Tag: right-wing media

Right-wing media has pushed 3 completely false narratives in less than a week

Right-wing media, most prominently Fox News, has promoted three major false stories in the past few days.

Last Friday, the New York Post published a cover story claiming that copies of Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2019 children’s book, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” were being gifted to migrant children at a Department of Health and Human Services shelter in Long Beach, California. The Post provided no evidence for the claim aside from a single Reuters photograph of Harris’ book propped against a backpack on a table.

The story was picked up by a host of right-wing media outlets, including Fox News, which coauthored a follow-up story with Laura Italiano, the Post reporter who wrote the original piece. A slew of prominent Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Tom Cotton and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, promoted the Post’s story. Continue reading.

How right-wing media keeps smearing George Floyd with the racist ‘no angel’ narrative

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In an appalling bit of shorthand, the riveting courtroom drama in Minneapolis has come to be called “the George Floyd trial.”

Floyd died in police custody last spring and is obviously not the one on trial. It was a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for more than nine unrelenting minutes, who now faces second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges.

But some in right-wing media keep doing their utmost to make this tragedy about Floyd’s drug use and troubled life, in what seems like an attempt to absolve Chauvin long before the jury reaches a verdict. In effect, they are putting Floyd on trial. Continue reading.

Secession And Martial Law Obsess Right-Wing Media Outlets

After the Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to overturn the election, many far-right pro-Trump media figures, social media personalities, Republican Party officials, and former congressional candidates expressed support for secession from the United States or the use of the military to overturn the election which President Donald Trump lost.

The lawsuit sought, in a “seditious abuse of judicial process,” to invalidate the election results from several swing states that contributed to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. This extreme attempt to overthrow our democracy garnered mainstream Republican support, with 17 GOP state attorneys general and more than half of House Republicans signing on in support of it.

The Supreme Court’s rejection of the lawsuit did not end Trump supporters’ calls to overturn the election results. While treason talk — fueled by Rush Limbaugh — had already begun in the right-wing circles before the Supreme Court announced its decision, it really took off afterward. Continue reading.

Right-Wing Media Again Push To Open Economy Despite Death Toll

Between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, there has been an increased wave of right-wing media figures calling for an end to the economic lockdown in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. As they’ve begun to explain rather openly, the cost for jobs and businesses is just too much for what they deem is a low death figure being reported.

Left out of all these discussions is a key detail: The reason that COVID-19 death predictions have been revised down from over 2 million to a (still horrific) figure of up to 240,000 is precisely because of the social distancing and stay-at-home orders. If that regimen were to simply be lifted, then the projected deaths would rise again — especially if the health care system were to become overwhelmed.

But as they miss this point, many of these right-wing media figures seem to think even this reduced level of deaths has come with too high an economic cost. Continue reading.

Right-Wing Media Intensify Attacks On Dr. Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the past 36 years, is a widely respected immunologist and major public face of the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19. Despite his credibility established over decades as a public health official, right-wing media have begun to launch attacks against “Dr. Doom Fauci,” blaming the medical expert for allegedly harming the economy and undermining President Donald Trump. The New York Times reported that Trump is “losing his patience” with Fauci.

Despite lacking the platform of someone like Fox host Sean Hannity, fringe right-wing media figures and outlets — one of which formerly had a White House correspondent in the briefing room just to troll journalists — can still reach and influence the thinking of Trump, who is exposed to a wide range of ridiculous lies online.

Pro-Trump podcaster Bill Mitchell: Continue reading.

Yes, Trump And His Republican Supporters Are To Blame

Republicans and the right-wing media cannot be allowed to live down the bad, dangerous, horribly wrong information they promoted on coronavirus for weeks.

President Donald Trump and many of his sycophants — including those at Fox News — have dramatically changed their tone when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. After weeks of claiming that the mainstream media were exaggerating the dangers of coronavirus, Trump has adopted a somber tone and now acknowledges how deadly it is. But the fact remains that for far too long, many Trumpistas and Republicans claimed that coronavirus wasn’t nearly as dangerous as liberals, progressives, Democrats, centrists, Never Trump conservatives and the mainstream media were making it out to be. And those Trumpistas and Republicans — by encouraging complacency in the face of a deadly pandemic — now have blood on their hands.

Previously, Trump claimed that coronavirus warnings from the mainstream media and Democrats were a “hoax.” But unsettling figures from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland say otherwise. As of early Friday morning, March 20, the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus has killed 10,038 people worldwide — including 3405 in Italy alone. Italy, in fact, has now passed Mainland China in the COVID-19 death count. Other countries being ravaged by coronavirus range from Iran (with 1284 deaths) to Spain (833 deaths). But those numbers are likely to increase substantially in the weeks ahead. Continue reading.

How Health Care Inequities Increase The Pandemic Peril

Right-wing media have lied for years about the American health care system, downplaying the fact that millions of people are either uninsured or lack access to affordable health care.

With a possible pandemic on the horizon, that’s a real problem.

A perfect example of this problem is evident in the Miami Herald’s reporting about Osmel Martinez Azcue. After visiting China, he felt sick. Taking the advice of experts, he went to the hospital, where it turned out that he did not have the novel coronavirus strain known as COVID-19, but rather the common flu. He was then billed $3,270, but he may only have to pay $1,400 for the tests he was given if he can prove to his insurance company that the flu he contracted was not related to a preexisting condition. The Herald noted that so-called “junk plans” that don’t actually cover common medical expenses contribute to this problem, writing that “often the plans aren’t very different from going without insurance altogether.” Continue reading.

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

AlterNet logoThere 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.

Anti-Trump Reddit user falsely identified as Jacksonville mass shooter by right-wing media outlets

The following article by Chauncey Alcorn was posted on the Mic.com website August 28, 2018:

At least seven pro-Trump media personalities and outlets falsely identified an anti-Trump Reddit user as the mass shooter who attacked a Madden NFL video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, over the weekend.

Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and Daily Caller contributor Ian Miles Cheong tweeted out false reports Sunday accusing a Minnesota Reddit user named Pavel, 23 — who declined to give his last name, but goes by “ravenchamps” on Reddit — of being David Katz, the 24-year-old gamer from Baltimore who allegedly killed two people and injured 10 more Sunday before killing himself.

“Bitch Boy was a diehard Trump hater, as his Reddit account shows,” Cheong tweeted.

View the complete article here.

Yes, Sinclair Broadcast Group does cut local news, increase national news and tilt its stations rightward

The following article by Gregory J. Martin and Josh McCrain was posted on the Washington Post website April 10, 2018:

Before a video that showcased news anchors reading a required script went viral, Sinclair Broadcast Group was not a well-known name. (Erin Patrick O’Connor/The Washington Post)

In recent weeks, news anchors at local TV stations across the country have warned Americans about the “sharing of biased and false news” and the threat “fake stories” pose to democracy. As a recent video revealed, reporters recited word for word the same script bearing this warning.

What do these stations have in common? They’re all owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest television station conglomerate in the United States. Continue reading “Yes, Sinclair Broadcast Group does cut local news, increase national news and tilt its stations rightward”