Fox Knows Who Is To Blame For Ferguson Riots (It's Still Eric Holder Obvs)

Fox News wasted no time in repackaging the news that the Justice Department is not expected to file civil rights charges against Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, according to a report in the New York Times,  into an astonishingly distorted pack of lies about Ferguson. Yes, we know you're shocked.

Attorney General Eric Holder still has to sign off on the investigators' recommendation that no charges be filed against Wilson, but that's unlikely; it's not known when the investigators' report will be made public. A wider investigation into the Ferguson Police Department's treatment of black citizens is continuing. But Fox sees no reason to wait to blame everything that happened in Ferguson on the Justice Department, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, and pretty much the entire Democratic Party.

The following segment on Fox & Friends Thursday morning is pretty incredible, even by Fox's low standards:

Goatfelching Steve Doocy starts lying from virtually the first sentence, suggesting that the Justice Department's investigation of Wilson's shooting of Mike Brown began only after the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson, even as file footage showed Eric Holder visiting Ferguson on Aug. 20. The FBI's civil rights investigation of Wilson actually began on Aug. 11, just two days after Brown was shot. The grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson actually came on Nov. 24.

Doocy's version?

Remember out in Ferguson, Missouri, after the grand jury said that the white police officer would not be indicted, [...] then the Department of Justice headed up by Eric Holder, he went out there and talked to people and then announced that there would be a civil rights investigation, whether or not the white police officer violated the civil rights of the black man who he shot. Well now, according to the New York Times, the FBI could find no evidence of any civil rights violations, and the Department of Justice will oppose any civil rights charges. That's the breaking news this morning. What's curious though, is, it prompted all of those riots. 

Elisabeth Hasselbeck agreed: "It sure did -- I mean, we heard from Eric Holder, we heard from Al Sharpton, which kind of stirred it up in that region. Remember this?" And then the screen cut to a clip of Eric Holder, clearly labeled August 21, saying that he understood the mistrust that black citizens of Ferguson held for police officers, followed by Al Sharpton speaking on Nov. 30, as if the two were both reacting to the grand jury's decision. Sharpton was, Holder wasn't, and despite the entire segment's focus on Sharpton, we would like to remind Fox that Al Sharpton is not actually an employee of the Department of Justice and had nothing to do with the investigation. The clip also treats us to some security camera footage of looters, who were also no doubt talking to each other about the DOJ's civil rights investigation of Brown's death.

In reality-land, on the other hand, protests over the shooting of Michael Brown began immediately after his killing in August, and accelerated after St Louis County Police started acting like third-rate stormtroopers. Maybe that was the federal government's fault, too. The worst rioting occurred immediately after the grand jury's refusal to indict, and following St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCullough's inflammatory press conference where he made it sound like Michael Brown had been the person being tried.

The Fox segment also made no mention of DOJ's wider investigation of the Ferguson PD, which, just for the record, also started before the grand jury decision.

And so, your takeaway: Eric Holder needs to apologize for causing all those riots with the investigation that he began two months beforehand, and Al Sharpton needs to resign as attorney general.

[ NYT / Media Matters ]