Hillary Clinton launched a damning attack on Fox News over the network’s refusal to show the 6 January hearings.
Fox News announced on Monday that they won’t carry the hearings live on Thursday, but will instead “cover the hearings as news warrants”.
“Fox News won’t air the January 6 hearings because they prefer their sedition made fresh on-site,” Ms Clinton, a former secretary of state, New York senator, and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted on Tuesday morning.
The network said on Monday that chief legal correspondent Shannon Bream will host a two-hour programme on the initial hearing on Thursday at 11pm – after the proceedings have concluded.
Fox Business will broadcast the hearings live, anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Fox News Digital, Fox News Audio, and Fox Nation will also report on the hearings.
The announcement revealed that Fox News won’t intervene in the programming choices of its primetime lineup including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. All three have slammed the 6 January House Select Committee, claiming that it’s illegitimate and partisan.
Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe also criticised Fox’s decision, tweeting that “Fox ‘News’ ran 1,098 primetime segments on Benghazi from the attack until the committee hearings, which they carried live for over 7 hours. Today the network announced it won’t cover the hearings on the January 6th insurrection. Conclusive proof that Fox isn’t NEWS at all”.
Committee member Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, tweeted that “if you work for Fox News and want to maintain your credibility as a journalist, now is a good time to speak out, or quit. Enough is enough”.
Democratic advisor Kurt Bardella wrote that “if the terrorists behind 9/11 started a ‘news’ organization, would we let them in the [White House] briefing room? Would we credential them on Capitol Hill? Of course not. That’s how we need to think about Fox News”.
Journalist Molly Jong-Fast tweeted that “Fox News is trying to memory hole January 6 because they know it makes Republicans look indefensibly bad”.
