The revelation that Fox News Channel personalities sent text messages to the White House during the Jan. 6 riots is another example of how the network’s stars sought to influence then-President Donald Trump instead of simply reporting or commenting on him.
Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade all texted advice to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as a mob of pro-Donald Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, vice chair of the congressional committee probing the riot.
“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” texted Ingraham, host of “The Ingraham Angle.” “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
“Please get him on TV,” texted Kilmeade, a “Fox & Friends” host. “Destroying everything you have accomplished.”
Hannity, like Ingraham a prime-time host, wondered whether Trump could give a statement and ask people to leave the Capitol.
Cheney’s release of the text messages late Monday came a day after the most prominent hard-news journalist at Fox, Chris Wallace, announced he was leaving after 18 years for a new job at CNN. Wallace had grown privately frustrated by Fox’s amplification of its conservative opinion hosts, particularly since the network’s ratings took a brief dive following the election of President Joe Biden.
The network had no immediate comment Tuesday about the texts.
For journalists, the ethical lines are clear: Your job is to report the news, not try to influence the actions of newsmakers.
Fox has always tried to distinguish between “news” and “opinion” programming, even though those lines are often nonexistent and many viewers don’t make the same distinctions. The network considers Hannity, Ingraham and Kilmeade hosts of opinion shows. Fox has argued in court that its prime-time hosts can’t be held to the same factual standards as actual journalists.
It’s not the first time Fox personalities acted as sort of a kitchen cabinet to Trump. Hannity frequently consulted with him during his presidency, and Tucker Carlson once asked for and received a meeting with Trump to talk about COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic.
“I don’t consider them in the traditional definition of a journalist,” said Aly Colon, a professor of media ethics at Washington and Lee University. “But even so, they are representative of a news operation at Fox.”
Their actions leave questions about whether their loyalty was to Trump or to viewers, who expect to learn about the news from them or at least get news analysis, Colon said.
While CNN and MSNBC provided live coverage of the Monday night hearing in which Cheney revealed the text messages, Fox did not. Hannity interviewed Meadows but did not ask about the advice he and his colleagues sent. At the outset of his show, he bashed the committee’s work.
“We’ve been telling you that this is a waste of your time and money,” Hannity said. “They have a predetermined outcome.”
Not everyone thinks what the Fox hosts did was wrong, including a consultant who ran Fox’s news operation for eight years during the 2000s.
“I do think it was helpful to have them, or anyone else who had influence or potential influence over the president, tell him what needed to be done,” said Michael Clemente, a former executive vice president at Fox News.
At a point of national crisis, that’s more important than the objectivity rules that most journalists are bound by, he argued.
“Texting the chief of staff to urge him to tell the president to call for an end to rioting is a good thing,” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. “But, ideally, journalists shouldn’t be texting political advice to the White House.”
Graham said he didn’t think the news will be a bombshell to Fox viewers. “It shows Fox being anti-riot, so they will be heartened by that,” he said.
On the night of the riot, Ingraham told Fox viewers that the Capitol had been attacked “by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement.” She raised the idea that anti-fascist demonstrators may have been sprinkled through the crowd — which wasn’t true.
She complained about the “continual video loop” of the Capitol breach. She said the demonstration was “99% peaceful,” but “because of a small contingent of loons, these patriots have been unfairly maligned.”
Hannity, on his show that night, condemned violence at the Capitol. He also spent considerable time talking about the “train wreck” presidential election and the failure of Democrats to condemn “violent far left riots” in American cities in the summer of 2020.
Some critics said they saw a disconnect between what the Fox personalities said publicly and texted privately.
“So you are telling me all these Fox News hosts knew the coup was terrible, begged Trump to stop it, and when he didn’t they kept on promoting him?” tweeted Amanda Carpenter, a columnist for The Bulwark, a political website dominated by conservatives who oppose Trump.
On their shows Tuesday, both Hannity and Ingraham argued that there was no difference between what they said publicly on Jan. 6 and what they texted Meadows.
“Both publicly and privately, I said what I believe — that the breach of the Capitol was a terrible thing,” Ingraham said.
Hannity complained about Cheney publicizing his text.
“Do we believe in privacy in this country?” he said. “Apparently not.”
(AP)
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8 Responses
Missing from all the coverage of this so-called “bombshell” is the simple fact that Trump took all the advice he was getting. Everyone was telling him that even though he had done nothing to cause the violence, and there was no reason to think the violent people would listen to him if he called on them to stop, he had to do so anyway, so as to make it clear that he didn’t support the violence. SO HE DID EXACTLY THAT. At 4:00 he made a video statement telling the protesters they’d made their point but there couldn’t be violence, there had to be law and order, and now it was time to go home.
By the way, all this proves beyond all doubt — as if any proof was ever needed — that he had no hand in the violence, did not intend there to be violence, and that the lunatic paranoid fantasy the Democrats have been ranting about, that this was some sort of coup attempt by him, is a complete blood libel.
Antifa, on the other hand, which the Democrats including Kamala Harris openly supported and aided, is explicitly in rebellion against the USA. They say so openly. Nothing says “insurrection” like declaring “autonomous zones”. Harris ought to be tried for her part in that.
If liberal commentators had appealed to the president to call on rioters to go home, they would have been hailed as champions of democracy. Yet when right wing commentators do the same thing they are being unethical?
It seems to me as if the Fox commentators were doing the right thing.
This is by far the most nonsensical garbage irrelevant piece of junk news I’ve ever read. YWN, you have no filter?
The idea that exting the White House is somehow problematic is based on a myth, i.e., that newscasters are (or should be) tzaddikim that abide by some sort of ethical standard.
Years ago, there was a veneer that put a halo of “objectivity” on them. Today, there is no more veneer. They all have overt agendas. Fortunately, the agendas of these Fox personalities are ones that we often support.
I’m baffled about what the issue is here. Right wing media figures texted the presidents chief of staff their idea of how the president could and should stop a crime that was going on and they are being criticized?????
If anything it makes me support them even more. Instead of just being media airheads pontificating about how wrong what’s going on is they acted proactively to stop the violence.
Whatever . The January 6th commission and liberal media is so full of hate they lost the ability to think straight.
Why wouldn’t these “cabinet members” be involved??
They have been shamed for their hypocrisy and were completely silent for the first 24 hours after the revelation.
So a president has to be told and begged to try and stop a riot he encouraged? He did nothing for 3 hours while people were killed and beaten.
Millhouse says the President took their advice (a whole bunch of hours later…) as if that exonerates Trump. You would think if all these people can give this advice, the President who was watching TV and saw what was going on should have been able to figure out on his own what to do… Also, the President is sworn to defend the constitution and not trying to stop such an attack on the US Capitol might just be dereliction of duty.
RT lies and lies and lies again.
1. Trump never encouraged any riot. He had no reason to believe that it had anything to do with him, or that a statement from him could help matters. He did it in the end because he was advised that it was politically necessary, to prevent people from blaming him. And in the end we see that it didn’t help, because the liars who would blame him are blaming him anyway.
2. Nobody was killed. NOBODY. The only murder was OF one of the so-called “rioters”, by a black Capitol cop. The whole idea that they were killing people was a BLOOD LIBEL, and RT shamelessly repeats it.