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Critic’s Notebook: Women’s March on Washington Makes History, Except on Fox News

Jan 23, 2017  •  Post A Comment

Demonstrations around the globe over the weekend drew larger crowds than expected and galvanized anger over the Donald Trump presidency, but Frank Scheck writes in The Hollywood Reporter’s Critic’s Notebook that Fox News didn’t pay much attention.

More than 3 million people around the world reportedly participated in the event Saturday, with the centerpiece being the Women’s March on Washington. But Scheck notes that all three of the major cable news outlets started the day with coverage of a visit by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to a prayer service at the National Cathedral.

“During the service, if you wanted to see coverage of the Women’s March, you had to turn to C-SPAN,” Scheck notes. “When it was finally over, CNN and MSNBC began their daylong coverage of the protests, which already were exceeding expectations in terms of attendance. If you kept watching Fox News, however, you would barely have known they were happening.”

Scheck’s column adds: “Even while hundreds of thousands of people were peaceably marching in Washington, D.C., and other cities, Fox pretended that nothing special was going on. … And when Fox did finally report on the historic march, it was often in a smug, dismissive tone. Bill Hemmer rhetorically asked, ‘What does it say about Democrats, about liberals, that they refuse to accept reality?’ His co-host, Shannon Bream, cast doubt on the accuracy of the numbers of protesters being reported by the media, which was understandable if she was only watching her own network’s coverage.”

We encourage readers to click here to go to THR to read the full column.

7 Comments

  1. Women’s March on Washington Makes History, Except on Fox News.

    If I may quote Gomer Pyle: “Surprise surprise surprise.”

  2. Turnabout is such fun to watch! The mainstream media refused to cover the 15,000 and 20,000 attendees at Trump rallies but played camera tricks to make the few dozen that came out for Hillary look like a lot more. You criticize Hemmer for his observations but never challenged anything that the united mainstream made up about Trump. You (TV Week) have had a hard time trying to appear balanced and did not succeed in your effort. Your bias was palpable. And now you obviously are joining the Democrats in trying to continue gender politics. Listen to Trump’s inaugural speech again. He is not what the mainstream is trying to portray. People that practice race politics are racists. People that practice gender, income or age politics are bigots. It appears from the real world that the divisive politics of division is 100% from the Democrat playbook. You all still don’t realize why Trump is our president! Very sad.

  3. Score another Touchdown for “Reality Check” against TV Week !! Hey TV Week !! Where were you when I wanted to hear your take on Hillary Clinton’s home brew server? Or Benghazi?? Or Debby Wasserman-Schultz putting her thumb on the scale in favor of Clinton over Sanders in the Dem Primary??? Or Donna Brazile giving debate questions to Hillary before debates against Sanders???? Or the embarrassing DNC and Podesta emails made public by Wikileaks????? Or… Well, you get the point.
    (However, I really DON’T think TV Week gets the point. That would be too “uncomfortable.”).

  4. Fox News should just change their name to “The Conservative-Republican Party Network…Ignoring Everything Unless It Fits Into Our Narrow Worldview.”

  5. It was a tremendous event to have all of those people marching. That type of organization is fantastic. The odd part was that when you talked to the people that were just marching, they didn’t have an agenda other than they don’t like Trump. That large a group should have had a real agenda that they represented. But it was embarrassing to hear the marchers interviewed and they could only say they were against Trump. Yes, the usual group of talking heads gave their usual complaints when interviewed. But it was much more compelling to see the interviews of the marchers and realize that they had no agenda other than saying they didn’t like Trump.

  6. Not the first time FNC has ignored news that does not meet their narrative. Fair? Balanced?

  7. FNC, The antidote to CNN.

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