Molly Butler / Media Matters
Fox News didn't mention the death toll in prime time at all
Written by Nikki McCann Ramirez
Published
Yesterday, the United States recorded more than 3,000 COVID deaths in a single day, more than the amount of Americans killed on 9/11. More than 3,000 died today as well. CDC Director Robert Redfield projects that this will go on for weeks.
Meanwhile, on Fox News, the catastrophic number was deemed largely unworthy of a mention. In the morning, Fox barely mentioned the death toll:
Later, on Outnumbered, anchor Harris Faulkner berated commentator Marie Harf for pointing out they’d gone nearly the entire show without mentioning the record-breaking death toll.
On Faulkner’s “straight news” program Outnumbered Overtime, Benghazi was mentioned more than the death toll.
While Fox occasionally did talk about the pandemic, vaccines, and the death toll during the day, in primetime, things were very different.
On Tucker Carlson Tonight, the pandemic was not mentioned at all. Carlson instead dedicated his hour to broadcasting decrees of vindication over things like various claims about Hunter Biden, a book that apparently eclares that the United States is the least racist society on earth, and speculation about Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA):
The death toll also was not mentioned on Hannity, who’s hour featured fellow Fox host Mark Levin comparing other major outlets coverage of Hunter Biden to covering up the Holocaust.
In fact, the only mention of the pandemic on the show was a passing mention by Corey Lewandowski that it caused Hunter Biden to delay a deposition. (In reality, Biden reached a settlement in the matter in March shortly after a judge in Arkansas denied the request to delay the hearing.)
Hannity, when he was not speculating about Rep. Swalwell, focused on Hunter Biden as well as the ongoing attempted coup to overturn election results; he hosted White House press secretary and Trump campaign adviser Kayleigh McEnany to tout the new and objectively terrible lawsuit filed by Texas' attorney general.
On The Ingraham Angle, the record-breaking number of deaths also went unmentioned.
Instead, host Laura Ingraham framed the pandemic as an attack on President Donald Trump and later fearmongered that the focus on the pandemic was being used to cover up a surge of migrants from the southern border. Ingraham wondered how anyone could take concerns over the pandemic “seriously” if “open borders” were allowed. (She also had a tease on this matter.)
At the end of the hour, Ingraham complained about remarks that Dr. Anthony Fauci made on CNN about why vaccines are being given in two doses.
Fox News has downplayed or ignored the death toll from the pandemic all along.
Imagine if, in the days after the 9/11 attacks, we simply did not mention the staggering human cost. Imagine if we decided that all that suffering may have been bad but was not worthy of public grieving. Imagine if we decided that banal politics were simply more important than those people who died.
You cannot, by the way, make the same claim about any natural disaster, because the network already hit bottom there: Fox News also has erased the victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in 2017.
That is now what Fox News is doing to the victims of this pandemic day after day after day. And there is no sign that anyone at the company really wants that to change.
