This morning on Fox & Friends, Gretchen Carlson told Rudy Giuliani that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano -- whom she had interviewed shortly before -- “refuses” to call the recent attempted car bombing in New York City “terror.” Carlson wondered whether it's a “mandate” within the Obama administration to not use the word “terror.”
Huh? The moment Carlson said this, words appeared on-screen that said, “Times Square Car Bomb...Napolitano: A 'Potential Terror Attack'”:
To be fair to Carlson, Napolitano called it a “potential terrorist attack” on CNN's morning show the previous day, not during their interview. To be fair to Napolitano, she absolutely did not “refuse” to call it terror. She repeatedly told Fox & Friends she would “not rule out” terrorism, but suggested she would not define it as such “until we know the perpetrators, the people -- person or persons who were responsible,” because “you don't know the derivation, you don't know their intent.”
Normally, we'd call this a Fox News chyron fail, but in this case, the chyron's right and Carlson is wrong. This is just the latest example of the extreme dissonance that runs rampant at Fox News.