Fox & Friends used a video of Wisconsin protesters confronting a GOP state senator to attempt to portray the protesters as a "violent" "mob"
Fox & Friends used a video of Wisconsin protesters confronting a GOP state senator to attempt to portray the protesters as a "violent" "mob", while also advancing the falsehood that Gov. Walker "campaigned on" ending collective bargaining. In fact, the video shows no evidence that violence occurred during the incident, prompting the photographer who shot the video to slam Fox's coverage as "a genuinely dangerous narrative that Fox News is helping to create."*Fox has always done its best to demonize working Americans that disagree with Fox's proto-racist agenda. So nothing new in that regard. One interesting aspect is the way they play pieces of a video, than immediately begin to talk over it, thus lending whatever is in the video a narrative that Fox wants its viewers to believe. No wonder Fox has the worse informed viewers of nay news network.
Fox & Friends Falsely Claims "Violent" WI Protesters "Attack[ed]" Grothman
Kilmeade: Protesters Got "Restless And, Dare I Say, Violent." On the March 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade introduced a segment on a Republican Wisconsin lawmaker, Sen. Glenn Grothman, being heckled by a chanting crowd of protesters by falsely claiming the protesters were "getting restless and, dare I say, violent." Co-host Steve Doocy claimed that, "If you put yourself in [Grothman's] shoes...it's absolutely scary." Doocy later claimed, "When you look at that and all the incivility there, you realize that to these people, elections have no consequence, mean nothing." During the segment, the on-screen graphics repeatedly referred to the "angry" protesters as "violent" or "attack[ing]" Grothman.
....Twelve-Minute Long Video Shows No Violence Occurred. The video, which was shot by Wisconsin area photographer Phil Ejercito, show that Grothman was heckled by protesters, but no violence occurred. In fact, at one point during the video, a protester can be heard to shout "don't touch him" and at another, the protesters chanted "peace" and "peaceful." [YouTube, 03/01/11]
Grothman Himself Claimed "He Didn't Think He Was Ever In Any Real Danger." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that, Grothman "told the [Cap Times] he didn't think he was ever in any real danger." From the Journal Sentinel:
Grothman downplayed the situation and told the paper he didn't think he was ever in any real danger.
"I really think if I had had to, I could have walked through the crowd and it would have been okay," he told the Cap Times. "They're loud, they'll give you the finger, and they yell at you, but I really think deep down inside they're just mostly college kids having fun, just like they're having fun sleeping with their girfriends on air mattresses. That's the guts of that crowd." [Journal Sentinel, 03/02/11]
Grothman Called Protesters "Good People" And Noted That He Was Not Scared. During his interview on Fox & Friends, Doocy asked Grothman if he was scared by the protesters. Grothman responded "Not really, because I think most people are basically good people. I mean, they've been running around the capitol for over a week now, chanting, blowing their horns, pounding their drums." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 03/03/11
Photographer Slams Fox's Coverage As "Establish[ing] A Fictional Narrative"
Photographer Phil Ejercito: I condemn the use of my work to distort the truth about the spirited but non-violent protests here in Madison. In a statement to Media Matters, Phil Ejercito, the local photographer who shot the footage of Sen. Grothman being heckled by the crowd, said he "condemn[ed] the use of my work to distort the truth about the spirited but non-violent protests here in Madison," calling it a "a genuinely dangerous narrative that Fox News is helping to create." From Ejercito's statement to Media Matters:
It sickens me to see the truth so willfully distorted. In deciding to release this video, I considered how it would be used, but I (perhaps naively) believed that the facts in the video would speak for itself - the people of Wisconsin are angry, Senator Grothman got a well-deserved ribbing, the Walker administration's lockdown of the Capitol is misguided, and Representative Hulsey acted honorably. It is simply astounding that the same faction of the right-wing that would claim that torture in Abu Ghraib was "fraternity hazing" would equate heckling as a "violent attack."
Let there be no ambiguity: I condemn the use of my work to distort the truth about the spirited but non-violent protests here in Madison. I believe that this is a genuinely dangerous narrative that Fox News is helping to create... I am deeply disturbed to consider that my work is being misused to establish a fictional narrative of violence by the working families of Wisconsin, and I encourage people to watch the entire clip on YouTube for themselves to understand the full context and decide for themselves what truthfully took place. [Media Matters, 03/04/11]
Doocy Again Falsely Claims Walker "Made It Very Clear" That Collective Bargaining Was "One Of the Things He Was Going To Address." Later on Fox & Friends, during an interview with Grothman, Doocy claimed that "all these people with the signs, the horns, the whistles, apparently they weren't paying attention to the fact that there was an election this past November and the message in the fact that Scott Walker became the governor, he had made it very clear, this is one of the things he was going to address. Collective bargaining. And the unions." [Fox News,Fox & Friends, 03/03/11]Walker does have a history of hating unions, but he never campaigned on ending collective bargaining. Doocy is a true believer, willing to sacrifice all honor and integrity for the sake of the cause.
In Fact, Walker Did Not Campaign On Ending Collective Bargaining
PolitiFact: Walker Did Not Campaign On Ending Collective Bargaining. On February 22, PolitiFact Wisconsin gave a "false" rating to Walker's claim that he campaigned on his budget proposals, including curtailing collective bargaining
