As I previously posted, this morning's Fox & Friends made a tasteless joke about Ray Rice's knockout punch to his then-fiancée. Apparently, the backlash was so strong that a Fox News spokesperson says the show will address it tomorrow morning.
In The Washington Post this afternoon, Erik Wemple noted that normally Fox ignores criticism of the network on blogs and social media. Wemple wrote:
Fox News commonly fields complaints on social media and blogs such as this one about its programming. In most cases, the complaints focus on coverage emphases, political titling and other such issues that bear on any cable news network in the 21st century. Usually the network plows ahead, blocking out the noise from detractors.
Yet what happened on “Fox & Friends” this morning bucks the normal back-and-forth between cable news and its critics.
However, as both Wemple and the Los Angeles Times reported, Fox was mercilessly lambasted on Twitter over co-host Brian Kilmeade's "joke" about the elevator video. In case you missed it, Kilmeade said, “I think the message is, take the stairs.” Co-host Anna Kooiman laughed. Co-host Steve Doocy said the message is, "When you're in an elevator, there's a camera." The result is that both papers are reporting that a Fox News spokeswoman has said that Fox & Friends will address the issue tomorrow morning.
Proof that speaking out against Fox's tactics can make a difference.
You can watch the Fox & Friends segment from this morning below.
4/4/18 Update: Video no longer available.
I’m sure there are a few who worship Fox News who are reading our comments thinking that no matter what was said it wouldn’t be good enough for us, and yes I’ll admit my own bias that there is some truth to that however all of us can relate to saying an idiotic comment that we wished we didn’t say or delete what we wrote and in this case I wasn’t expecting any of them to get on their knees begging for forgiveness, just a simple acknowledgement, from their own words, not what some PR marketing pros told them to say that they just simply messed up here, wish they didn’t say it and a lesson learned to avoid in the future.
CO-HOST BRIAN KILMEADE: Comments that we made during this story yesterday made some feel like we were taking the situation too lightly. We are not. We were not. Domestic abuse is a very serious issue to us, I can assure you.
It came across as forced by the Fox News suits who are only concerned about avoiding a Sandra Fluke type fiasco that would cost them the holy advertising dollar. It was not sincere but what you expected.
On one blog (I think Media Matters) I read a comment that I thought was very good as the writer said “Can you imagine the reaction if someone were to say after the 9/11 attacks the lesson learned here is next time take a car instead of a plane”?
Um, yeah, Kilmeade and co-horts, you were making light of the situation – a situation where a joke was clearly inappropriate (so excuse me if your assurance rings hollow). And that twit Kooiman even thought it was funny. No, Kooiman, Kilmeade’s joke was NOT funny – shame on you for thinking it was.
No actual apology from Kilmeade and nothing about his regretting making the joke. I noticed the way he made sure to put the “we” in his clarification when it was HIS comment that actually caused the outrage (although I would say that Daddy Douchey’s snide Limbaugh-esque quip about her marrying Rice anyway and how one should be aware of the cameras should have never come out of his mouth either).
And, unless I missed something while refilling my coffee, Kilmeade’s statement was ONLY given when they discussed Rice at the beginning of the first hour of F&F. If you weren’t awake at 6:04am (Eastern time zone) or the equivalent of that time in other time zones, you never heard it.
