In a Tuesday piece for Salon, Stanford comparative-literature professor David Palumbo-Liu alleged that Fox News “surely planned to furnish [accused Charleston mass-murderer Dylann] Roof with an alibi regarding the exact nature of his heinous crime,” and declared that “if Roof is convicted I suggest we regard Fox as an accessory after the fact.”
Palumbo-Liu also claimed that Fox News “provides a support system for hatred” to politicians and organizations unaffiliated with FNC and dubbed “this mutual support system that radiates out from the cesspool of Fox News the ‘Larger Fox Network.’”
From Palumbo-Liu’s piece (bolding added):
[T]here is no doubt at all that for its commentary on this horrific, hate-filled crime Fox News should be indicted in the court of public opinion…The network surely was conscious of what it was doing in aiding and abetting; it surely planned to furnish [Dylann] Roof with an alibi regarding the exact nature of his heinous crime.
Indeed, if Roof is convicted I suggest we regard Fox as an accessory after the fact: someone who assists another 1) who has committed a felony, 2) after the person has committed the felony, 3) with knowledge that the person committed the felony, and 4) with the intent to help the person avoid arrest or punishment. An accessory after the fact may be held liable for, inter alia, obstruction of justice.
…This is a classic example of sensationalistic yellow journalism. And it’s worse, because it is also ideologically driven and it perpetuates a racist ideology.
How else could Steve Doocy opine on Fox News that it was “extraordinary” that the Charleston church shooting was called a hate crime? How else can Fox wonder if it had a racial element to it when Roof is on record as saying during the shooting that he wanted to kill black people because they are “taking over”?...
Fox provides a support system for hatred, and in this instance its collaborators include people like Rick Santorum, who in a craven act of opportunism turns a racist attack into an attack on…his political base, the religious right; Lindsey Graham, who argues the same and defends flying the Confederate flag as a sign of Southern pride and defiance; Rick Perry, who called the shooting an “accident”… and those in the NRA who make this about their cause, the right to own arms…I would call this mutual support system that radiates out from the cesspool of Fox News the “Larger Fox Network”…
…[A]fter this “story cycle” wanes, what will be the lasting effect? Make no mistake, the Larger Fox Network will still be intact, still spewing its garbage and hatred. We need to do something about that.
As one part of the response I would look to our schools — they are one of our last institutions wherein racism can be exposed in all its forms, critiqued, and fought against…
…[I]n 2012, CNN ran a story titled “Has ‘whiteness studies’ run its course in colleges?” The question was prompted by the fact of Obama’s election and what that supposedly signaled: a “post-racial” era. But its conclusion is what is most interesting now, as we contemplate Charleston, McKinney, Texas, and Ferguson, Missouri, and all the other recent manifestations of virulent racism:
Some believe the idea of racism is shifting entirely. A 2008 poll by USA Today/Gallup and showed that 40% of adults in America think racism against white people is widespread in the United States. A study published last year said that bias against whites is a bigger problem than bias against blacks.
The mass murders at Charleston, and certainly what happened in McKinney, show that this skewed reasoning is on the rise, and the Larger Fox Network is doing all it can to profit from this. And this means that we need to develop a strong and consolidated set of strategies to fight it. Besides strengthening anti-racist education, we need to turn to the rest of the media, outside Fox and its ilk.
