Fox News and vaccines
Fox News and vaccines
Right-wing network Fox News spent months pandering to antivaxxers, pushing misinformation and false claims about coronavirus vaccines in a way that almost certainly helped reinforce high levels of vaccine refusal among conservatives.
Host Sean Hannity has brought conspiracy theorists onto his radio show to blame vaccines for new variants of the virus and falsely claim they are no longer effective, while Tucker Carlson has portrayed vaccination as authoritarian (totalitarian, actually) and distorted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data that shows vaccines are safe to argue they are actually very dangerous. Coverage on Fox has referred to “unvaccinated Americans” as though they are a vulnerable minority group and attacked vaccination campaigns as Orwellian government overreach. In general, the tenor of Fox coverage has been to consistently deny that anyone at the network is against vaccines while undermining the science behind them, claiming they violate civil liberties, and a Big Government boondoggle that won’t help fight the virus.
It should come as little surprise that, as CNN reported last month, Fox Corporation has implemented a “vaccine passport” system in which vaccinated employees who can provide a card proving they’ve had the shot can bypass otherwise mandatory health checks on entering its facilities.
