face diapers"

The Washington Post

"These two conflicting messages have run through Fox News’s pandemic coverage since the early weeks of the crisis: corporate-backed pleas to follow conventional public health advice on the one hand, and fact-challenged outbursts against that same advice on the other," reports The Washington Post's Jeremy Barr, adding that early on "a rift was already starting to emerge between the network’s public health push and its personalities’ desire to ride a wave of conservative anger against local and state anti-contagion efforts, much of it stoked by President Donald Trump...Masks became the most obvious symbol of the conflict." Fox News, meanwhile, defends itself, saying in a statement: “Fox News Media has continuously provided viewers with the latest news on the global pandemic over the past year, hosting over a dozen pandemic-related town halls, while extensively promoting mask-wearing and vaccinations to our audience via public service announcements across all platforms. Any suggestion otherwise is pure cherry-picking and a deliberate mischaracterization of the facts.”