Russian foreign minister praises Fox News for Ukraine coverage
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After three weeks of bitter and barbaric fighting in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praised the coverage of the war from one American media outlet: Fox News.
Speaking to the state-owned RT network, Lavrov said Fox News has been “trying to represent some alternative points of view” in its coverage of the war.
“We understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent Western media,” he said in the Friday interview, which was conducted in English.
He went on to denounce the social media ban of former President Donald Trump and appeared to criticize the labeling of Jan. 6 insurrectionists as terrorists.
“But when you watch other channels, read the social networks and internet platforms, when the acting president was blocked and this censorship continues in a very big way. The substitution of notions whenever something is happening by the way of mass protest, mass demonstrations, which they don’t like, they immediately call it domestic terrorism.”
He added: “So it’s a war, and it’s a war which involves the methods of information terrorism.”
Last Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that U.S. government officials wanted a war between Russia and Ukraine in a bid to “grab more power.” While otherwise denouncing the Russian invasion, Carlson theorized that the U.S. helped provoke the conflict after emergency powers enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic had come to an end.
“At exactly the moment when the emergency powers they awarded to themselves to fight COVID started to wane, our leaders began pushing for conflict with Russia,” the Fox News host said.
Meanwhile, retired United States Army Col. Douglas Macgregor declared on Carlson’s show on Thursday that Kyiv had lost the war with Russia and that Ukraine had been “grounded to bits.”
The retired colonel added: “There’s no question about that, despite what we report on our mainstream media.” Most military experts, however, say the Russian advance is moving much slower than Moscow expected in the face of severe logistical problems and fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Fox News hosts have continued to push certain talking points while reporting on Russia’s invasion, linking the war to various Biden administration policies.
Three days into the invasion, “Fox and Friends” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy declared it “a Green New Deal war,” stating, “This is John Kerry’s war. This is AOC’s war.”
Two days before that, while covering Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine, Carlson accused the Biden administration of trying to “degrade and humiliate” the U.S. military by focusing on “white rage” and “maternity flight suits.”
Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin has made waves for her near-constant correcting of the record set forth by the news network's opinion hosts, including primetime host Sean Hannity.
And Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall corrected “The Five” co-host Greg Gutfeld in early March after Gutfeld complained about what he saw as a narrative presented solely through the eyes of the Ukrainians.
“And they only go in one direction. And I understand why they only go in one direction, because it’s the invaded who experience the atrocity, right? And that’s all we’re going to see,” Gutfeld complained.
Moments later, live on air, Hall rebuked the host for making those comments from a studio in New York. “Speaking as someone on the ground, I want to say that this is not the media trying to drum up some emotional response," Hall said from Ukraine. Gutfeld, whose mother-in-law escaped from Ukraine to Poland earlier this month, called it a “cheap attack” on him.
Hall was wounded during a Russian attack just five days later. A cameraman, Pierre Zakrzewski, and a producer, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, who were both working for Fox News on the ground in Ukraine, were killed in the attack.
