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TV TATTLE

It took just five days for Fox News to essentially move on from the U.S. Capitol riot

  • By Monday of last week, Fox News went from covering the U.S. Capitol siege to focusing its outrage on President Trump's deplatforming on social media. “This, to me, is a five-alarm fire for America," Brian Kilmeade said on Fox & Friends. "A five-alarm fire for America," writes Justin Peters of Kilmeade's words. "While the roughly concurrent deplatforming of the president of the United States and a microblogging app popular among right-wingers is an important news story under any circumstances, Kilmeade’s assertion seemed more than a little overheated considering the bloody, historic context in which the bans occurred. After all, it was mere days after a mob, convened and incited by Donald Trump, toted the Confederate flag into the U.S. Capitol and erected a gallows near the Capitol Reflecting Pool, while some in the mob chanted 'Hang Mike Pence!' This deadly riot was preceded by two months of lies about a “stolen” election, told by Trump and a cross-section of his enablers, as well as literally decades of scaremongering from Kilmeade’s employer about the character and intentions of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. It’s true that other right-wing outlets have done more than Fox News to promote the stolen-election lie, but that hardly absolves the network; just because Fox hasn’t been the most dishonest network over the past two months doesn’t mean it still hasn’t been consistently dishonest for years and years. The actual five-alarm fire was one that Trump and Fox News had themselves built, stoked, and tended up until the day it nearly consumed the republic. Obviously, there can be multiple five-alarm fires raging at the same time—for more on this exciting prospect, please see my latest Chicago Fire spec script—but by any reasonable measure of newsworthiness, the siege of the federal legislature is clearly the fire that merits the most attention, especially from a flag-waving, law-and-order cable network such as Fox News. Right? Wrong! By Monday morning (last week), Fox News had all but moved on from the story of the Capitol riot, so eager was the network to get back to yelling about the suppressive left. Consigning the Capitol story to a series of passing references, for three hours Fox & Friends made a passionate case for the right of extremely online MAGA propagandists to be able to harass, incite, and misinform people free from any and all consequences." ALSO: Jake Tapper calls out Fox News hosts for promoting hte "Big Lie" of a stolen election.

    TOPICS: Fox News Channel, Jake Tapper, Cable News, U.S. Capitol Takeover