Fox News Host: We Shouldn’t Have Shown Islamic State Killing Tape (VIDEO)

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Fox News host Howard Kurtz said Wednesday that he did not approve of the network both broadcasting a still image from an Islamic State video showing a Jordanian pilot be burned alive and posting the footage in full on its website.

“I disagree with the Fox decision and here’s why: ISIS — I fear that many of the us in the media are helping ISIS spread its propaganda, using its fear tactics,” Kurtz told fellow Fox host Megyn Kelly.

Kurtz, who hosts a show criticizing media, said that he understood the argument made by Fox’s higher-ups, that “the barbarity of ISIS” trumped concerns over showing the graphic video of pilot Muath Al-Kaseasbeh burning to death in a cage.

“I just have a concern that we are helping spread the fear that ISIS so badly wants to spread,” he concluded.

Kurtz’s concerns echoed what a terror expert told the Guardian on Wednesday, that the Fox News Channel should be receiving “royalty checks” from the Islamic State.

“[Fox News] are literally – literally – working for al-Qaida and Isis’ media arm,” expert Malcolm Nance said, arguing that the channel had placed more hostages, including an American, in danger.

Kelly defended the decision of her show to a frame from the hostage’s death as a tool to “remind people of the enemy we face.”

“It’s as if we’re in World War II, Howie, and there’s a chance to see inside the concentration camp and inside the gas chamber as the horror was happening,” she said.

Watch the clip, courtesy of Media Matters:

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Notable Replies

  1. But unfortunately you did… that horse has done left the barn as they say.

  2. Avatar for mantan mantan says:

    FOX, impressed by the graphics in the most recent highly produced death tape, wants to hire that ISIL producer.

  3. “[Fox News] are literally – literally – working for al-Qaida and Isis’ media arm,” expert Malcolm Nance said"

    Of course they are; their corporate model demands that they keeptheir (over 65 , white and entitled) audience as fearful as necessary to control them…

  4. Though this morning on Morning Joe: “We should’ve shown the immolation of the Jordanian pilot.”

  5. Well, of course they’re not sorry because they imagine it’s Obama in that cage. Expect that to be a new meme, if it hasn’t already.

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