Former Fox News correspondent warns the network ‘foments fear and anger’ as analysis shows El Paso terrorist echoed the toxic rhetoric of right-wing media stars

There was a time when right-wing media, apart from Patrick Buchanan, were much more forgiving of undocumented immigrants and praised President Ronald Reagan for granting so many of them amnesty during the 1980s. But in recent years, right-wing media have found that fear-mongering over illegal immigration can be great for ratings or online traffic — and a report for the New York Times finds that the El Paso shooter used much of the same inflammatory language and rhetoric that right-wing media stars have been espousing.

According to Carl Cameron, former chief political correspondent for Fox News, the language of the extreme fringe is now common in right-wing media. Cameron told the Times that right-wing media are now “putting that into the zeitgeist…. Fox goes out and looks for stuff that is inherently on fire and foments fear and anger.”

Shortly before the terrorist mass shooting in El Paso that left 22 people dead, the killer (according to law enforcement) posted a 2300-word manifesto on 4Chan asserting that he was acting in order to fight an “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” And the Times report (written by Jeremy W. Peters, Michael M. Grynbaum, Keith Collins, Rich Harris and Rumsey Taylor and published on August 11) notes that right-wing media stars like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson have been using the same type of rhetoric.

View the complete August 12 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.