Fox News is a right-wing propaganda outlet that over the course of its history has manufactured numerous “scandals” in order to turn them into “news” for its audience’s consumption.
Recall that in April, Fox News had propaganda all set for publishing when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bussed some asylum-seekers to Washington, D.C., as part of his retribution for the Biden administration’s just decision to end use of Stephen Miller’s Title 42 policy. That gross stunt maybe didn’t turn out exactly how Abbott and Fox News envisioned, with some migrants expressing thanks for the free ride.
But a more recent manufactured scandal is one of the racist outlet’s most despicable yet. Media Matters reports that it aired 55 lies about baby formula and migrant infants in the span of one week. Nor is this even the first time that Fox News has pitted these children against U.S-born kids.
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“For the past week, Fox News has used photos and video of infant food supplies at border facilities to portray the Biden administration as caring more about migrants than American children,” Media Matters said in a May 15 report. “The network has aired at least 55 false or misleading claims suggesting federal officials are prioritizing migrant children and families in the midst of a baby formula shortage in the United States.”
The report notes that some of the culprits have been Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Fox and Friends, the latter of which has also openly trashed the right of undocumented children to a public school education. Brian Kilmeade in particular really can’t stand migrant children, complaining about them during segments in January 2022, and September and October of 2021. Kilmeade in 2018 also defended the insurrectionist administration’s family separation policy. “Like it or not, these are not our kids,” he said at the time.
Observers have noted that the federal government is legally required to provide nutrition to migrant children under its watch, but damn does it feel so fucking bleak that even has to be said. To decent people, it’s simply unfathomable to consider denying a child a bottle of formula or other food for any reason. Yet this is exactly what the right wing favors. When they publicly argued in favor of kidnapping children from their parents for the supposed “crime” of legally seeking asylum at the southern border (this is in fact legal immigration), they told us they favored child abuse. So believe them.
You should also believe Fox News when it promotes the racist replacement theory that has been used by numerous mass killers. In particular, Tucker Carlson has “amplified the idea that Democratic populations and others want to force demographic change through immigration,” The New York Times has reported.
“That’s the heart of the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, which is popular among white nationalists and was previously confined to the fringes of U.S. media. That racist trope motivated the likes of the mass shooters at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and an El Paso, Texas, Walmart and two New Zealand mosques in 2019,” Media Matters also reported. Yet Carlson is still on air, nor has Fox News taken any steps to disavow any of this messaging. It knows what it’s doing, and it knows what it’s doing when it targets these children.
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