During Monday’s The Kelly File on the Fox News Channel (FNC), host Megyn Kelly and The Five co-host Dana Perino excoriated the liberal media for committing a double standard in their portrayal of the tea party compared to the Black Lives Matter movement.
After Perino explained that “leaders in the media” need to come together and more appropriately describe the makeup of Black Lives Matter, Kelly interjected that she couldn’t recall anyone in the media refuting the assertion by Democrats that the tea party was “perceived as racist” and “nuts” who need “to be denounced.”
Kelly continued that point by blasting the media for allowing the Black Lives Matter movement to “get away with” making threatening statements toward police officers “because they’re afraid of being racist”:
I don’t remember anybody saying, when the tea party, you had a couple people came out and say something that was perceived as racist and the Democrats went nuts asking for the tea party to be denounced, denouncing the entire group as racist or what have you, but now, this. This like – well, it’s just a couple people who said something in a chant and the media lets them get away with that because they're afraid of being accused of being racist and being against black lives.
Perino then connected the present situation to an instance in the 2008 presidential election in which a few McCain supporters “said something incendiary” that the candidate refuted, but was still lambasted as being supported by “angry white people.”
With the case of the Black Lives Matter movement, Perino explained that it’s “the flip side” as “a lot of leaders have hoped that this movement would fizzle out, that it would go away with the summer, but it’s really been sustained since the Trayvon Martin hearing.”
In reference to video where Black Lives Matter protesters in Minnesota suggested that police are “pigs in a blanket” who should be “fr[ied] like bacon,” Kelly wondered aloud why “should we [in the media] be listening” to activists like that:
But what are the media supposed to do? I mean, you're supposed to put on somebody from the black lives matter movement to represent their side of the story and you treat somebody who is out there saying, “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon.” as a serious person whose names we need to consider and ponder and fold into policy, why should we be listening to someone who speaks like that?
(h/t: Brent Baker)
The relevant portion of the transcript from FNC’s The Kelly File on August 31 is transcribed below.
FNC’s The Kelly File
August 31, 2015
9:27 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Breaking Tonight; Black Lives Matter and the Media]
DANA PERINO: We're being told by your previous guest, Mark Hannah, don't listen to the rhetoric. They’re just out there – they have a right to protest. Well, we get that. When you start piecing together as law enforcement is supposed to do, what are the common threads and what will we do to get ahead of it? You need all people who work together so that’s law enforcement, the media, in particular, leaders in the media and also, there’s a social media component that I don't think we fully understand.
MEGYN KELLY: How – I don’t remember anybody saying, when the tea party, you had a couple people came out and say something that was perceived as racist and the Democrats went nuts asking for the tea party to be denounced, denouncing the entire group as racist or what have you, but now, this. This like – well, it’s just a couple people who said something in a chant and the media lets them get away with that because they're afraid of being accused of being racist and being against black lives.
PERINO: Remember also that during John McCain's presidential campaign, that somebody said something incendiary and McCain called him out on that, but that followed his campaign throughout and that really was the media viewing it, saying, oh, “white angry people are supporting John McCain” and even though he condemned it, they – the media still tagged him with that. Now, you see it’s like the flip side. In a way, I think that a lot of leaders have hoped that this movement would fizzle out, that it would go away with the summer, but it’s really been sustained since the Trayvon Martin hearing. It wasn’t just Michael Brown.
KELLY: But what are the media supposed to do? I mean, you're supposed to put on somebody from the black lives matter movement to represent their side of the story and you treat somebody who is out there saying, “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon.” as a serious person whose names we need to consider and ponder and fold into policy, why should we be listening to someone who speaks like that?
PERINO: That’s right. I do think they have to be delegitimized. You got the DNC to issue a resolution, you rejected it, you don't have a specific grievance and what they’re actually doing – so they basically want revolution, but what – they are hurting the very communities that they say they want to help because as police officers, if they feel like they need to pull back and I'm not saying that they would do so consciously, but if you are worried about yourself and your family and let's say you're a young recruit. You're deciding, “do I really want to spend my life as an officer?”
