Crime coverage on Fox News halved once US midterms were over

[William769]

In the weeks leading up to the US midterm elections, the message from Fox News was clear: violent crime is surging, cities are dangerous hellscapes and Democrats are responsible.

With the vote over, however, the rightwing news channel appeared to decide things weren’t that bad after all and decreased its coverage of violent crime by 50% compared with the pre-election average.

Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, found that each week from Labor Day until the Friday before the Tuesday 8 November vote, the network averaged 141 segments on crime across weekdays. The blanket crime coverage matched the Republican party’s efforts to depict violent crime as out of control and portray Democrats as responsible.

In the week of the midterms, however, once voting was over, Fox News aired just 71 segments on violent crime, Media Matters reported.

“I think this shows pretty clearly that the amount of Fox coverage of violent crime doesn’t really have anything to do with the level of violent crime in America – it has to do with the political benefits,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/crime-coverage-on-fox-news-halved-once-us-midterms-were-over/ar-AA14xslv?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=777ac9e0b15d4e9fa193ee9dc58ebe6a

[Augiedog]

1. Fux news itself is a rolling crime wave of lies, hate and mass hysteria

[underpants]

2. Spending the day with my stepfather

All Fox all day. The ladies are going shopping. I get to put up moms tree. I’m going to just enjoy it as much as possible

[MyOwnPeace]

3. The irony..........

decorating to honor the 'Prince of Peace' while hearing the voice of hate........

[lambchopp59]

11. God help you

The last time I had to endure that was at my late parent's residence when dad absolutely had a cow if he ever missed that ugly jackass Bill O-Really's show. Not that this made sense but he insisted the damn teevee had to be on Fox all damn day so he didn't miss it. I didn't have to do anything because mom would grab the remote, change the channel to the classic movie channel while he was up to the bathroom, and he'd promptly fall to a deep snooze in his chair, hours later to pop awake and change it back to that damn noise.
It only brought up argument to say anything about it. I adopted the same method here and there.

[keroro gunsou]

18. Noise canceling headphones

Bluetooth linked to a device with good music is my recommendation

[GreenWave]

8. And also fomenting others to commit hate crimes

[certainot]

4. i'll bet it's the same on 1500 radio stations. same with inflation and anything else the new

congress doesn't want to deal with. but they will stress biden's laptop etc

fox is a retailer, talk radio is the wholesaler of the alt reality and media matters can now use AI to start digitizing it and start figuring out fox and social media are not the primary media problem the US has

[Walleye]

13. They are now openly showing hostility toward democracy itself

It’s not even subtle

[IronLionZion]

5. A caravan is coming to invade America

gas prices! inflation! Dems are coming for your guns. Be afraid and angry at those damn democrats

So are foreigners stealing our jobs or does nobody want to work anymore?

[sop]

6. They need the time to attack SC Jack Smith.

[dutch777]

7. Sad you can't run on policy proposals...just fear mongering. Amazing 1/2 of US keeps falling for it

Slow learners I guess

[Boomerproud]

24. They believe in their righteousness. Never will they change.

[AllyCat]

9. Last night my step dad turned it on as we were leaving

They were crowing about $5/gallon gas still and JB “I did that” stickers on gas pumps being against the law. I mentioned we passed $2.98/gal on the way down and the stickers aren’t illegal, but defacement of private property.

Fox Noise interviewed woman gas station owner asking about what run ins with the law she was having. She said none. It’s a fine imposed by the franchise. They didn’t listen and kept calling it a law.

Stepdad didn’t listen either. He knows we hate Fox and turned it off until we were leaving.

[paleotn]

10. Propaganda arm of the GQP and should be treated as such in the White House press corp.

i.e. kicked to the curb. Take away their journalist status. Sure, a GQP admin would do the same to mainstream media outlets, but so what? They call anything but Fux News "fake news" anyway and wouldn't mind shutting them down a la Vlad Putin. I don't see why Dems even bother going on Fux News. It serves no real purpose. Reasoning with the cult leaves no perceptible impression on them. It's a waste of time.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

12. From Media Matters

Link to tweet

[roamer65]

14. ..plus gasoline dropped by 75 cents in Michigan one week after election.

Coincidence? I think not.

[marmar]

16. You know I was just thinking the same thing.

I was in Jamaica on vacation right after the election. Wednesday I stopped at the gas station I normally go to in Dearborn and the price was down 85 cents pg from my last fillup before vacation.

[roamer65]

17. Oil companies.

They should all be nationalized IMO.

[marmar]

15. Least surprising thing I'll read today.

[Zambero]

19. Kevin McCarthy fixed it

Nancy is stepping down. MAGAts will hereby chill, until new scare tactics can be drummed up and/or resurrected!

[Hortensis]

20. Phillip Bump of the WaPo's also written on this:

Beginning in late September Fox began talking about crime more than the baseline set in the first six months of 2022. It's climbed since. There's literally no obvious reason except politics. And that gas prices suddenly weren't as useful to talk about.

What’s the non-obvious reason Fox News is talking about crime more?
The network insists that its focus on crime is a function of crime, not of politics. Sure.

And regarding future Fox coverage:

House Republicans announce plans to produce content for Fox News

[kimbutgar]

21. I remember in 2014 it was Ebola Ebola ebola during the campaign season

After the repukes won no mention of Ebola again on Fox.

[greatauntoftriplets]

22. Figures.

No need for scare-mongering anymore.

[hay rick]

23. Surprise level zero.

[Trenzalore]

25. I wonder what replaced it

LGBTQ hate?

[RANDYWILDMAN]

26. What do you expect from a propaganda network

They only sell the drugs they are pushing and they are only pushing to get conservative/repubs elected to do their bidding. and then NONE of that matters and they jump back to how bad Hunter Biden is for the country


A sickening circular firing squad if I have ever seen one.

Before Fox, news was much tamer and that was a good thing

[Rhiannon12866]

27. From Media Matters a month ago:

Fox hosts turn crime into a political cudgel against Democrats - mediamatters4america

Fox News prime-time shows featured discussion of violent crime in more than 1 out of every 9 segments over the last few months, according to a Media Matters review. The network’s stars are telling their viewers that Democrats are to blame for rising crime as they seek to leverage the bogus narrative to help Republicans triumph in the midterm elections.

[Aussie105]

28. It's just directives from above.

Teleprompter writers follow the directive, talking heads read it out.

Trace it back and you will see you-know-who pulling the strings.

Too bad many people just suck it up. Short memories and no logical thinking skills are pre-requisite to be a Fox viewer.

Fox thinktank currently discussing the next topic - won't be guns unfortunately.