The editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was not a huge fan of the way Fox News covered the Ferguson protests following the death of Michael Brown in August.
Editor Gilbert Bailon lamented that Fox focused more on the looting during the protests than on the broader situation.
“I think Fox took a different angle, their view was more of the view of the chaos, was really focusing on the looting and less of what was going on in the community pre-dating the looting. The looting was very dramatic,” he told Media Matters in an interview published Tuesday. “But there was the deeper story there. Some stayed on in town longer, I think there was a different viewpoint on them and less on the undercurrent.”
Bailon said that Fox didn’t “look at it as deeply” or stay as long as other networks like CNN and MSNBC.
He also criticized the Washington Post and the New York Post for stories he thinks had questionable sourcing.
“I don’t know whether these are wrong but we haven’t been able to verify it,” Bailon said.
He mentioned a Washington Post story citing a “person familiar with the county’s investigation” who said that Brown has marijuana in his system when he was shot by a police officer.
He also said that a New York Post story citing a report that the officer who shot Brown sustained a fracture to his eye socket has been “has been debunked by many.”
