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Cruising On Bike, Biden Trolls Fox News Reporter

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

This morning, on a bike ride—one of those physical activities I have yet to see the world's healthiest orange president do—Joe Biden was asked a question by Fox News' Peter Doocy: "Mr. Vice President, have you picked a running mate yet?" Biden, in response, answered "Yeah, I have." Doocy, believing he had a scoop, asked: "You have? Who is it?" Biden responded: "It's you," and continued to ride away.

The obvious truth is that it is incredibly likely Biden does have a running mate, but why give that to Fox New? Rather than accept the answer tongue-in-cheek, though, Fox News continued to report as though they had a big scoop on hand.

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QAnon, Plandemic, And Right-Wing Media’s Conspiracy Spiral

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

The rot runs deep in the right-wing media. Just look at what happened over the last week.

On Wednesday, Sinclair Broadcast Group released a segment featuring coronavirus conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits, who alleged that top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci had "manufactured" the virus. The pro-Trump cable news network OAN aired a segment Thursday defending as "widely accepted" and "the new mainstream" the QAnon movement, whose adherents claim President Donald Trump is fighting a cabal of Satan-worshiping politicians and celebrities who control the world and run a child sex trafficking ring.

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Fox News Viewers Increasingly Believe Covid-19 Conspiracy Theory

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

A new Axios/Ipsos poll finds that people who get their news from Fox News are more likely to buy into a conspiracy theory that has frequently been spread by right-wing media since the pandemic began: The false and baseless idea that the coronavirus death count has been inflated.

The poll found that 62 percent of Fox News watchers said the real number of coronavirus deaths is lower than the official number, closely aligning with 59 percent of Republicans. By contrast, only 9 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of Americans overall professed this view.

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Fox News Falsehoods About Virus Masks Are A Public Health Menace

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

Surgeon General Jerome Adams implored the American public to wear cloth masks to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 on Monday, saying that "this whole administration is now supportive of masks" because they are "one of the most effective ways to open our country." But wearing them "relies on the individual people of America doing the right thing," he told the hosts of Fox & Friends. "That's why I'm pleading with your viewers, I'm begging you, please understand that we are not trying to take away your freedoms when we say 'wear a face covering.'"

Fox News was the correct venue for Adams' appeal. Mounting evidence shows that mask use is a vitally important tool to curtail the spread of the pandemic that has caused more than 140,000 U.S. recorded deaths. But major Fox figures helped politicize face coverings, turning their usage into a culture war issue, and continue to blatantly misrepresent scientific findings to dispute their effectiveness.

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