[An Erroneous Fox News Report Clouds the New York Times
An incorrect report spread by Fox News about the New Orleans terror attack has significantly warped the political dialogue in the aftermath of the deadly rampage. The false report, attributed to anonymous sources, has confused the public and even President-elect Donald Trump, and is still circulating more than 24 hours later, serving as a cautionary tale about the news ecosystem as the new year begins.
During the 10 a.m. hour on Wednesday, Fox News reported that the suspect’s truck crossed the U.S. border in Eagle Pass, Texas “two days ago.” Some of the network’s coverage explicitly stated that “the suspect” had crossed the border, leaving viewers with the impression that a foreigner might be responsible for the deadly attacks. In fact, the New Orleans attack suspect is a U.S. citizen and a former Army veteran. However, those facts were not yet public when Fox aired the faulty information.
Eight minutes after the first Fox segment, Trump issued a statement about “criminals coming in” from other countries, though he did not mention Fox directly. Some of Trump’s family members and political allies also quickly connected the attack to illegal immigration and cited the report.
Fox attempted to walk back the incorrect report about an hour and a half later, clarifying that the truck used in the attack was in Eagle Pass nearly two months ago, not two days ago. The truck was being driven by someone else at that time, making the detail about the border completely irrelevant. However, the damage was already done, with references to Eagle Pass continuing to spread across social media.
Trump’s original statement used the New Orleans attack to assert that he was right and the “Fake News Media” was wrong about the threat posed by illegal immigration. If he had waited a couple of hours to react, he would have learned that the suspect was a U.S. citizen.
In a strange moment on the air, a Fox reporter read Trump’s quote about “criminals coming in” from other countries, then clarified that the New Orleans attacker did not enter from another country, without noting that it was Fox that seemed to mislead Trump into issuing the statement in the first place.
Overnight, Trump continued to post messages on his Truth Social platform assailing “open borders.” After a related segment on “Fox & Friends” the next morning, Trump wrote, “I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”
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