Fox News’ Anti-Vax Mandate Messaging Is Out of Step With Its Own Strict Policies

Over the previous six months, Fox Information personalities have used the community’s platform to liken vaccine mandates to apartheid, accused the Biden administration of utilizing vaccine necessities to banish “honest Christians within the ranks” of the army, and in any other case undermined the efficacy of vaccines almost day-after-day. However in a uncommon interview granted to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox Information CEO Suzanne Scott, who acknowledged that she is vaccinated, refused to debate the rhetoric of the community’s main anti-vaccine voice. “I’ve a daily cadence of conversations with all kinds of expertise right here, together with our prime-time expertise,” Scott stated when requested about Tucker Carlson. “I’ll by no means focus on these conversations. That’s not who I’m. I’m loyal first. I’m loyal to everybody on the crew, whether or not they’re somebody on the information facet or the opinion facet. To me, they’re all individuals who work for Fox Information Media, and I respect the privateness of these conversations.”

On Wednesday evening, Carlson’s mysterious private relationship with the COVID-19 vaccine led MSNBC host Chris Hayes to name out the Fox Information star. “The Fox Information vaccine requirement is stricter than the one proposed by President Joe Biden and described as ‘tyranny’ and ‘creeping communism,’” Hayes said. (Certainly, 90% of Fox’s full-time workers were vaccinated as of final month, with each day testing for many who are usually not.) “In the event you actually consider you’re struggling underneath the ‘sadomasochistic heel’ of a tyrannical employer,” Hayes stated, “even when they’re paying you heaps and many cash, when you don’t need folks to assume you’re a complete fraud, then you must have the center to name out Fox Information or resign in protest.”

Whereas the community did considerably bend on the problem over the summer time, as plenty of anchors promoted the protection and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, Carlson by no means broke, and he continued his combat towards the jab even when it meant actively undermining the pro-vaccine remarks made by his colleagues. Although, Carlson just isn’t alone in that respect. Sean Hannity, Fox’s second-most widespread host behind Carlson, had a brief stint by which he voiced help for vaccines and beneficial that his viewers “take COVID critically,” however his obvious change of coronary heart was remarkably short-lived. Following these remarks in July, Hannity assured his followers that he was certainly not “urging folks to get the COVID-19 vaccine” however to “do the analysis.” And Hannity has solely renewed his issues in regards to the nation’s low vaccination fee in an effort to demonize the “unvaccinated” migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. “An unprecedented multimillion-person surge, all these unvaccinated unlawful immigrants packed into Biden’s cages, Biden’s overcrowded cages, makeshift tents, no social distancing, and as I identified, not even any testing––by no means thoughts a vaccine,” Hannity stated on Wednesday evening whereas working an advert that depicted migrants as disease-ridden. “We’ll by no means know, by the best way, what number of People died as a result of they had been contaminated by the unlawful immigrants that Joe Biden is processing via the nation and dispersing throughout the remainder of the nation.” 

That very same evening, Fox Information host Laura Ingraham, who has beforehand accused “anti-freedom” Democratic lawmakers of forcing an “experimental drug on People towards their will,” used the alarmingly excessive nationwide COVID loss of life toll as a political cudgel towards the Biden administration. “Why didn’t Biden step down at this time? Based on Johns Hopkins, extra folks died of COVID in 2021 than all of 2020,” she stated. “So regardless of being handed vaccines, promising therapeutics, Biden has presided over a 12 months of loss of life.”

On the matter of COVID deaths, the daughter of an unvaccinated man who died of COVID-19 final month partially pinned her father’s loss of life on Carlson’s promotion of vaccine misinformation. “He watched some Tucker Carlson movies on YouTube,” said Katie Lane whereas discussing her father’s loss of life on CNN. “And a few of these movies concerned some misinformation about vaccines. And I consider that that performed a job.”

Whereas it’s tough to quantify the results brought on by Fox’s anti-vaccine push, the progressive media watchdog group Media Issues released a report this week detailing simply how dedicated the community apparently is to undermining vaccines. Fox Information has aired segments denigrating COVID-19 vaccines or pro-vaccine insurance policies on all however two days over the past six months, based on the report. “Fox pushed a declare undermining vaccines throughout 99% of the times [from April through September],” the report states, noting that it “deemed claims to be undermining vaccines in the event that they described the vaccines as: pointless or harmful; coercive, representing authorities overreach, or violating private freedom or selection; or cynical ploys for political or monetary achieve.”