January 8, 2021

At Fox News, It’s Always About Scary Threats to White People

Isn't this sweet?SMG via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

So here’s how things work on Fox News. This is from Laura Ingraham’s show a few minutes ago.

First, she invites New York state senator George Borello to discuss a bill in the state Assembly that would allow the governor to detain anyone who is “or may be” a public health risk. They both agree this is outrageous. Where’s the due process? If you’re out in the woods and someone reports you for not wearing a mask, can you be unilaterally detained? Where’s the ACLU on all this?

Quick cut, and next up is Chris Rufo, a Fox regular who’s made a name for himself by inveighing against critical race theory. Ingraham feigns an ah-hah moment: you know, she says, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has called systemic racism a public health crisis. So does this mean he could detain anyone he thinks is a racist? Rufo enthusiastically agrees. This is yet another example of liberals inventing a crisis (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic) in order to control the movements and words of ordinary Americans.

Scary stuff, says Ingraham. Please keep on it. We’ll be back after a few words from the MyPillow guy.

Check out what’s going on here. First, there’s no bill in any serious sense of the word. This is something that was introduced years ago during the Ebola scare and has been reintroduced every year since, never even getting out of committee. Cuomo’s spox says he’s never even heard of it.

Ingraham then takes this nonexistent bill and makes it into a race thing. How? It hardly seems possible, but Ingraham manages the pretzel bending by taking something Cuomo once said—namely that high rates of COVID-19 in the Black community show that “racism is a public health crisis”—and absurdly twisting it into the scary possibility that Cuomo might start locking up anyone who tells an off-color joke. In a nutshell, it goes like this:

  1. Introduce scary story about minor state legislation regarding public health that has no chance of ever going anywhere.
  2. Invent out of whole cloth a segue into racism as a public health issue.
  3. Conclude that liberals want to lock up white people they disapprove of.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the pros do it.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate