Riots, Lies, and Faux News...
The riot lie
Watch Fox News for a few hours, and you might think rioters are still prowling America's biggest cities, smashing windows and stealing handbags. You might think Minneapolis is still burning. You might think the unrest is getting worse.
In the "Fox & Friends" and "Hannity" alternative universe, the rioting is still a present-tense threat and could restart at any time. This is contradicted by every news report from every other outlet. The story now is about peaceful, powerful, sustained protest all across the country. But "riot porn" video is irresistible to Fox's producers and hosts, even though the video is out of date now.
I've been noticing this for several days now. Sometimes the video has a little label in the corner with the date, like "May 28" for fires in Minneapolis, but not always. And if you think the label is sufficient, you're kidding yourself. The video is often accompanied by talk of "unrest," violence and inner-city chaos. One of the banners on Sean Hannity's show Tuesday night said "GROWING LAWLESSNESS IN MAJOR CITIES." His show, and others, have been blurring the unrest seen in the wake of George Floyd's death with other, generalized types of crime. Statements like "we have to restore law and order" have implied that law and order has not been restored.
Look, I live in Manhattan and I hated what happened in this city on May 31 and June 1. The looting and mayhem was appalling. But it was more than a week ago. The graffiti has been scrubbed off the bodega on my block. The broken windows have been cleaned up. And today I noticed the city's garbage can -- taken away last week because vandals were lighting fires in them -- back on my building's corner today. I took it as a small but telling sign that things are getting back to normal. It is grossly misleading to show old video of looters on a loop while omitting what's going on today.
These are editorial choices
Brian Kilmeade kind of gave up the game on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday morning. "I thought when George Floyd was killed, we were going to be talking about racial equality in this country and George Floyd's life," he said. "We could not get to that because our first four stories were all about the massive destruction on the biggest cities." The control room cued up video of Minneapolis chaos from May 29, a week and a half ago. Kilmeade said "now people are looking around and saying 'What is the message again?'"
Well, the message from the video was that Minneapolis is in shambles. The message from the on-screen banner was about "THE THREAT OF ANTIFA." Other networks have found plenty of time to talk about racial equality and Floyd's life, so Kilmeade should look inward...
Trump perpetuates the lie
On Tuesday morning the president retweeted a three-day-old post from a right-wing columnist in Europe who said Minneapolis is "looking like the aftermath of a war." Again, notice the use of present-tense. The tweet was old and the video was even older -- it was a compilation of ugly scenes from the end of May.
Folks who live in these cities know the truth about the swift recovery from the sickening but short-lived riots. Do Fox viewers in rural areas know the truth?
All three of Fox's prime time shows delighted in an audio tape of Chicago aldermen arguing with the mayor about the May 31-June 1 violence. The conference call took place on Sunday, June 1. WTTW, the PBS affiliate in Chicago, obtained the tape and published it last Friday. Yet on Tuesday night Fox treated it like it was brand new.
The riot lie is related to this next item...
The "Antifa fantasy"
That's what Anne Helen Petersen calls it in her must-read story for BuzzFeed News. She explores how rumors about "roving bands of Antifa have followed small protests all over the United States." It's nonsense, of course, nonsense fueled by Facebook posts and fringe websites, but the rumors give militias something to guard against. As Petersen writes, "it doesn't matter if antifa was never coming in the first place. They didn't come, and that's evidence of victory."
>> The reality: " NPR has reviewed court documents of 51 individuals facing federal charges in connection with the unrest. As of Tuesday morning, none is alleged to have links to the antifa movement..."
>> Historian Mark Bray, who has studied the leftist groups, made this point on CNN the other day: "You can see that when these groups in major cities mobilize, they don't get more than a couple hundred people. And they're more active in some regions than others..."
>> In the past two weeks, Fox News programs have mentioned Antifa more than 325 times, per TVEyes. Fox Business: 173+ times. Antifa has come up 67+ times on CNN and 88+ times on MSNBC...
Trump's poisoned well of info
I'm about to pop up on Don Lemon's "CNN Tonight" with a look at where Trump's crazy Buffalo tweet came from. In short, an anonymous post on the Conservative Treehouse blog led to a kooky segment on One America News, and Trump tagged OAN in his Tuesday morning tweet. So OAN is funneling conspiratorial nonsense from the fever swamps of the web into Trump's lap, and he's sharing it with the world.
>> Republican lawmakers dodged questions about the tweet...
Garbage in, garbage out...
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