Looking Deeper at Differing Coverages of Officer Sicknick Memorial
On Tuesday night, February 2nd, a ceremony was held to honor Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was murdered on January 6th at the Capitol. His remains were brought to the Capitol Rotunda to lie in a place of honor. This was only the 5th time a private citizen has ever been honored in this manner. The media coverage surrounding this memorial was strikingly different among cable news outlets, and provides plenty of information for us about what these news organizations deem worthy for citizens to know.
CNN and MSNBC covered the ceremony fairly extensively, and showed footage of President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden paying their respects and praying for the slain officer. Meanwhile at Fox, after spending portions of his program talking to Eric Trump about not agreeing with the use of the term "insurrection" to describe the event at the Capitol on January 6th, Sean Hannity showed an image of the ceremony at 9:59 pm, made a brief statement, and handed the programing over to Laura Ingraham, who also made a brief statement about the officer. From there, it was on to talking about COVID with doctors who were publicly supporting Hydroxychloroquine this past year. She would check back in with the ceremony 20 minutes later as she went to commercial break.
While there were a lot of claims on Twitter about Fox News not covering the ceremony at all, these were technically not correct, as at the time both of these Tweets were sent, these Fox hosts simply hadn't gotten to their coverage yet.
Hey Clark, I think this was very well written. Having talked to a good number of people about the incident(hazards of work) I think that the difference between media orgs is perception of intent. The right-wing folks I've talked to have seemed to think that this incident was the same as BLM protests. It just got out of hand. The further left wing folks tend to think it was a legitimate attempt to overthrow the government. But I think the function of both of these extreme viewpoints is a purposeful playing up or playing down of the significance of the events. Great post!
ReplyDeleteIt is always fascinating to take a look at the differences between the various 24/7 network news programs. Personally, I think it's all pretty bad. That said, Fox News deserves special recognition. I am highly interested to see what exactly the channel will look like over the next four years. For the last four, it has gushed over a President that lied nearly every single day of his term, and glossed over the lies on a regular basis. The last few months in particular have been especially bad. In the events leading up to the Capitol riot, Fox opinion hosts were glad to push the lies that ultimately killed officer Sicknick. How can a station simply move past that with a new President? Will they pretend as though Trump never happened, all is normal, you can trust us? Who knows. But considering just how many people use Fox News, it's in all of our best interest to keep an eye on it.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very interesting read. I had no idea of how Fox was covering the memorial of Brian Sicknick (or should I say lack thereof). The difference between Fox covering the murder of a capitol police officer and other officers who have died in the line of duty is because, like you said, it doesn't align with their narrative. To cover a memorial is admitting, by Fox's standards, fault for the insurrection on January 6th; this is something Fox refuses to do and has consistently pushed the notion of "moving on" from the events at the capitol.
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