On Sunday's episode of CNN's Reliable Sources, host Brian Stelter in his typical smug patronizing fashion ridiculed Fox News for their in-depth coverage of the rising crime in American cities.
Stelter ran a series of banners that Fox News ran on air to get through to their audience how much crime has skyrocketed within the past year. The hyperbolic CNN host described the headlines while they were running along the screen:
These are just some examples of the banners on Fox News in the past few days. You get the sense that America’s gone to hell, declining quality of life, America as a apocalyptic hellscape, that was one of the actual banners. This is a narrative that's both anti-Biden, it’s also anti-Democrats who run urban areas and it goes on and on every hour. I just wanted to give a sampling. Biden administration’s a clown car driving off a cliff.
He then made that laughable claim "the kind of incendiary rhetoric that you would’ve never seen from another channel let’s say during the Trump years or now during the Biden years."
Next came Stelter's sidekick Oliver Darcy who claimed Fox News executives are hypocrites for planning on holding two events in New York City and Los Angeles after they covered crime in major cities.
As if that wasn't bizarre enough, Darcy compared Fox's coverage of crime to an Instagram filter claiming "you start with a real image and then you take the filter and you pump it up 1,000% and what you're left with is distorted. It no longer reflects a reality. It started as an accurate portrayal of something but the end result is totally different, it’s no longer an accurate portrayal of reality and I think that's what Fox's coverage with crime really is."
Next up, was Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell who accused Fox News of wanting "to freak people out, to cause them to live in fear." She then implied that Fox is fear-mongering "about the things that are not actually mortal threats and then there’s ignoring the things that are mortal threats." Rampell subsequently accused Fox of saying Covid and climate change aren't real.
This segment of Brian Stelter mocking a rival news channel's coverage of rising crime was brought to you by Prevagen and Vicks. Their information is linked so you can let them know about the biased news they fund.
To read the relevant transcript of this segment click "expand":
CNN’s Reliable Sources
1/23/2022
11:08:01 AM
BRIAN STELTER: Let’s take a look at the imagined drama that Fox News presents every day. Let's cue the scroll. These are just some examples of the banners on Fox News in the past few days. You get the sense that America’s gone to hell, declining quality of life, America as a apocalyptic hellscape, that was one of the actual banners. This is a narrative that's both anti-Biden, it’s also anti-Democrats who run urban areas and it goes on and on every hour. I just wanted to give a sampling. Biden administration’s a clown car driving off a cliff. That's a great example of the kind of incendiary rhetoric that you would’ve never seen from another channel let’s say during the Trump years or now during the Biden years, etc. Oliver, you wrote about this in our newsletter this week, it felt like Fox went up another notch this week when it came to how they described crime and, yes, there is a crime problem, but the way it's described on Fox, you’d be afraid to leave your house.
OLIVER DARCY: Yeah, two points, Brian, one, as Fox is describing these cities as apocalyptic hellscapes their executives this week decided they announced that they’re going to be holding two major events one in New York City and one in Los Angeles over the next few months.
STELTER: Right
DARCY: So that's one. The executives obviously don't believe what they're selling to their audience. And two is, like you said, there is a cornel of truth to what they're saying.
STELTER: There always is.
DARCY: Violent crime is on the rise. I kind of think of it as like.
STELTER: By some metrics, in some ways. There are also very scary specific stories that get a lot of attention.
DARCY: It–I kind of think of it as a Instagram filter Brian, you know you start with a real image and then you take the filter and you pump it up 1,000% and what you're left with is distorted. It no longer reflects a reality. It started as an accurate portrayal of something but the end result is totally different, it’s no longer an accurate portrayal of reality and I think that's what Fox's coverage with crime really is. yes, there is an issue in some places, but what they're presenting to viewers is not accurate.
STELTER: Instagram filter, that’s gonna stay with me. That's the perfect way to describe it. And then Catherine, when we talk about polls showing most Americans think the country is on the wrong track, when we talk about polls showing most Americans are filled with doom and gloom, we need to link it back to the media coverage.
CATHERINE RAMPELL: Obviously they're getting that messaging from the media that they consume. I mean that set of headlines that you just scrolled through, I could feel my blood pressure rising.
STELTER: Could you? We should’ve all worn measurements to tell.
[Crosstalk]
RAMPELL: I know! But that's the goal, right? The goal of this kind of coverage is to freak people out, to cause them to live in fear. Ironically a lot of the fear-mongering is about the things that are not actually mortal threats and then there’s ignoring the things that are mortal threats, you know, Covid isn't real and climate change isn't real. I would argue that to me anyway those things are a little bit scarier or have been scarier at various points in the past couple of years.
STELTER: Right?
RAMPELL: And instead it's about the immigrant hoards and the senile President and Critical Race Theory brainwashing your kids, and things that are you know, if not just exaggerated invented out of whole cloth.
STELTER: Catherine and Oliver. Thank you both.
