Last Thursday afternoon, the lead story in the most reputable news sources online was the war on science and scientists being waged by the nation’s top quack. The turmoil involving DHHS and the CDC is obviously of public concern, involving as it does matters of life and death. But, Fox News’ website thought otherwise. It ignored it, and was still leading with the shooting at Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minn., the previous morning.
The murders of Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, and the wounding of more than 20 others were an appalling act and yet another twist in the story of the horrific gun carnage in the U.S.
Fox, from the start though, were clearly probing and pushing for angles that might work best for their purposes. They certainly had a particular interest in a possible anti-Catholic dimension as a key motivation for the murderer.
FoxNews.com, like everyone else, reported Pope Leo’s condolences issued the day of the attack. When the pontiff returned to the subject on Sunday, numerous American outlets again covered his comments — notably CBS, CNN and Reuters, but FoxNews.com did not, even though it was still finding aspects of the tragedy to report on as of Monday.
“The U.S.-born pope spoke in English as he denounced the attack and the ‘logic of weapons’ fueling wars around the world, during his Sunday noon blessing from his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square in Rome,” CBSNews.com reported Sunday soon after his appearance.
"Our prayers for the victims of the tragic shooting during a school Mass in the American state of Minnesota," Leo said, according to CBS. "We hold in our prayers the countless children killed and injured every day around the world. Let us plead God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world.”
And note, it’s not “a pandemic” or “a logic,” it’s “the pandemic” and “the logic,” which, of course, critiques the catechism as written by the weapons manufacturers’ lobby — with its mantra of guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
So, Fox is all over this tragedy in a way that it often isn’t when it comes to mass shootings, and it stresses the Catholic angle (as in persecution of the faithful by — fill in the blank here with some favorite bogeyman), but it can’t report what the pope says about it on Sunday in Rome a few days later?
You might say, well it’s hardly “censorship” — Fox is not the government. But, isn’t it? Whatever the case, it’s certainly not state TV in the Western democratic tradition, where at least the media outlet is expected to try to be neutral and include as many perspectives as possible, in the interest of the public good.
Fox instead follows the Pravda model of the East with its fealty to the party line, and, right now, that party is in power. And, as in the case of a place further to the east and south, it must keep Dear Leader happy at all times of the day and night.
They went to extraordinary lengths the last time to keep him in power, and got into legal hot water as a result. Indeed, the $787 million out-of-court settlement Fox paid to Dominion Voting Systems is the largest ever in history in a defamation case. In that episode, the news channel helped undermine the very foundations of the democratic system (the context in which the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and invasion took place), and so don’t expect them to worry too much about reporting on what the pope has to say about the shooting dead and wounding of schoolchildren at Mass.
