Even we thought that Fox wouldn’t bury the news of Mike Pence’s refusal to support Donald Trump. We were wrong.
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With the public’s distrust of the press at an all-time high, it is important for news organizations to admit when they are wrong. And we mean really wrong, not like that time this weekend when media outlets accurately covered the news that Donald Trump insinuated there would be “bloodshed” if he does not get reelected.
Sure, the former president and his allies suggested that his remarks were meant only for the auto industry, but he has used this kind of violent rhetoric many times in the past, and a direct quote of his remarks showed that he was not just talking about car manufacturers.
So either Trump owns up to his words, acknowledges that he is getting senile and doesn’t know what he is talking about, or stops doing rallies where non-MAGA cultists can hear him speak. But covering what he says and quoting his own words do not merit an apology.
But this article isn’t about that.
There is something WhoWhatWhy got wrong in the past few days, and for that we want to apologize to our readers.
On Friday, in an interview with Fox News, former Vice President Mike Pence said he would not support his former boss this time around. As understandable as that is in light of Trump troops asking for Pence to be strung up on January 6, it is still a big, huge deal for him to make that statement — especially with so many others bowing to the former president purely out of fear.
If, for example, current VP Kamala Harris were to disavow President Joe Biden and leave the Democratic ticket, it would be one of the biggest political stories of the past few years.
In any case, in covering Pence’s announcement, we pointed out that the right-wing propaganda machine would usually insulate its audience from any news reflecting poorly on Trump.
This is all true, of course. Then, however, we made our big mistake by adding: “In this case, however, that is not possible because Pence made his announcement on Fox News, which will therefore also undoubtedly earn the (temporary) ire of Trump and his supporters.”
In retrospect, that was naive and foolish of us.
As it turns out, the one time Fox News lived up to its name and generated, well, actual news, it then went on to bury it!
According to an analysis by the left-wing watchdog Media Matters, of the three major cable networks, Fox is the one that barely covered its own scoop.
From the time of Pence’s announcement through Monday, CNN had dedicated 1 hour and 19 minutes to the topic, which seems very low for news of this magnitude. Similarly, MSNBC had spent 1 hour and 14 minutes on this story.
And Fox?
Four minutes!
That’s right, after getting a genuine scoop of significance, the network then went on to make sure its audience would hear nothing about it.
In retrospect, maybe we should have anticipated this since Fox is fully on Team Trump again.
Our bad!
