But there was an abnormal value. “Just for that you’re aware, this is, on the contrary, this is the front page for our Fox News Channel friends right now,” said Maddow. “It’s like you can see a little different.” In fact, above the fold, Fox was covering everything except the death toll.
“If you scroll down and scroll down and scroll down, in the end you get – in the end they get to, oh yes, 100,000 dead Americans,” said Maddow. “In the end they get there.”
Maddow’s remark was not unique on Fox’s homepage. The network broadcast on Wednesday evening was similar. None of his prime time shows brought with the grim news on the death toll. Martha MacCallum, which hosts what should be Fox’s “straight news” program, began her show with the story of a student suspected of two murders. It took her over 50 minutes to get to the news of about 100,000 Americans dead. He saved him for his latest segment.
Like the President, whose Twitter feed focused on everything but the death toll on Wednesday night, Fox looked away largely as the death toll surpassed 100,000. If historians were to go back and look at Fox News on the night the country passed 100,000, they would be forgiven if they didn’t know what happened.
It’s all extraordinary. We are experiencing what is widely considered to be one of the biggest stories of a generation and the country’s most popular cable news network continues to put it on the back.
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