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Fox News’ Impeachment News Cover-Up

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It’s truly shocking how easily norms are knocked down..and out. Case in point: many say Fox News is virtual talk radio television with talk show hosts who often deal in conspiracy theories, inaccuracies and truth-challenged assertions. But the one thing that could not be said is that if there was a truly huge, monster, historically important story Fox News would not cover it like any other reputable news organization.

Until now.

Fox News found a unique way to cover but not cover the Donald Trump impeachment trial: cut from the unfiltered news feed and bring in (predictable) commentators.

North Korea-style coverage anyone? The L.A. Times’ Brian Boyle:

…(E)ven if (or, most likely, when) Republican senators vote to let Trump off the hook, as they seem determined to do, there may be no escape from the cold, hard facts of insidious guilt. No escape, of course, unless you flip to Fox News.

Because if you happened to be tuned in to the president’s favorite cable news outlet Wednesday night, you would’ve missed Schiff’s closing remarks in their entirety. In fact, by late afternoon, the network mostly relegated the proceedings to a small, silent box in the bottom corner of the screen.

Even with a complicit Republican-controlled Senate led by the legislatively ruthless Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Trump’s greatest asset in his impeachment trial — and his presidency writ large — continues to be the unconditional love of America’s most watched news network.

We’re in the midst of only the third impeachment trial ever — and only its second in the television age! — and one of the titans of TV refused to air it live. Instead, Fox viewers were subjected to Jesse Watters’ low-brow Statler and Waldorf impression, a dumbed-down “Mystery Science Theater 3000” knockoff for the Rush Limbaugh crowd.

Around the time Schiff began his closing remarks, Sean Hannity was on the air, shouting over the congressman in a warped, incoherent monologue. A chyron declared “NO QUID PRO QUO, NO EXTORTION, NO GROUNDS TO IMPEACH: SCHIFF TALKS FOREVER BUT KEY FACTS WILL NEVER CHANGE” (for the record, I, for one, think it’s quite nice that Fox appears to have hired the president as the chyron-writing intern).

Here’s what Fox viewers were treated to in Hannity’s opening monologue, which played over Schiff’s closing remarks: “We got hours and hours and hours, literally, of the compromised, corrupt, congenital liar Adam Schiff. Never ending, nonstop, feigned moral outrage … a lunatic … who has lost his mind…. If you watched him today, he was totally unhinged…. Babbling, repeating over and over and over again, incoherently … a psychotic meltdown for the entire world to see.”

AND:

Perhaps most annoyingly, Hannity and his guests couldn’t even engage with the trial on its merits. Instead, they waved it away as nonsense, a ludicrous step to take for a president who keeps racking up “wins” for the so-called Real America.

Journalistically speaking, it’s a ridiculous and obvious dereliction of duty to not air the trial live. But it’s hard to ascribe journalism ethics and values to a station with a lead host who is so closely embroiled with the Trump administration.

Go the link to read the whole column.

Vox:

As the impeachment trial got underway in the Senate on Wednesday, Fox News covered it in a way that gave the appearance of journalism but was actually propaganda.

In fairness, the network did cover the entirety of Rep. Adam Schiff’s two-hour opening statement. But after that, while CNN and MSNBC continued to broadcast the trial, Fox News turned to spin.

..During the 9 pm hour — just before Schiff closed the day’s proceedings by emotionally imploring Republican senators to have the same courage that witnesses like Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman did in coming forward to testify, even at risk of their careers — Sean Hannity began his show by immediately cutting away from the trial, telling his viewers “none of this will matter,” and describing Schiff as a “lunatic” (a characterization at odds with other primetime segments that criticized the trial for being boring).

Hannity later played a supercut of snippets of Schiff’s testimony that framed things in the most demeaning possible light.

AND:

Why does this matter? Fox News’s coverage of the impeachment trial’s day-long rules debate on Tuesday was easily the highest-rated on broadcast and cable. The network drew record ratings in 2019, and its viewers constitute a large portion of Trump’s base. Trump rewards the network for its loyalty by relentlessly promoting its programming on social media and granting it exclusive interviews, including as recently as Wednesday morning.

The 2.7 million people who have been watching Fox News’s impeachment trial coverage at any given time are being told a story about it that’s completely untethered from reality — one that reinforces America’s deep polarization between the roughly 50 percent of voters who want Trump removed from office and the 40 to 45 percent who continue to support him through scandal after scandal.

Progress Pond’s Martin Longman writes that this was the GOP trying to keep its base in a “bubble.”

Fox News’ broadcast the first two hours of the impeachment trial on Wednesday in a normal manner, but after that, they turned off the sound..Their post-truth business model couldn’t withstand the House Managers’ methodical destruction of their viewers’ hero, so this is telling but not at all surprising. Just don’t call them a news network, or treat them like one.

And he has a good point. This wasn’t the Democratic convention or an Elizabeth Warren campaign rally. This was a major historical event in American history that no matter what is decided by the Senate will have far-reaching, long-term consequences.

But there’s an additional point about this that needs to be made because when norms are shattered people tend to forget how it was before.

Name calling, a disregard for facts — some say we are now living in a post-truth era — are what passes for as political commentary and analysis among many these days. But it isn’t discussing of issues, or offering a rebuttal. It’s about expressing outrage, anger and putting in as many strong adjectives to define another individual or group.

And, yes, there are many skilled news people who work on Fox News who in various jobs gather, piece together and deliver more traditional news. But they are no longer working for a news organization.

Fox News used to have the slogan “We report you decide.”

In some of its coverage of one of the biggest stories in American history it seems to deserve a new slogan “We filter out things we don’t want you to hear so we decide for you.”