Fox News Host’s Pro-COVID-Vaccine Message Gets No Airtime on Fox News

On Tuesday, Fox Enterprise host Neil Cavuto knowledgeable the general public that he has contracted COVID-19—an announcement he used to advise others to get vaccinated. “Whereas I’m considerably shocked by this information, docs inform me I’m fortunate as effectively,” Cavuto, who underwent an open-heart surgical procedure in 2016, was identified with a number of sclerosis in 1997, and has beforehand been handled for most cancers, mentioned in a statement launched by the community. “Had I not been vaccinated, and with all my medical points, this is able to be a much more dire state of affairs. It’s not, as a result of I did and I’m surviving this as a result of I did.” He then expressed his hope that everybody who continues to be unvaccinated “will get that message loud and clear. Get vaccinated, for your self and everybody round you.” 

Whereas Cavuto’s assertion on his well being and the vaccine has been steadily mentioned on his community’s rivals MSNBC and CNN, Fox Information and Fox Enterprise didn’t instantly talk about his remarks on-air, in response to a search utilizing media-monitoring service TVEyes, or on their house pages. Even with Cavuto all of a sudden absent from the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of Fox Enterprise’s Cavuto Coast to Coast, this system’s fill-in host, David Asman, failed to say his COVID-19 prognosis or in any other case clarify his absence to the viewers. His state of affairs was not mentioned till the Wednesday airing of Cavuto’s later present on Fox Information, Your World with Neil Cavuto. “Neil Cavuto has examined constructive for COVID-19,” said this system’s fill-in host, Charles Payne. “I need everyone to know that he’s feeling tremendous. He’s a fighter and we look ahead to getting him again in his chair as quickly as doable.”

Various Cavuto’s colleagues at Fox have made pro-vaccine endorsements of their very own, including Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, and Invoice Hemmer. Rupert Murdoch is, after all, additionally vaccinated, and the COVID-19 security protocols instituted on the Fox Information workplaces are literally more stringent than these outlined within the Biden administration’s worker vaccine mandate. However over the previous six months, Fox Information has been a nightly destination for anti-vax rhetoric, with Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity utilizing their prime-time reveals to characterize vaccine and masks mandates as attacks on constitutional liberties; allege that Joe Biden is using the vaccine to power Christians out of the army; and enhance misinformation claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine is linked to hundreds of deaths. 

As just lately as Monday, Carlson used the coronavirus-related death of Colin Powell to counsel that getting vaccinated is all however pointless. “Like nearly everybody his age, Colin Powell was absolutely vaccinated in opposition to COVID, and but in response to his household and docs, Colin Powell died of COVID,” said Carlson, failing to notice that Powell, 84, suffered from ​a number of myeloma most cancers and Parkinson’s illness and subsequently had a severely weakened immune system. This truth was not acknowledged by Carlson, who went on to say that Powell’s demise reveals Individuals that “you’ve been lied to. Vaccines could also be extremely helpful for some folks, however throughout a inhabitants, they don’t clear up COVID.”

On Tuesday, CNN anchor John King tried to counter Carlson’s anti-vax rhetoric by opening up about his personal private well being historical past. “I’m going to share a secret I’ve by no means spoken earlier than: I’m immunocompromised. I’ve a number of sclerosis. So I’m grateful you’re all vaccinated,” King informed his viewers. “I’m grateful my employer says all of those wonderful individuals who work on the ground, who got here in right here for the final 18 months after we had been doing this, are vaccinated now that we now have vaccines.” The host, who expressed his worries about bringing COVID-19 “house to my 10-year-old son who can’t get a vaccine,” famous that whereas he does “not like the federal government telling me what to do. I don’t like my boss telling me what to do. On this case, it’s necessary.”