Fox News' anti-vaccine campaign isn't over

[Nevilledog]

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Matthew Gertz
@MattGertz
A fun thing I came across while writing about the Hannity snippet - the evidence Fox PR uses to claim Carlson is pro-vaccine is laughably out of context. Left via NYT. https://mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-anti-vaccine-campaign-isnt-over…
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8:31 AM · Jul 20, 2021

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fox-news-anti-vaccine-campaign-isnt-over

Fox News’ PR representatives, desperate to salvage the reputation of a network that is literally killing its viewers by convincing them not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, have taken to sending out out-of-context snippets of star host Tucker Carlson purportedly praising vaccines on his show. “I’ve had a million vaccines in my life, as we all have. I think vaccines are great,” reads the quote provided to The New York Times last week.

The Fox PR team knows that reporters are generally conscientious enough to print the network response but not diligent enough to scrutinize the material. In the full quote from his April 27 broadcast, Carlson actually suggested that the vaccines may be ineffective and attacked the idea of requiring their use (Fox’s snippet in bold): “So if you can't answer very basic questions about a policy on which most Americans, including me — I've had a million vaccines in my life, as we all have. I think vaccines are great. But if you can't answer even the most basic questions, can you really force the policy on the population?” It’s implausible that Carlson’s viewers came away from that statement more encouraged about getting vaccinated.

Fox presumably pays its communications staff a hefty sum to burnish the network’s reputation by taking its hosts out of context. So it’s curious to see journalists and political professionals doing that work for free.

A snippet from Sean Hannity’s show in which he urged viewers to “take COVID seriously” and said that he “believe[s] in the science of vaccination” went viral on Twitter Monday night. While Hannity stopped well short of actually encouraging his audience to get vaccinated, in isolation, his comments seemed to cut against Fox’s prime-time narrative. Some commentators quickly responded to the clip by praising Hannity or saying that his remarks showed a real, positive change in the network’s tone. Others suggested that a new mandate had come down from the Fox brass to behave more responsibly.

*snip*