Media Matters: Fox News volunteers for Scott Brown's campaign

MediaMatters
January 22, 2010

Picking up where the network left off in 2009, Fox News jumped into its first political campaign of the year, this time setting its sights on the U.S. Senate to help elect Republican Scott Brown to the seat previously held by Democrat Ted Kennedy. Fox News and other media conservatives anticipated and celebrated Brown's election with a hyperbolic fervor that would redden the faces of the "Obamaniacs" they most despised in 2008. As conservative media saw it, in defeating Democratic challenger Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, Scott Brown took down Goliath, the 1980 Soviet Olympic hockey team, the Berlin Wall, and the British Empire. Before Brown assumed his seat in the Senate, he had been nominated by Drudge and Fox News to be our next president.

Fox News didn't simply cheer from the sidelines of this contest. Indeed, the network actively aided Brown's campaign. Fox News repeatedly hosted Brown in the days leading up to the election, and during each appearance, Brown directed viewers to his website to find out "how to help with donating and volunteering." Fox News political analyst Dick Morris took it upon himself to urge viewers to "go to DickMorris.com ... to help elect Brown," because if "we win this fight, then there will never be another victory for Obama." When asked at a rally about "ethical questions" raised by Fox News' advocacy for Brown, chief political correspondent Carl Cameron fled, saying he didn't have time to answer. But he did have the time to autograph "Brown for Senate" campaign materials and pose for pictures with Brown's volunteers, as Think Progress documented.

Fox News also did Brown the favor of repeatedly misrepresenting remarks Coakley made to portray her as incompetent. America's News HQ anchor Gregg Jarrett stated on January 17, "Martha Coakley is out of step when she says things like terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan, or in the debate saying, quote, 'We need to get taxes up.' " Interpreting Coakley's remarks in this way requires a willing suspension of basic verbal reasoning skills; and that was Fox's "straight news" programming. On Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy actually claimed that Coakley "suggested the Taliban [are] gone from Afghanistan," and Michael Scheuer declared that Coakley "doesn't seem to mind" that "we are losing there." For his part, Glenn Beck accused Coakley of "religious bigotry" for saying that those who would "deny emergency contraception to a woman who came in who had been raped" probably "shouldn't work in the emergency room."

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