“One of the reasons people are so misinformed about the vaccine—and a lot of other things—is Fox News,” Jimmy Kimmel said Wednesday night, highlighting a new study that shows just how deep that network’s disinformation campaign about COVID-19 goes. According to Media Matters, Fox “pushed a claim undermining vaccines during 99 percent of the days” between April 1 and Sept. 30 of this year.
“The two days they didn’t undermine it were the days they took off to go get the vaccine,” the host joked. Last month, Fox News revealed that more than 90 percent of its workforce is vaccinated and implemented a policy under which any unvaccinated staff would have to undergo daily COVID testing.
“They scoff at the vaccine,” he added. “They’re always making fun of people wearing masks, which is especially nuts because everyone, if you go around the Fox News building, you’d see that pretty much everybody is wearing a mask!” He showed footage from a recent report on the network’s new Washington bureau to emphasize his point.
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Kimmel did give credit to Fox hosts like Steve Doocy and Sean Hannity for at least mildly encouraging their viewers to get vaccinated, which is more than can be said for the “hardcore hammerheads” over at One America News. “They make Fox look like Alyssa Milano,” Kimmel joked.
“And it turns out they are funded—and no one knew this until yesterday—by AT&T!” he continued. “In 2013, they were like, ‘You know what this country needs? And someone was like, ‘I don’t know, affordable health care?’ And they said ‘No! An even farther-right-wing news network!’ And then they pumped tens of millions of dollars into what became One America News.”
That network “reportedly promised to offer only positive coverage of AT&T,” Kimmel explained, “in addition to positive coverage of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, anti-vax conspiracy theorists, QAnon, racism, fascism, narcissism, botulism, genital herpes, all the bad things.”
“So good going, AT&T!” he concluded. “Quite an investment in America.”
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