On her 9:00 a.m. ET hour show on Friday, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle kept up her network’s effort to actually blame competitor Fox News for the spread of coronavirus across the country. She and her guests repeatedly suggested that Fox was providing “misinformation” that would “put people’s lives in danger.”
“The truth matters, but only if you hear it. And at a time when Americans are holding on to any piece of information they can get about the coronavirus, misinformation is more dangerous than ever,” Ruhle proclaimed at the top of the segment. She then announced the guilty party: “And it appears that even the most prominent voices in some media, I’m gonna call it Fox, they ain’t realizing it.”
The only supposed evidence the anchor presented to prove her assertion came in the form of two quotes from Fox News host Sean Hannity, neither of which were examples of “misinformation”:
SEAN HANNITY [MARCH 9]: We’ve got to be very real with the American people. I don’t like how we are scaring people unnecessarily. And that is that unless you have an immune system that’s compromised and you are older and you have other underlying health issues, you are not going to die, 99%, from this virus, correct?
HANNITY: [MARCH 31]: Hospitals around the country, they are now being stretched dangerously thin. Protective medical supplies, we are getting reports, are running low in areas. One big concern is more people, younger people, are being impacted.
“Between March 9th and March 31st, many Americans kept going on about their normal lives and the number of confirmed cases across the country rose by more than 185,000,” Ruhle then declared, as if the soundbites and that statistic were directly related somehow.
Turning to her guests, the host was “relieved” to talk to liberal tech journalist and Recode executive editor Kara Swisher, who “called Fox News out” in a recent New York Times op/ed “for their coronavirus coverage.”
Despite the column in question being titled “Fox’s Fake News Contagion,” Swisher asserted: “Well, I wasn’t writing about Fox per se, it was my mom and the information she was getting.” She described how worried she was about her elderly mother being a regular Fox News viewer:
...she had a lot of information that just was terrible, including that it was just like the flu and that she could go out and that there was no problem and that it was a Democratic talking point to score political points. You know, it was all kinds of really bad information. And I realized it was a lot of stuff that was being said on Fox News and she was just parroting it. And I think a lot of people who have elderly parents have this issue. And so it was – so I wrote about it.
Swisher went on to proudly tout: “And so, I just wrote about that and then, you know, Sean Hannity on Fox, sort of his head blew off just because I pointed out the obvious. That they’re news consumers of Fox and they let these people down.”
Hannity hammered her Twitter, defending his coverage and pointing out some pretty questionable coronavirus coverage in the Times itself.
Also part of the MSNBC discussion was NBC News senior media reporter Dylan Byers, who eagerly praised Swisher and piled on Fox:
Well, first of all, I want to say, Kara’s article or Kara’s column got right sort right to the crux of this issue, which is that you have the primary source of misinformation about this health crisis, at least up until recently, coming from a news outlet that’s target audience is the most vulnerable group of people to that disease, or to that pandemic. And it’s sort of this perfect storm where you have this entire community that over several years, predating Trump, but certainly with Trump’s presidency, has been taught not to trust the mainstream media. And so you get to this sort of crazy, perfect storm where all of a sudden, the very people who are most vulnerable to this disease are simultaneously being given the worst information about it.
Ironically, in the segment immediately preceding the attacks on Fox, Ruhle denounced Florida Senator Marco Rubio for daring to criticize those in the media who spread Chinese propaganda about the pandemic, claiming it was assault on journalism.
MSNBC has made a habit out of using the global health crisis to accuse Fox News of “misinformation” and trying to “politicize” the emergency.
Here is a transcript of the April 3 discussion:
9:46 AM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: The truth matters, but only if you hear it. And at a time when Americans are holding on to any piece of information they can get about the coronavirus, misinformation is more dangerous than ever. And it appears that even the most prominent voices in some media, I’m gonna call it Fox, they ain’t realizing it.
SEAN HANNITY [MARCH 9]: We’ve got to be very real with the American people. I don’t like how we are scaring people unnecessarily. And that is that unless you have an immune system that’s compromised and you are older and you have other underlying health issues, you are not going to die, 99%, from this virus, correct?
HANNITY: [MARCH 31]: Hospitals around the country, they are now being stretched dangerously thin. Protective medical supplies, we are getting reports, are running low in areas. One big concern is more people, younger people, are being impacted.
RUHLE: But was that changing tone too little, too late? Between March 9th and March 31st, many Americans kept going on about their normal lives and the number of confirmed cases across the country rose by more than 185,000.
Joining me now to discuss, Kara Swisher, co-founder and executive editor of Recode. And Dylan Byers, NBC News senior media reporter. Kara, I am so happy to be – not happy – I’m relieved to be talking about this with you because all week long you’ve been discussing it. You and I both share moms who watch Fox News.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah.
RUHLE: And you’ve called Fox News out and you’ve gotten a major response in the op-ed that you wrote calling them out for their coronavirus coverage. Tell us more about it.
SWISHER: Yeah. Well, I wasn’t writing about Fox per se, it was my mom and the information she was getting. She’s in Florida right now and thankfully they had the shutdown there finally, the official shutdown. But she was getting – early in the – in March, she – in February, she had a lot of information that just was terrible, including that it was just like the flu and that she could go out and that there was no problem and that it was a Democratic talking point to score political points. You know, it was all kinds of really bad information. And I realized it was a lot of stuff that was being said on Fox News and she was just parroting it. And I think a lot of people who have elderly parents have this issue. And so it was – so I wrote about it.
And it was me and my brother, who’s a doctor on the front lines in San Francisco, in hospitals, were trying to get her good information. And it took a while to get her to, like, stay inside and to do stuff. And so, I just wrote about that and then, you know, Sean Hannity on Fox, sort of his head blew off just because I pointed out the obvious. That they’re news consumers of Fox and they let these people down. And my mom’s a big fan, she’ll keep watching it. You know, everyone can watch whatever they want, but I would like them to have good health information, especially across the network. And there was good information, Tucker Carlson certainly was sounding the alarm, but that was very few and far between at the network.
RUHLE: Dylan, what is your reaction to what we’ve seen from Fox News and others? It wasn’t long ago Rush Limbaugh said this thing’s the common cold.
DYLAN BYERS: Right. Well, first of all, I want to say, Kara’s article or Kara’s column got right sort right to the crux of this issue, which is that you have the primary source of misinformation about this health crisis, at least up until recently, coming from a news outlet that’s target audience is the most vulnerable group of people to that disease, or to that pandemic. And it’s sort of this perfect storm where you have this entire community that over several years, predating Trump, but certainly with Trump’s presidency, has been taught not to trust the mainstream media. And so you get to this sort of crazy, perfect storm where all of a sudden, the very people who are most vulnerable to this disease are simultaneously being given the worst information about it. And on top of that, have built up this sort bulwark, this psychological bulwark against trusting anything else. Obviously that has changed recently. And as Kara said in her column, you know, it should be a really low bar to expect factual information about a health pandemic.
I want to just add one point about, you know, Tucker Carlson has been a source of accurate news and has been calling for greater steps to be taken. That’s fine. It’s just there have been so many times where Fox News will take the misinformation on one side and they will point to someone else on the network and say, “Well, this guy is saying something else and we value the diversity of opinions.” When you’re talking about facts, when you’re talking about things that put people’s lives in danger, it is not enough to have some hosts saying one thing and another host saying another thing. It is the network’s responsibility to have a sort of holistic, blanket approach to how they deal with that information.
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