Thread by @existentialfish

I want to look more closely at how Fox "straight news" uses misinformation to downplay right-wing terrorism and violence.

This aired last night. The anchor on the left is Martha MacCallum, who Fox touted as a potential Democratic debate anchor.

MacCallum showed this chart, saying that “it looks like there’s no single group that is sort of dominating this issue and also that the numbers are relatively low”

MacCallum is ripping this data out of context in a couple ways. For one, WaPo reporting also tracked terrorist incidents overall. And those *do* show a marked increase in right-wing terrorism. Look at the left-column here.

The data that Fox News cited to downplay right-wing violence comes from this report. See if you can catch the disconnect. washingtonpost.com/national/in-th…

Ending the data at 2017 conveniently leaves out the horrific terror incidents at the Tree of Life synagogue and the mail bombing attempts in October 2018 alone.

Or look at the man who crashed a truck into a Planned Parenthood earlier in 2018 nj.com/essex/2018/02/…

In fact, the ADL found that “attackers with ties to right-wing extremist movements killed at least 50 people in 2018” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

None of that was reflected in the Fox straight news segment.

In fact, the guest, Heather MacDonald, was promoting a book “The Diversity Delusion.” She's been a regular guest on Tucker Carlson's show in recent months, where she's made racist remarks mediamatters.org/video/2018/04/…

I wish I had a more witty conclusion here, but in fact it’s simple: giving the Fox News a chance to set the agenda for Democrats is a horrible mistake. The news side is ultimately as corrupt as the opinion side. Fox needs to be fought back aggressively against, not appeased.