Fox News host Laura Ingraham sneered at other news outlets on Monday night for catching her airing misleading images of empty store shelves, briefly issuing a grudging correction before mocking those who had the temerity to fact-check her.
In recent weeks, right-wing media has increasingly featured out-of-context photos of bare grocery store shelves to blast President Joe Biden over the growing supply chain issue. While some shops around the country are indeed currently facing increasing challenges due to clogged ports in Los Angeles, labor shortages, and the ongoing pandemic, many of the images of barely stocked American supermarket shelves are outdated or from elsewhere in the world.
During an Oct. 19 segment on the supply chain crisis, Ingraham aired two photos of empty shelves that were actually from the early days of the pandemic in March 2020, as PolitiFact later noted. (Ingraham’s Fox News colleague Will Cain used one of the same images the night before in a segment bashing Biden over the supply chain woes.)
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“On October 19, this show played eight seconds of b-roll showing empty shelves,” she declared Monday night. “The footage was mismarked in our system as it actually showed shelves for March 2020. Not a big deal [and] we of course apologize for putting up inaccurate visuals, but the really odd thing came in the ensuing days.”
Pointing to the PolitiFact fact-check, Ingraham said the outlet was “so concerned with this eight-second mistake” because it wanted to “distract from the fact” that stores are having problems stocking their shelves.
“So in the interest of accuracy, we want to take you on a tour of the United States,” she added, before scrolling through a montage of images she said were taken in recent days.
“Here are some empty shelves in Chicago,” Ingraham said at one point as she shared a photo of a nearly full grocery store shelf.
Notably, while many of the photos of half-empty shelves were dated from the past week, the final undated image she aired purportedly came from Smyrna, Tennessee. That same image also happened to be used in the Oct. 15 broadcast of Fox News @ Night during a segment on an uptick in shoplifting.
“Bare necessities missing from some store shelves making shoppers feel lucky if they can find the items they’re looking for, while others are finding simple and low-priced items being kept under lock and key to keep things away,” Fox News correspondent Laura Ingle said during the Oct. 15 segment as the image was aired.
