Cable news was again a study in contrasts on Thursday:
Fox News carried a big portion of
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s testimony before a House committee, while
CNN and MSNBC did not. Kennedy’s candidacy — which seems to be embraced much more by the right than the left — also was highlighted with an interview later in the day on Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum, while the political scion next week will sit for a town hall with
Sean Hannity. Related Stories Controversial Bill Maher Interviews RFK Jr., Asks Internet Whether Candidate’s Vax Positions Are “That Unreasonable”
BREAKING News
YouTube Cracks Down On Anti-Vaccine Misinformation, Ejects Robert Kennedy Jr. And Others From Platform As a star witness before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Kennedy’s appearance was contentious from the start. After
Republicans and
Democrats sparred over his testimony and he gave his opening statement, Fox News anchors then gave him high marks for his debut before the panel. “He dispensed with his written statement. He gave it passionately from the heart. He actually got applause at the end of that — he might obviously have some
Friends in the room,” said Dana Perino, while noting that Democrats wanted to table the hearing “so that he wouldn’t even have a chance to be seen in public, which is ironic given the subject matter of the hearing.” Bill Hemmer said, “He’s quite comfortable speaking off the cuff, and he’s quite comfortable talking for a considerable period of time,” noting that he used the phrase “toxic polarization” and “he called out everyone in the room about the state of affairs in
American politics today and how people simply do not get along.” Their comments were a contrast to CNN’s coverage, which included a fact check countering Kennedy’s claim that he is not “anti-vax,” while anchor Dana Bash devoted a segment to Kennedy’s appearance on the noontime Inside Politics but pointed to instances where he engaged in “denial and deflection.” MSNBC also did segments on the hearing, with
NBC News correspondent Ryan Nobles focusing on the “circus” of the hearing, with Democrats trying to press Kennedy on his stances and Republicans focused on the power of
Social Media companies to de-platform figures like him. “RFK Jr.’s argument is that you should be able to say whatever you want, on any type of platform, and no one should be able to tell you that you can’t,” Nobles said. A focus of the hearing was on comments Kennedy made in a recent dinner in which he said of Covid: “There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. The races that are most immune to Covid 19 — because of the structure, the genetic structure, the genetic differentials of different races, of the receptors … Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted with that or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.” The
New York Post, which broke the news about the remarks, also provided video, and they drew swift condemnation among Democrats and more recently other Kennedy family members. House Democrats called for disinviting him, and at the hearing (you can watch it below), the comments were the source of a contentious exchange with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). Later, in an interview with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum, Kennedy said that he was describing the results of a study that said “that certain races were more affected by Covid than other races. …I was not saying that this was something that had been deliberately done.” Kennedy is viewed with suspicion by many Democrats, in part for his stance on vaccines but also because his long-shot candidacy is seen as a potential spoiler for President Joe Biden’s re-election chances. Kennedy has guested on right-wing media outlets, perhaps more so than a number of
Republican presidential candidates polling in the single digits, as well as a recent extended interview on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast. As Kennedy appeared before the House committee, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called his candidacy a “living, breathing false-flag operation” whose “whole campaign is being run by right-wing political operatives who have one objective: try to take down President Joe Biden.” The Fox News coverage on Thursday was like a double whammy for its daily news diet: a well-known figure — and a Democrat, no less — criticizing Biden, as well as someone who could affirm the theme that certain points of view were being censored, namely his attacks on the Covid vaccine. For more than five years, congressional Republicans have claimed that big tech is stifling voices on the right, and that argument has advanced more recently to claims that it is at the behest of the federal government. That was a central theme of a hearing last week featuring
FBI Director Christopher Wray, who denied any such effort. At Kennedy’s hearing, he said: “My views are constantly misrepresented, so that the truth of what I believe, we are not allowed to have a conversation about with the American people.” He accused Rep. Stacey Plaskett from the Virgin Islands, the top Democrat on the panel, of “defamations and malignancies” that “are used to censor me to prevent people from listening to the actual things that I am saying.” At another point in the coverage on Fox News, anchor Harris Faulkner said that “the discrediting of this particular man, who is the leading rival on the left against
Joe Biden, is remarkable.” Then Dr. Mark Siegel, a Fox News contributor, offered some skepticism. “I’m very pro-vaccine, and I don’t think we should assume that this vaccine is a bioweapon or that it targets certain groups or that it lets other groups off the hook. There’s no way that the vaccine does that.” But he added, “He’s entitled to what he has to say,” and the government should not try to suppress it. Kennedy’s candidacy has posed a challenge for many newsrooms, some of which have devoted more resources to calling out misinformation and, after years of covering
Donald Trump, more wariness of letting falsehoods go unchecked. A significant amount of the coverage of his campaign has focused on his vaccine skepticism, along with the pushback from the medical and scientific community. NewsNation, the fledgling Nexstar network, last month hosted a town hall with Kennedy in which moderator Elizabeth Vargas pointed out the conclusions debunking his claims from major medical and science organizations. Other outlets, however, so far have not given Kennedy that spotlight. In an interview with Pod Save America last month, CNN’s Jake Tapper said that he would not do a town hall with Kennedy “because he spreads dangerous misinformation about childhood vaccines.” Tapper said that Kennedy has misrepresented an incident in 2005, when the CNN host was working for ABC News. In a recent interview, Tapper said, Kennedy claimed that he was working with him on a documentary tied to Rolling Stone/ Salon piece on vaccines that was “killed by corporate.” But Tapper said the piece was merely an interview with Kennedy, and it ultimately was aired. Kennedy’s Rolling Stone /Salon story that year linked childhood vaccines to autism, but it was given five corrections before it was ultimately deleted. Joan Walsh, who edited the piece, recently wrote that publishing it was the “worst mistake of my career.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communication and director of the Annenberg Policy Center at the University of
Pennsylvania, said in an interview last month that given Kennedy’s standing in the polls, in the double digital in some recent surveys, he certainly warrants coverage. Moreover, with the attention that he has gotten in appearances on outlets like Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, where many of his claims go unchecked, there is even more of a case to be made for giving him attention. “The press should make sure that the public knows everything they should know,” she said, adding that news outlets also hold candidates accountable. “That is something where journalism should be actively involved,” rather than asking whether coverage is giving Kennedy legitimacy, she said. Media analyst Andrew Tyndall said via email that Fox News is trying to frame Kennedy’s bid “as a 1992-style contest.” That was when Pat Buchanan challenged President
George H.W. Bush for the nomination and Ross Perot mounted an independent bid. RELATED: No Labels Town Hall With Joe Manchin And Jon Huntsman Raises Speculation Of Third-Party Bid “If 2024 is really going to follow in the footsteps in 1992, we can expect not only an upsurge of attention paid to RFK Jr., but also to the No Labels third-party effort,” Tyndall wrote, referring to the effort by the organization to get ballot access for an independent bid. Yet since Perot, he noted, no candidacy has gained traction as “newsworthy third-party efforts,” though there has been attention paid to bids by Ralph Nader and Jill Stein as spoilers. “Frankly, I think that both RFK and No Labels are nothing more than silly season stories in the dog days of summer,” Tyndall said. “I do not expect either to have legs once the Republican primary season proper gets underway when the debates begin.”