Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, two of the anchors that Fox News holds up as shining examples of their “straight news” operation, are set to host the network’s special coverage starting on Sunday at 10 p.m. EDT of the Democratic National Convention. Throughout the major stories of the year so far, including the presidential election cycle, a global uprising against racism against Black people and police violence, and the uncertainty of a global pandemic that has taken millions of lives worldwide, they have repeatedly fallen short of many basic journalistic standards. They have fallen for viral hoaxes, repeated lies from the Trump administration, downplayed the threat of the pandemic, and aired other misinformation about the coronavirus on their respective shows.
Within the Fox News misinformation maelstrom, the role of Baier and MacCallum is to uphold the veil of integrity and respectability in order to protect the network from criticism of the blatantly racist state TV propaganda that comes from its extreme prime-time hosts. But they have failed to even do that -- their misleading programming often calls to the same pro-Trump misinformation pushed by the “opinion” side. This problem is long-standing: A 2019 Media Matters study showed that Fox’s “hard news” side pushed misinformation every day for four months.
This isn’t the first time during the 2020 election season the pair have been tapped to lead important election-related broadcast. Baier and MacCallum previously anchored a town hall with President Donald Trump in March, during which they lobbed softball questions at him, to which Trump responded with rambling, vague answers. As we wrote at the time: “The duo’s follow-up questions were tepid or essentially non-existent.”
Here’s a non-comprehensive list of examples of how these anchors have failed in their coverage of important stories that have defined 2020 thus far.
The coronavirus pandemic
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2/19/20: MacCallum hosted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on The Story and let him discuss a debunked conspiracy theory about the origins of the coronavirus with one light pushback.
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2/26/20: MacCallum appeared on the Outnumbered and, according to Mediaite, “bashed Democrats for saying the government needs more money to adequately prevent the coronavirus from spreading,” claiming, “On the Democrat side, the answer is always more money.”
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3/11/20: MacCallum interrupted Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-CA) criticism of Trump’s coronavirus lies, saying, “I'm not sure that's particularly helpful. … I just think it's very difficult to know where this thing is going, and I think that a lot of people say things on both sides that may not end up being true.”
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3/12/20: MacCallum and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer discussed Trump’s Oval Office speech about the pandemic. When Fleischer criticized Trump’s “lack of emotion,” MacCallum defended Trump, saying, “You're citing, maybe a failure among, I don't know, the speechwriter, or making sure it was run through several times before they went in there. This is only the second time he has done an Oval Office speech.”
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3/12/20: MacCallum chided Democrats for “finger-pointing” Trump’s error-filled Oval Office speech on the coronavirus response the night before: “The president's speech last night was not without errors, and that was not helpful, but finger-pointing doesn't fulfill what Americans need right now from their government.”
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3/13/20: MacCallum let Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) allege without any pushback that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was “putting in ... reformations to abortion laws and abortion practices” in the coronavirus relief bill as “a way to try to make Republicans and the president look like we don't support testing.”
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3/21/20: Bret Baier shared a tweet linking to a medium post full of misinformation about COVID-19, writing, “Really worth the time. … Most complete I have read to date.” Medium eventually took down the post but not before multiple Fox hosts shared it, helping it go viral. Baier later shared a thread that debunked the post, calling it a “strong counter-argument to the medium article — also worth the read.”
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4/15/20: As early as April, while the death toll from COVID-19 continued to rise, MacCallum was pushing for the country to reopen: “Opening the country back up is the key. That’s what will save these companies.” She also downplayed the risk posed by the virus, as Mediaite pointed out, by “arguing that the number of victims of the coronavirus could be less than those of the 2018 flu season.”
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5/12/20: After Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) attacked the White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci’s credibility during a Senate hearing, MacCallum asked the senator on May 12 if he thinks Fauci has “gotten puffed up or has too much attention or we’re leaning on him too much?”
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5/12/20: Baier characterized pushback against reopening states against recommended public health guidelines as a partisan issue, describing it as “a thought on the left that the president is ignoring their advice and just opening up everything and doing it dangerously.”
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5/22/20: Baier focused on “concerns” of media coverage of states reopening even though Fox News’ own polling reflected the public’s concern about reopening too quickly.
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7/15/20: MacCallum commented on football reopening debate in a segment with former football player Lou Holtz: “You know, you talk about the risk, I mean, there is risk in everything in life, right?” She later added, “I mean, I'm just shaking my head. It's like, you know, you look at it and you look at the risk to young people as you say and it is very minimal.”
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7/16/20: A Media Matters study found that MacCallum’s 7 p.m. show broadcast 20 instances of coronavirus misinformation in a five-day period. Baier’s show, Special Report, aired 13 instances of the coronavirus misinformation. MacCallum’s show, The Story, contained the most instances among all of Fox’s “straight news” programming, which overall accounted for 35% of the network’s misinformation in that timeframe.
