Fox News to cover Jan. 6 hearings ‘as news warrants,’ won’t air during primetime on main station
Fox News Media will relegate coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to secondary outlets including Fox Business Network and move forward with its regularly scheduled primetime programming Thursday, which includes shows featuring on-air personalities caught up in the investigation.
The right-wing media giant’s latest step to undermine the insurrection marks a new low for the conspiracy-pushing outlet, according to Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who sits on the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.
“If you work for Fox News and want to maintain your credibility as a journalist, now is a good time to speak out, or quit,” he wrote on Twitter Monday night. “Enough is enough.”
I didn't expect any less from the people who are banning books. Hide the truth if it disagrees with your narrative https://t.co/9gM1Aj9nwY
— Adam K (@KapusinHouse) June 7, 2022
Kinzinger previously called on Fox News employees to stand up to the network’s “disgusting” editorial practices in November when network star Tucker Carlson produced an absurd “documentary” alleging the attack on the Capitol was a ruse meant to “purge” the sort of right-wing fanatics aligned with Carlson’s extremist views. A pair of veteran Fox News contributors resigned their positions as the result of the 53-year-old provocateur’s antics.
Adding he “didn’t expect anything less” from Fox News, Kinzinger wrote, “Hide the truth if it disagrees with your narrative.”
Fox News announced in a statement Monday that anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum would cover the hearings live on Fox Business Network, which enjoys a fraction of Fox News Channel’s ratings. Fox News Channel plans to air an 11 p.m. recap of the hearings as interpreted by the network’s chief legal correspondent. Its subscription-based streaming platform will carry the hearings live as will Fox News Digital.
“Fox News Channel’s primetime programs will cover the hearings as news warrants,” the network stated.
The network has been heavily criticized for giving airtime to skeptics seeking to delegitimize President Biden’s electoral defeat of popular Fox News guest and former president Donald Trump. Two voting technology companies are suing the network for coverage suggesting their equipment may have been to blame for the 2020 vote count.
In addition to his “Patriot Purge” series, Carlson has continued to undermine the attack on the Capitol including a January episode of the highly viewed “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” where he allowed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to come on the program and beg forgiveness for implying Trump loyalists who participated in the insurrection were “terrorists.”
After letting Cruz grovel for a few minutes, Carlson told the senator, “I guess I just don’t believe you,” before they both agreed “the corporate media” was to blame for the term “terrorist” being used loosely.
Sean Hannity, whose show will air after Carlson’s Thursday, became a player in the Jan. 6 investigation when it was revealed that he’d been texting Trump’s team urging them to have the former president abort the assault on the Capitol. Laura Ingraham, whose Fox News show follows Hannity’s did the same, then went on air the night of the attack to suggest it was unclear who had stormed Congress to stop the certification of the election. Both hosts falsely said “Antifa” — a decentralized anti-fascism movement — may have been involved.
Fox News celebrates a quarter-century of ... whatever it is they’re doing over there
Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera told followers on Twitter that he probably wouldn’t have made the “ballsy” choice made by Fox News programmers, but said that between Fox’s multitude of platforms, viewers will not be cheated out of coverage surrounding the “profoundly disturbing insurrection that wrecked the United States Capitol building and stunned the nation.”
