Hunter Biden and ‘dirty’ New York: Fox News back
to basics after lawsuit
Network’s $787.5m settlement with Dominion over
election lies is barely mentioned as hosts pick up where they left off
Adam
Gabbatt
Adam
Gabbatt in New York
@adamgabbatt
Sat 22 Apr
2023 07.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/22/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-tucker-carlson
With Fox
News humbled into a $787.5m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over
election lies this week, it might be expected that the conservative TV
channel’s outspoken hosts would tone down the misinformation a bit, soften
their rhetoric – basically, just chill out.
None of
that has happened.
Instead Fox
News has continued just where it left off, serving viewers a largely imagined,
and utterly terrifying, version of the US: one where trans people are on the
warpath, where people in New York City are never more than 6ft from either a
rat or being murdered, and where the government is attempting to “send away”
Fox News viewers to an undefined but ominous sounding “camp”.
Just a normal
week, in other words, as America’s most-watched news channel mainly ignored the
Dominion lawsuit – brought after Fox News repeatedly aired untrue accusations
that the company’s voting machines had been manipulated to flip votes from
Donald Trump to Joe Biden – and got back to basics.
On Thursday
night Tucker Carlson, Fox News’s most performatively upset host, was churning
out the usual hits on his 8pm show, with Hunter Biden, “racial violence”, and
“transgenderists” to the fore.
“Say what
you will about elected Democrats but they know where the power is. They’re like
truffle pigs for power,” was how Carlson began his show. He then made a pig
noise, before accusing Joe Biden of attempting to subvert the course of justice
regarding an investigation into his son.
“This is
not a small story,” Carlson told his audience, seemingly implying that the
mainstream media had ignored it: except the story – that a whistleblower had
come forward accusing the Department of Justice of going easy on an
investigation into Hunter Biden’s finances – had been broken by CBS News, and
covered by ABC News, NBC News, the BBC, the Los Angeles Times and Associated
Press.
“What we’ve
learned here is exactly [what] you suspected all along: the Biden people are
criminals,” Carlson said.
Given none
of the “Biden people” have been convicted of any crimes, it was the kind of
statement a network just sued for defamation might have wanted to avoid, but
never mind, because soon Carlson was on to New York City, a favorite bugbear.
“New York
City has got a lot dirtier,” Carlson announced to the audience after an ad
break.
Dirtier
than what? Than where? Than who? We’ll never know, but it’s something to do
with Democrats, liberals and possibly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
We learned
that there are rats in New York City – the place where Fox News is
headquartered – and that the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, is a chump.
On Fox News
the viewer is never more than two minutes away from being warned about trans
people, and Thursday night was no different.
After
inviting on Tulsi Gabbard – a former Democratic congresswoman turned paid
rightwing media personality who has been such an ardent defender of Russia and
Vladimir Putin that Russian state TV has literally used her appearances as
pro-war propaganda – to have a go at trans people in the military, Carlson
later declared that trans people are “blowing stuff up”.
“They
detonated explosives at the University of Pittsburgh the other night, because
somebody said something they didn’t like. That’s what the transgender
movement’s up to this week,” Carlson said.
“There is
an enormous amount of transgender violence going on,” Carlson continued – news
which will come as a surprise to those who have seen crime against trans people
rise in recent years.
The story,
about activists in Pennsylvania protesting against an anti-trans speaker, was
wildly overblown – the “explosives” the students “detonated” consisted of a
firework and a smoke bomb, according to police – but you wouldn’t know it from
watching Carlson.
“These
people are low-IQ thug savages,” he announced.
In the days
following the Dominion settlement, Fox News has remained largely silent on its
own legal struggles. It reported the end of the lawsuit on its 6pm show on
Tuesday, but the channel’s media correspondent, Howard Kurtz, had been rather
coy about the details.
“The amount
of the settlement has not been disclosed,” Kurtz told viewers – a strange thing
to say, given the $787.5m settlement had been reported by almost every news
outlet in the US.
“For
Dominion, if it lost the case, it ends up with zero, and because of the first
amendment concerns […] that would’ve been a roll of the dice for the company
that argued that they had been defamed by Fox,” Kurtz added.
It raised
the question as to why Fox News paid Dominion the better part of a billion
dollars. The question was not answered.
Sean
Hannity, the silver-haired, box-faced, Carlson follow-up act, hasn’t mentioned
the massive settlement this week. His focus has been elsewhere.
“Coming up,
Kamala Harris giggles her way through another public appearance,” read a chyron
on his show on Thursday. The vice-president’s laugh has proved an enduring
fascination for Hannity, who has repeatedly devoted air time to Harris’s
chortling.
The Fox
News host had kicked things off with the customary 15 minutes on Hunter Biden’s
laptop, before bringing on Laura Ingraham, who hosts her Fox News show at 10pm.
Hannity has
been experimenting with hosting a live studio audience recently, and they gave
Ingraham a rapturous welcome – the cheers only dying down when she attempted to
toss an American football into the crowd and instead hit a spotlight.
Amid a
rambling speech which touched on Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and unnamed
“destroyers of democracy”, Ingraham turned to Hannity’s audience –
predominantly made up of white men with red faces – and gave a stark warning
about Democrats’ aims.
“Every one
of you sitting here tonight, if they could, I really believe they would shut
you down: whether put you in a camp or send you away somewhere so you’re never
heard from again,” Ingraham said.
Hannity
nodded in agreement.
“These are
the only normal people in the country,” he said, referring to the audience.
There was a chorus of lusty cheers.
For the
crowd, and the viewers at home, it was like a greatest hits show: because
that’s what Fox News does.
Every night
people are told that a revolving cast of Biden, Democrats, liberals, trans
people, Black Lives Matter activists, criminals, China and Hunter Biden are out
to get them.
Fox News,
and its executives, know what its audience want. They don’t want apologies
about allegedly defaming innocent companies. They want fire, and brimstone, and
Kamala Harris’s laugh.
On the
evidence so far, the Dominion lawsuit isn’t going to stop them getting it.
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