Media Matters weekly newsletter, September 27
Written by Jason Campbell
Published
Welcome back to Media Matters’ weekly newsletter. This week:
- Fox News buries the Mark Robinson story while Sean Hannity does cleanup for Donald Trump.
- Fox News does not have an independent decision desk.
- Violent crime has dropped. Inflation has plummeted from its peak. Oil and natural gas production is at record highs. Unauthorized border crossing in the Southwest has plummeted. Fox's response: Don't believe the data.
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![Newsmax: "CNN attempts to slander Robinson's gubernatorial campaign"](https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/styles/scale_w1024/s3/static/D8Image/2024/09/26/newsmxh_greg-kelly-reports_2024-09-23-09_00_00-pm-0.jpg?itok=qFFGzEFy)
This week in stupid
- Fox’s Greg Gutfeld said legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are a “scam.”
- Fox’s Maria Bartiromo on Kamala Harris: “A lot of people are worried … because of all of the laughing.”
This week in scary
- Greg Gutfeld called for the imprisonment of the January 6 committee.
- White nationalist Nick Fuentes described his dinner with Trump: “We had a pretty good rapport.”
- The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh: “The public school system itself needs to be abolished.”
- Trump ally Laura Loomer: “Why the hell should I care if an illegal alien starves?”
Excuse me?
- After the indictment of New York Mayor Eric Adams was unsealed, Fox News was forced to quickly change its tune from pushing conspiracy theories about retaliation from the Biden administration to admitting that the indictment laid out a seemingly damning case.
- Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts touted a decrease in weather-related deaths. The decrease is partially attributable to the NOAA, an agency Project 2025 wants to dismantle.
- The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles claimed that same-sex couples are not fit to raise a child.
- Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said not voting for Trump will lead to nationalized abortion rights.
![Mark Robinson with an image of Sean Hannity](https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/styles/scale_w1024/s3/static/D8Image/2024/09/24/fox_news_mark_robinson_hannity.png?itok=Ipd_9h47)
Citation Andrea Austria / Media Matters
Fox News is burying the bombshell CNN reporting that North Carolina’s GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson posted extremist rantings, including describing himself as a “black NAZI!,” on a porn website message board. Meanwhile, host Sean Hanity has found the story’s real victim — Donald Trump.
From September 19 through September 23, Fox covered the Robinson story for only 20 minutes, with 7 of those minutes airing on Monday’s Hannity, according to a Media Matters review. This is not that strange — Fox regularly ignores or downplays stories that reflect unfavorably on Republicans as the network seeks to return Trump to the White House.
During Hannity’s coverage of the story, he complained that “the media mob” and Democrats are unfairly trying to “smear” Trump by linking him to Robinson. It should be noted that Trump endorsed Robinson and compared him favorably to Martin Luther King Jr.
Meanwhile, Greg Kelly is carving out a niche for himself as the explicitly pro-Robinson host on Newsmax, imploring the nominee not to back out of the race.
![Bret Baier with a fox news logo](https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/styles/scale_w1024/s3/static/D8Image/2024/09/25/1.png?itok=jHQLrLCk)
Citation Andrea Austria / Media Matters
Fox News depicts the “decision desk” that calls elections for the network as an independent, data-driven body cordoned off from its right-wing propaganda machine. But the 2020 presidential election showed that this independence is a fiction: Top Fox executives are willing and able to overrule those calls if they think the results would anger Trump and Fox viewers.
With the entire right-wing apparatus — including Fox figures — framing any potential Trump loss in November as a result of fraud, that scenario could easily repeat this fall.
Media Matters’ Matt Gertz provides this insightful history on what happened with Fox’s decision desk in the 2020 election. I invite you to read through that here.
Fox is just a Trumpist propaganda outlet, not a legitimate news agency. During this election cycle, there are even fewer voices at Fox urging the network to behave responsibly.
![Fox News logo overlaying image of voting booth](https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/styles/scale_w1024/s3/static/D8Image/2024/06/07/fox-news-election.png?itok=Ox0EKVzX)
Citation Molly Butler / Media Matters
In recent weeks, multiple Fox personalities have been in denial of objective reality that under the Biden-Harris administration, especially in recent months, violent crime has declined, inflation is steadily declining, oil and natural gas production are at record highs, and unauthorized border crossings have plummeted.
On September 23, the FBI released its annual crime statistics estimates, which showed a 3% decline in violent crime nationwide. Nevertheless, Fox, which ran nearly 1,000 weekday segments on the bogus “migrant crime” narrative in just half of this year, has denied these statistics.
Likewise, multiple measures of inflation have plummeted since their mid-2022 peak. Fox, however, continues to cover inflation in a misleading manner, falsely claiming that it is currently at “record highs.”
The same pattern continues with energy production and unauthorized border crossings. In both cases, Fox is telling its audience the exact opposite of objective reality.
The lies and misinformation Fox spews not only push false narratives to the network’s viewers — they also construct a completely separate alternative reality. It’s a place where up is down, down is up, and facts are irrelevant. In an election year, the danger of this fake reality is even more extreme.
In case you missed it
- On Thursday, Newsmax and Smartmatic reached a settlement in Smartmatic’s defamation suit against the rabidly pro-Trump outlet. Media Matters compiled this great piece laying out some of the conspiracy theories Newsmax told about Smartmatic.
- In the past month, right-wing media and the Trump campaign have pushed smears against immigrants in Alabama, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, claiming they are abducting and eating pets, invading local communities, and taking over American cities. City and state officials have debunked these rumors.
- TikTok is serving users blatant misinformation about Haitian immigrants.
- Maria Bartiromo’s Fox show made false claims about Kamala Harris, echoing MAGA extremists.
- Media Matters’ Matt Gertz has this great piece on why we need to take Trumpist threats to jail journalists seriously.
- Trump ally Laura Loomer bragged that Trump promised to endorse her for Congress and tried to hire her last year.
- Media Matters compiled this fantastic list of the hoaxes that right-wing media have been spreading during the 2024 election (so far).
- A week after Trump proposed restricting food imports when asked how he’d lower the cost of food and groceries, many major newspapers, newswires, and broadcast news programs continue to ignore his proposal, which would lead to higher food prices for American consumers.
- Trump surrogate and JD Vance debate adviser Monica Crowley is already alleging Pennsylvania is stealing the election.
- Fox host Vivek Ramaswamy pushed an antisemitic trop against Alex Soros.