Tag: midterm elections
Fox News Instantly Slashed Crime Coverage Following Midterm Elections

Fox News Instantly Slashed Crime Coverage Following Midterm Elections

Fox News significantly decreased its volume of violent crime coverage in the week of the midterms, down 63 percent from the week prior.

The network averaged 141 weekday violent crime segments per week from Labor Day through the Friday before the election; in the week of the midterms, Fox aired 71 weekday violent crime segments — a decrease of 50 percent compared to the prior average.

Fox was open in its strategy of using violent crime as a political cudgel against Democrats throughout the midterms. Driven in part by Fox host Tucker Carlson's calls for Republicans to run on the issue, the network engaged in a months-long campaign to tie Democrats and the Biden administration to violent crime, often by highlighting specific incidents in “Democratic cities” and blaming progressive criminal justice reform for individual violent crimes.

In the lead-up to the midterms, Fox averaged 141 weekday violent crime segments per week from Labor Day through the Friday before the election. The two weeks prior to Election Day, those starting October 24 and October 31, featured the highest number of weekday violent crime segments of the period studied: 187 and 193 segments, respectively. That coverage dropped dramatically during the week of the election, which had just 71 weekday violent crime segments.

In the week after the election, Fox’s crime coverage has ticked back up a bit as stories about the tragic shooting at the University of Virginia and multiple killings at the University of Idaho entered the news cycle — but the coverage was notably less focused on painting Democratic cities as crime-infested. Thus far this week, Fox has aired 74 violent crime segments in three days, which is still notably fewer than in the weeks prior to the midterms.

Fox’s breathless political coverage of violent crime during the midterm period often ignored key context, such as the reality that crime statistics from red states were higher than those of blue states and that Democrats across the country at multiple levels of government made efforts to fund law enforcement and curtail violent crime. Instead, these segments often focused on attacking progressive district attorneys and candidates across the country.

This initial drop-off in violent crime coverage immediately following the midterm elections bears resemblance to another long-forgotten Fox News midterm narrative: “migrant caravans.” The network went all in fearmongering about “migrant caravans” in the weeks leading up to the 2018 midterms — only to completely drop the subject right after.

Media Matters searched our internal database of all original, weekday programming on Fox News Channel (shows airing from 6 a.m. through midnight) for segments that analysts determined to be about violent crime in general or specific violent crimes from September 5, 2022, through November 16, 2022.

We counted segments, which we defined as instances when violent crime in general or a specific violent crime was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of violent crime in general or of a specific violent crime. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed violent crime in general or a specific violent crime with one another.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Republicans Prepare Racially Inflammatory Anti-Immigrant Midterm Campaign

Republicans Prepare Racially Inflammatory Anti-Immigrant Midterm Campaign

Two organizations tracking anti-immigrant advertising say they’ve documented more than 700 such ads leading into the 2022 midterms, including attacks against the Biden administration over a so-called “border crisis” and content designed to undermine a vastly popular pathway to citizenship for the nation’s undocumented communities.

The former is particularly shameless considering two of the previous administration’s worst policies largely shutting down the U.S. asylum system, Remain in Mexico and the debunked Title 42 public health order, are still in effect today. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lying. And as we get closer to Election Day, we already know it’ll only get worse.

“Increasingly, these ‘border crisis’ attacks are also using Vice President Kamala Harris as their main foil: the border czar,” America’s Voice and Immigration Hub said in the report. “Thirty-seven paid ads invoke the Vice President with xenophobic dogwhistles, echoed by members of Congress, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA). The gender and racial connotations are also quite evident.”

The report notes hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has spent tens of thousands of dollars over the past two months targeting nearly two dozen House Democrats for their support of popular, pro-immigrant legislation. The racist Tanton network organization has launched ads against House Democrats despite the fact that House Republicans also voted in favor of bills protecting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and undocumented farmworkers.

But anti-immigrant advertising isn’t solely a product of the fringe right-wing. Racism is the Republican mainstream. (FAIR led Congressional Republicans in “border crisis” messaging from the very start of Biden’s administration.)

America’s Voice late last year noted racist ads from House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik and Sen. Rick Scott, who heads the National Republican Senate Committee. While both voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in favor of the twice-impeached former president, Stefanik’s ad stoops to calling undocumented immigrants the real insurrectionists. Stefanik also echoed the white supremacist “replacement theory” in her ad.

The report notes that Lindsey Graham, once a Republican champion of comprehensive immigration reform, also echoed racist “invasion” rhetoric. Once again: It’s not the fringe, it’s the GOP. But America’s Voice and Immigration Hub note that GOP-led attacks “fail to dampen support for citizenship.”

“The report includes new results of a study by Immigration Hub, conducted by BlueLabs Analytics, testing political ads among Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania voters,” the two organizations said. “A GOP ad that attacked President Biden on his management of the border failed to move voters against a path to citizenship, only managing to drive down Biden’s approval numbers.”

“However, voters who viewed the Hub’s ad that exposed the GOP’s obstruction and politicization of the border and pushed for citizenship, moved voters in favor of Democrats. By going on offense, Democrats have an opportunity to counter the Republican electoral playbook.” America’s Voice has separately noted that in a futile attempt to stop GOP attacks, “the Biden administration has maintained numerous Trump policies along the border, only to continue to be attacked by the rabid right wing media.” The groups encourage Democrats to combat Republicans by delivering on promises for a more humane immigration system.

“Republican and right-wing messages haven’t changed since Trump’s departure,” Immigration Hub chief political and communications officer Beatriz Lopez said. “The warning signals to Democrats are clear: It’s immigration today and it’ll be immigration in 2022.”

“While the right-wing playbook is to exacerbate fears over the economy and public health with hyperbole over immigrants and the border, their strategy fails to shake voters’ strong support for a path to citizenship,” she continued. “Our tracking and testing among battleground voters makes clear that Democrats must go on offense by driving their efforts to deliver on a path to citizenship and sensible immigration solutions while exposing the GOP political gamesmanship on the issue.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Trump Unable To Answer Simple Question On Republican Agenda (VIDEO)

Trump Unable To Answer Simple Question On Republican Agenda (VIDEO)

When former President Donald Trump appeared on right-wing Newsmax TV this week, he was asked about the 2022 midterms and the things he would like Republicans to prioritize if they regain control of the House of Representatives. But Trump didn’t offer any specific policy recommendations should the GOP have a House majority in 2023 and seemed to ignore the substance of the question entirely.

Newsmax TV prides itself on being more right-wing and more pro-Trump than Fox News and Fox Business

"Sounds like the Republicans are going to take back control of Congress," the interviewer asked, "and what would you like to see them do?"

Trump responded, “Number 1: take back. That’s what has to be Number 1; we have to take it back.”

Obviously referring to the Democratic majorities in Congress, Trump continued, “These are radicalized, horrible people that hate our country — what they’re doing with the open borders and the judges and all of the things they’ve been doing is so sad. And then you look at Afghanistan is a topper…. We were coming out strong, with dignity. There’s never been a lower point than what happened with Afghanistan, in my opinion. So, we’ve gotta, Number 1, we’ve gotta win the House — and I think we can win the Senate also.”

Despite Trump's claim that Democrats have enacted an "open borders" policy, Biden has actually preserved many of his predecessor's immigration policies, much to the dismay of some critics on his left. The borders are in no sense "open." Here are some responses to Newsmax’s Trump interview:



Reprinted with permission from Alternet

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, left, and former President Trump.

Will Americans Go Backward Into Disease And Depression, With Trump?

In the professional stratum of politics, few verities are treated with more reverence than the outcome of next year's midterm, when the Republican Party is deemed certain to recapture majorities in the House and Senate. With weary wisdom, any pol or pundit will cite the long string of elections that buttress this prediction.

Political history also tells us that many factors can influence an electoral result, including a national crisis or a change in economic conditions — in other words, things can change and even midterm elections are not entirely foretold. There have been a few exceptions to this rule, too.

Such an exception ought to be possible in a country where, increasingly, the Democratic Party represents majority opinion on most salient issues, while the Republican Party wields power mainly because of rules, traditions, population imbalances and constitutional anomalies that thwart the majority. In no other democratic nation is the will of most citizens so systematically frustrated.

So the Democrats must fight their way uphill, and they would be wise to start now. The way to begin is to define the terms of battle with a message that reflects the lived experience as well as the hopes and expectations of voters in America after former President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss — and draws a powerful contrast with the opposition.

That message begins with the behavior of the Republicans, who no longer even pretend to have policy solutions to the crises that America confronts. Instead, they function solely as sycophantic servants of Trump, whose synthetic grievances over his impeachments and defeat continue to be their shared obsession. The Grand Old Party is no longer grand and scarcely a party, but it is terribly "old" in the most insulting sense: an entity decrepit and stuck in the past.

In recent days, the Republican leadership and a few of its media minions have seemed to sense how badly and bloodily they botched the pandemic. Suddenly, after more than a year of pretending it would go away and months of undermining the vaccination campaign, some of them are urging Americans to get inoculated. But with so many loonies and cultists infesting their active base, the party can't dispel the aura of needless, stupid death that surrounds it. Geniuses that they are, the Republicans apparently noticed President Joe Biden's strong approval, which rests on his competent, compassionate, scientific response to the pandemic.

Meanwhile that awful negative aura extends over the Republican obstruction of Biden's investments in economic recovery and national infrastructure, which are favored by a big majority of voters — and even a plurality of their own party rank and file. As the benefits of the Democratic program reach more households, the inadequacy of the Republicans will only be underlined.

The last time Democrats defied the midterm curse was in 1998, when Newt Gingrich overplayed his hand by impeaching Bill Clinton — another Republican outrage against the popular will. Their paranoid and conspiratorial tendencies have only grown worse over the past two decades.

Today's Republicans can be relied upon to exhibit the same character deficit as the 2022 cycle unfolds. That process began earlier this month, when a mob of fascist thugs disrupted a town hall hosted by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in her Southern California district. While Porter spoke about solutions to climate change and the pandemic, they interrupted her with shouted slogans and tried to drown her out. The disturbance was planned, organized, and led by her Republican opponent, a white nationalist and anti-vaccination activist who disgracefully joined in physical attacks on her supporters.

The attack on Porter, so reminiscent of the worst Tea Party scenes in 2009, is a harbinger of things to come. It is a clear reminder to every voter of what the GOP now represents as an engine of authoritarian violence, big lies and bigotry — the continuation of January 6. They are nothing more than Trump, a hollow figure who returns endlessly to a past that reeks of depression, disease and deception. And they are willing to violate every democratic principle to drag the country backward with him.

But most Americans don't want to go backward with Trump and his goons. Now they must mobilize to defend democracy and keep moving forward.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.