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:
But unfortunately you did… that horse has done left the barn as they say.
FOX, impressed by the graphics in the most recent highly produced death tape, wants to hire that ISIL producer.
“[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…
Though this morning on Morning Joe: “We should’ve shown the immolation of the Jordanian pilot.”
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.