Fox News is keeping its viewers in the dark about the gruesome allegations that Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) physically and emotionally abused his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and his 2-year-old daughter. Since late July, when the story began receiving national attention, Fox has given it only 6 minutes of airtime — and none at all in primetime.
The New York Times — following a story from Mother Jones about Miller’s custody dispute and alleged history of violent behavior — published an article on what it termed the “sordid, years-long family drama” on July 28. The paper detailed a flurry of accusations against Miller from court filings across multiple lawsuits and countersuits, all of which Miller, a former Trump aide, denies:
Ms. Moreno, the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno, also an Ohio Republican, has said that Mr. Miller scalded her chest and stomach by throwing hot water from a skillet at her body; held a gun to her head; pushed her against a wall and hit her head; and fractured their daughter’s collarbone and bruised her shoulder.
According to court documents, their daughter at one point told Ms. Moreno, “Daddy kill you.”
Since then, Sen. Moreno has publicly declared his son-in-law unfit for office; Ohio’s other Republican senator, Jon Husted, has called on Miller to resign; questions from reporters have forced Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Trump himself to weigh in; the president has reportedly raised concerns with the congressman about his reelection campaign; and the deadline has passed to replace him on the November ballot.
While Fox responded to the scandal with a mere six minutes of coverage, its right-wing competitors at Newsmax provided one hour and 43 minutes of airtime, according to a Media Matters review.
The bulk of Fox’s coverage of the Miller saga came from two correspondent reports on Fox’s “news” flagship Special Report and four headline reports (three of which ran on weekends). The scandal has been mentioned just once by one of the network’s “opinion” stars, during a July 31 exchange on the panel show The Five.
At the end of a lengthy segment about purportedly radical Democratic candidates, Jessica Tarlov, the program’s Democratic co-host, asked whether Miller, “who has been accused of abusing his wife and his daughter” should be “thrown out” of the GOP. Greg Gutfeld replied, “Sure,” before admitting he was unaware “what you're talking about” and pointing out that the story wasn’t “in the A-block.”
The story wasn’t in The Five’s A-block — or indeed, any block — in the days since. Nor has Miller’s saga and the GOP’s response to it drawn attention from the Fox star vehicles hosted by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Jesse Watters, or the hosts of its high-profile morning show, Fox & Friends. And across the “news” and “opinion” sides, no Republican politician interviewed on Fox has had to field the sort of uncomfortable questions about Miller they’ve faced on other networks.
While scandal-plagued Republicans seeking an opportunity to do damage control have for years made a beeline to Fox’s greenrooms, Miller has instead sought to deny and defuse the allegations through interviews on CNN and Newsmax, which have significantly lower ratings (and in CNN’s case is despised by the president and his base).
Did every single Fox “opinion” host independently decide not to throw Miller a lifeline? Did they and the bulk of their “news side” colleagues all determine that there was no value in informing their viewers about the allegations against him, even as the GOP became embroiled in the scandal?
Fox’s non-coverage of the Miller scandal is reminiscent of how the network left then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for dead back in 2021, following a Times report that Gaetz was under federal investigation for alleged sex trafficking.
For his part, Gaetz — who routinely feuded with Miller when they were both in the House, left office under a cloud of scandal in 2024, and is now a host at the far-right One America News — has used his own show to decry Miller’s “sad train wreck.”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
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