FOX Newscorp has a history of defending itself against claims that it distorts the truth and manipulates the news by claiming that it merely 'spins' what is perfectly interpretable political motivations and motivations behind legislation.
In particular, they have in the past claimed that what they do is merely 'reflect and report' on one of multiple ways to look at legal questions - and that they merely reflect a culture that looks for shortcuts and encapsulated ways of looking at complex problems.
Terms such as 'death panels' and 'Muslim brotheerhood' are purely hyperbole - not meant to be taken literally.
Except...
When Hallie Jean Mayes Knauss Culpepper, an elderly woman with health problems, fell in her home, a situation requiring medical intervention, she refused to go to the hospital - citing her fear of medical 'death panels' that might choose to mark her for euthanasia - and her refusal to see any of her health benefits turned over to "Obama and his Muslim Brotherhood". Instead, she refused all pleas for her to seek medical intervention - and died several days after her fall.
Woman Dies Over Fear of Death Panels
I am not sure what to make of this tragedy. Some will cruelly argue that she deserved what happened to her - that one should not make medical decisions based on media information.
Others will likely place the blame squarely on FOX Newcorp - a position I think goes too far in the other direction. While I believe they are complicit, I cannot see them as entirely responsible.
This paragraph says it all:
Don't write this woman off as some ignorant back-country hick. She clearly wasn't. She owned a company at one time. She paid attention to events and politics in the news, or at least, in the news as she understood it. She, like most of her neighbors, voted Republican. But until Fox News came along, Republicans weren't stupid. They had different philosophies about government and its role, but they weren't blatantly invested in advancing a lie-based ideology until Fox News came along.
And in that highlighted phrase lies the truth of the matter - and FOX's culpability in the death of an innocent person who relied on their 'reporting' as fact and their 'spin' as truth.