Rupert Murdoch’s right wing cable channel Fox News vilified LGBTQ people across more than 100 days out of the first 181 days of 2022, according to a just-published report that characterizes the attacks as “extreme and harmful.”
“Fox News attacked LGBTQ people at least once on 106 of the 181 days in the first half of 2022 (59%),” Media Matters reports. “Fox’s anti-LGBTQ attacks were particularly focused during LGBTQ Pride Month in June, with the network attacking the community at least once a day on 26 out of 30 days (87%).”
Media Matters reports that “Fox anchors, hosts, and guests repeatedly spread baseless lies about queer and trans people, including falsely claiming that life-saving gender-affirming health care is ‘child abuse,’ spreading the long–debunked myth that LGBTQ people seek to groom children for sexual exploitation, and misgendering and deadnaming trans people.”
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson “repeatedly called for violence against teachers who discuss LGBTQ issues with their students.”
During June, which is Pride Month, the cable network’s hosts, correspondents, and guests attacked “LGBTQ people at least once every day in the final 12 days of the month (June 19-30),” Media Matters adds. April was the second-worst month, with attacks occurring on 23 out of 30 days, and then March, with at least one attack on 20 out of 31 days.
As NCRM reported, in March Fox News personality Laura Ingraham hosted a segment with a chyron that read, “LIBERALS ARE SEXUALLY GROOMING ELEMENTARY STUDENTS” and then later it read: “DEMS HAPPY TO RUN ON PRO-GROOMING PLATFORM.”
In April the network sent its White House reporter, Peter Doocy, into the press briefing room, where he has asked if the Biden administration supports classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity “before kindergarten.”
Last year Fox News named an attorney who worked for an organization that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups as its new Washington editor.