Fox’s false report and attempted coverup of its article about the return of a fallen soldier’s body perfectly exemplifies what’s wrong with Fox “News” and the need to call out its dishonest, disreputable and unethical practices.
I wrote on Crooks and Liars last week about Fox’s false report that the family of Sgt. Nicole L. Gee was forced to pay $60,000 to ship her body home after she was killed in Afghanistan:
It’s pretty obvious Fox News “reporter” Michael Lee either hid the truth or never bothered to do any actual reporting when he dutifully took down the comments of GOP Congressman Cory Mills and came up with the false headline, “’Family forced to pay to ship body of Marine killed after Pentagon policy change; ‘Egregious injustice.’”
In reality, the family never paid to ship the body of Sgt. Nicole L. Gee.
Fox eventually removed the false story from its website but without making any retraction or correction or editor’s note and only after the network was outed by Military.com. Now we learn that Fox apologized on Saturday to Gee's family in a statement.
CNN’s Oliver Darcy commented:
Deleting an entire story is exceedingly rare in news media and is seen as a last-ditch measure if the entire premise of the article is incorrect. Deleting a story without offering readers an explanation or correction is widely considered to be unethical.
...
While unethical, the behavior is typical for Fox News. The outlet often breaks traditional news ethics and traffics in dishonest reporting and commentary.
In his newsletter, Darcy further highlighted Fox’s unethical behavior:
Fox News said the story has been "addressed internally," but declined to say specifically how it was addressed. Was Fox News Digital Editor-In-Chief Porter Berry reprimanded? Someone else? Who, if anyone, faced disciplinary measures over the matter and the way it was handled?
Darcy went on to make the most important point of this sorry episode: that Fox gets a pass from the rest of the media for practices that should not be tolerated:
The episode illustrates how the rest of the news media grades Fox News on a huge curve. If a news organization such as The WaPo or CNN behaved in such an irresponsible manner, it would be treated by the rest of the press as a major scandal. But in this case, outlets such as The NYT and The WSJ didn't even bother running stories on the error and the outlet's egregious conduct afterward. They pretend Fox News has a serious news operation…
Bingo. A “reporter” promoting Republican talking points without investigation or, just as bad, deliberately ignoring the truth, enabled by an organization that covered up the truth as well as its role in the deceit and any actions it took in its wake, does not deserve to be called a “news” outfit. Yes, some Fox on-air personnel are ethical. But their limited efforts do not make up for the dangerous misinformation and disinformation spewed with the consent, implicit or explicit, from the top.
This was not as consequential a lapse as Fox’s Dominion/Smartmatic lies about the 2020 presidential election. But these lies had a real-life effect, too. From Military.com:
The original Fox News story spread on social media and was used to lambaste the DoD for its apparent callousness and blame the Biden administration for its handling of the tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan -- and its tragic aftereffects. The story's central claim was repeated by other outlets like the Daily Mail.
It's long past time for everyone to start calling Fox what it is: a Republican/right-wing/MAGA propaganda network, and a dangerous one at that.
(NewsHound Brian assisted with this post)
Correction: This post originally stated that Fox had apologized privately to the Gee family.
(image from The All-Nite Images from NY, NY, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
They believe in their propaganda (which is not necessarily the same as believing their propaganda).