Fox News On January 6 Hearing Would Like You To LOOK OVER THERE! Wait No Not There Either.

This is some blatant propaganda shit.

Jun 10, 2022

The first night of the January 6 Committee hearings was all over TV last night, not only on cable news, but also preempting programming on the legacy broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC. But nobody watching Fox News saw the hearing at all, because the network didn't carry it, shunting the live coverage over to Fox Business instead. (See? Fox DID SO carry the hearings, just on the channel fewer people watch.)

But Main Fox didn't ignore the hearings and rant about China or migrant caravans or sex-crazed pandas as you might expect. Instead, the network's two top opinion shows, "Tucker Carlson's Radio Rwanda For Terrified White Folks" and "Sean Hannity Is Very Worried About America So You Should Worry About America Too," spent the two hours telling Fox viewers why the House January 6 Select Committee and its hearings are terrible and bad.

There also weren't any commercial breaks that might have risked viewers changing the channel and catching part of the hearing.

We can understand why Fox News didn't want any of its regular viewers seeing dangerous things like the committee's video compilation showing scenes of violence. Much of the video was previously unreleased. Wouldn't want to remind the Faithful how awful January 6, 2021, actually was.

As we look at the lies that were all over Fox last night, remember: This is what Fox News viewers did not see. It's what Fox News absolutely did not want them to see.

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'We Will Tell You The Truth,' Says Habitual Liar

Instead, Fox viewers got Tucker Carlson telling them that he was actually very proud that Fox wasn't showing the hearing, because only Fox News can be trusted, no do not look elsewhere ever:

In fact, it's deranged and we're not playing along. This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it. What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth. We've attempted to do that since the day this happened.

Hilariously, Carlson did tell viewers that "if something noteworthy happens ... obviously we will bring it to you immediately." But Carlson, and later Hannity, never cut away to the hearing even once, proving how unimportant it must have been.

Then he got to the serious business of lying, insisting we will never know what really happened that day because it was simultaneously nothing important at all ( "barely rates as a footnote" ), a false flag operation perpetrated by FBI provocateurs, a complete cover-up by the government,and a legitimate expression of anger by patriots who were upset the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. It may also have been a dessert topping and a floor wax.

Tucker once again rolled out his insistence that a guy named Ray Epps just had to be a federal provocateur, because clearly no real patriot would ever encourage violence, mercy no. ( Reality: Ray Epps is a freaking Oath Keeper who looked forward to hanging Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi, just like the rest of 'em.)

We especially like the way Carlson insisted the committee covered up the truth, all while Tucker himself lied and lied, like claiming that "none of the so-called insurrectionists had guns." Reality: At least10 have been charged with firearms offenses so far, and many other rioters carried knives, folding batons, and stun guns, to say nothing of their use of improvised weapons like police shields and flagpoles. Also, let's not forget the guy who pleaded guilty not only to carrying guns, but had a cache of Molotov cocktails in his truck. AHA! says Tucker, But Molotov cocktails are not firearms, I win!

Look At These Losers. Just LOOK At Them!

For some real laughs, check out the gallery of goons Fox had on as guests (lovingly collected by Nikki McCann Ramirez) instead of carrying the hearing, and get a load of the Stalinist-sounding chyrons. There was Tulsi Gabbard ("The January 6th 'Show Trial' is underway").

CPAC magnate Matt Schlapp ("The left's changing views on riots")

Federalist CEO Sean Davis ("Liz Cheney is helping Democrats crack down on Americans who oppose their agenda")

And our personal favorite, Michael Tracey, who probably complained that Maxine Waters was trying to murder him again. (Chyron: "Democrats want to destroy anyone that challenges their message and power")

Why Did Capitol Police Keep Hitting Themselves?

Tucker also dragged out the canard that no cops died due to the mob, because they merely committed suicide later, and in the case of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, he just happened to die of natural causes like one of those clumsy Russian oligarchs who clumsily fall out a window now and then.

Carlson went on an extended rant about the multiple incorrect reports that Sicknick had been beaten with a fire extinguisher, calling the reports deliberate lies, but he left out the fact that Sicknick had been attacked with a chemical spray . Instead, he said, Sicknick "died of a stroke in his office later. No one has been charged in Officer Sicknick's death because Officer Sicknick wasn't murdered."

Carlson left out that Sicknick's attackers were charged with assault , but not with murder, because an autopsy did indeed find that Sicknick died of a stroke — but the DC medical examiner added that "all that transpired" on January 6 "played a role in his condition.” Just not enough to get a murder conviction.

What Tucker Carlson Doesn't Say Is More Insidious Than What He Does

Officer Caroline Edwards Is A Goddamn Hero

It's a familiar lying by omission strategy for Carlson, who also likes to suggest that George Floyd happened to die of a drug overdose that was completely unrelated to a rogue cop kneeling on Floyd's neck.

But because they didn't see the hearings, Fox viewers also didn't see Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards testify that the attack on the Capitol looked like a "war scene":

There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. [...]

I am trained to detain a couple of subjects and handle a crowd, but I'm not combat trained. And that day, it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat.

Fox viewers also didn't see Edwards describe seeing Sicknick, who like other Capitol Police had been hit with chemical spray by rioters:

All of a sudden, I see movement to the left of me. I turned, and it was Officer Sicknick with his head in his hands and he was ghostly pale, which I figured at that point, he had been sprayed and I was concerned. My cop alarm bells went off. Because if you get sprayed with pepper spray, you're going to turn red. He turned just about as pale as this sheet of paper.

Gee, if he wasn't feeling well he should have called in sick that day, huh?

They Distort, We Deride

The spin went on for the rest of Fox primetime, with Carlson, Hannity, and the other network talking heads behaving, as the Washington Post's Philip Bump put it, "as though it was former president Donald Trump’s defense team — without, of course, showing its audience the prosecution’s case."

Fox did provide glimpses of the hearings, but only as a video window in the background, often restricted to long shots of the hearing room, and never with sound. As NBC News producer Manny Fidel pointed out last night on Twitter, even that partial coverage cut away when the hearing showed the violent attack on the Capitol.

“I lined up the Jan. 6 committee hearing footage with Tucker Carlon's show and found that Fox News cut away from clips that showed rioters breaking into the Capitol”
— manny (@manny) 1654829284

For his part, during his commercial-free hour, Sean Hannity dismissed the hearing as the "dullest, the most boring — there's absolutely nothing new — multi-hour Democratic fundraiser masquerading as a Jan. 6 hearing." He wasn't watching, and neither were his audience, so Hannity missed his own mention in the hearing, when Liz Cheney read his January 6 text to Kayleigh McEnany, telling her "no more crazy people" and "no more stolen election talk ... Many people will quit."

Instead, the crazy people all found on-air spots on Fox News, the end.

[ WaPo / Nikki McCann Ramirez on Twitter / Media Matters / CNN / Salon ]

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