Some commenters were exercised that I called Whoopi Goldberg’s exhortation on “The View” for her audience to “block [Trump’s Presidency] every way we can! That’s all. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. Don’t wait until November. Start looking now” a pure violation of FCC rules, which it is. Broadcast networks are permitted to use the airwaves only if they hew to the public interest. Editorials are in the public interest when they are labelled as such, and political endorsements are permitted. However, a network, in this case ABC, using the privilege of a government-owned and regulated broadcast channel to call on its audience to block the elected government of the United States is not in the public interest, and no news program with an FCC license has ever crossed that line before.
Now comes Fox News, swinging to the other extreme. Radio host Sid Rosenberg joined “Fox News and Friends” last week and launched into a rant against New York’s Muslim, Hamas-supporting, anti-Israel, communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as you can see above. The trigger was the Mayor’s grandstanding about wanting to arrest Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes.
Rosenberg was a guest, and as a guest, was not speaking for Fox News, nor was Fox News responsible for his opinions. Nonetheless, “Fox and Friends” co-host Griffin Jenkins felt it was necessary to distance the network from Rosenberg’s opinions and to disavow them directly to the Fox viewers.
“We know there are heated feelings around this war last hour, while discussing the role anti-Israel is playing in the rise of antisemitism, one of our guests labeled New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a quote, “terrorist,” Jenkins said. “Now that word carries an extremely serious meaning, it should not be used freely and its important we distinguish between strong political criticism and factual allegations.”
All Fox News needed to say, if it really needed to say anything, was to repeat the hoary disclaimer that the opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of Fox News. Who in broadcast news ever distinguishes between strong political criticism and factual allegations? On the other networks, guests, contributors and sometimes hosts routinely call President Trump a racist, a fascist, a pederast, a criminal, a dictator, demented, a murderer and worse. Virtually never does a representative of the program apologize or disavow these extreme accusations, and I only say “virtually” because I can’t monitor all the networks all the time.
Jenkins is right: enabling terrorists, encouraging or rationalizing terrorism doesn’t make someone a literal terrorist. However, he pushed back on that position when Rosenberg stated it. That was all that is necessary. He was engaging in responsible news analysis moderation. The other networks seldom even meet that standard.
Ethics Alarms 