John Roberts, Fox News‘ co-anchor of “America Reports,” and the right wing network’s former White House correspondent under Presidents Trump, Bush, and Clinton, came under intense fire Monday morning for using the COVID-19 related death of former U.S. Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell to promote the network’s position of vaccine disinformation.
Fox News has long suggested there was a wall between its daytime “straight news” reporters and their coverage, and its nighttime opinion hosts, but that wall over the past few months has largely disappeared. It is now common for Fox News daytime viewers to be served “reporting” on the opinions of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.
For that to happen Fox News reporters have had to become mirrors of the disinformation campaigns the network’s nighttime personalities promote.
Like vaccine disinformation.
Vaccine disinformation is “a big reason behind low inoculation rates,” the L.A. Times recently reported.
“Fox News aired claims that undermine COVID-19 vaccines on 99% of days in the last six months, according to research by progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America,” HuffPost reported earlier this month. “Only two days from April through September didn’t feature the sowing of doubt about the safe and effective shots.”
The news of the death of former U.S. Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell has hit many across the nation hard. Secretary Powell was 84 years old and died of complications from COVID-19, with his family noting he was fully vaccinated.
Powell was also battling “multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that impacts the body’s ability to fight infections,” and Parkinson’s.
But according to Fox News’ John Roberts, Secretary Powell’s death “raises new concerns about how effective vaccines are long-term,” which is both manipulative and false, given the facts surrounding his health – namely that he was 84 and battling a cancer that impacts the body’s ability to fight infections.
Journalists and many others are blasting Roberts so mercilessly that he ultimately deleted the tweet with no apology or explanation, but here’s a screenshot: