MSNBC analyst Eric Boehlert claimed that Fox News has been responsible “for getting people killed for years” during a segment on “AM Joy” Sunday morning.
Boehlert’s claim came during the middle of a conversation about the novel coronavirus, which has continued to spread across the world. Earlier in the hour, host Joy Reid pointed to a piece from the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan, who called on Fox News to “tell the truth about coronavirus.”
“Anyone waiting for Rupert Murdoch to do the right thing will be waiting a very, very long time, after someone who has watched him for 20 years,” Boehlert said. “Look, Fox News has been getting people killed for years, just look at the crusade against affordable health care, their crusade against expanding Medicaid. This is not unusual for them. It’s far more dire.”
WATCH:
WaPo’s piece specifically asked Murdoch, a media mogul who owns the corporation that owns Fox, to force the network to be honest. Sullivan accused Fox News of being “a de facto state-run media monster more devoted to maintaining power than shedding light on the truth.”
The article also reads that Fox News is not taking the coronavirus threat seriously, a point that Boehlert expanded on.
“But now the mind-meld of Fox News and Trump is potentially lethal as Trump plays down the seriousness of the coronavirus and, hearing nothing but applause from his favorite information source for doing so, sees little reason to change,” according to Sullivan’s article.
The MSNBC analyst also claimed that Fox News brainwashes its viewers and is more than “just a conservative news organization.” He added that the network is “a cancer on this country.”
“Their programming is to vilify, stir hatred and paranoia and if a pandemic is the backdrop, they’re gonna do it,” according to Boehlert. “This is textbook brainwashing. So, the problem is when people watch Fox News, the hardcore viewers, they don’t watch it with an a la carte menu.”
“They don’t pick and choose which topics they think they believe or maybe they’re not going to believe. They’re all in. They believe everything. Even during a pandemic.” (RELATED: Disaster Capitalism In Full Swing As Kid Caught Selling Squirts Of Hand Sanitizer And Americans Go Berserk At Stores)