Fox & Friends Airs Misleading Footage To Suggest Al Sharpton Led Protesters Calling For “Dead Cops”
Fox's Clayton Morris: Al Sharpton Is “Calling To Kill Cops”
Written by Timothy Johnson
Published
Fox & Friends Sunday repeatedly spliced footage of Al Sharpton speaking at a Washington, D.C. “Justice for All” march with footage from a separate event in New York City where some in the crowd chanted for “dead cops” to claim Sharpton is “calling to kill cops.”
The December 14 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday opened with video from a December 13 march in New York City where some protesters chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.” Co-host Anna Kooiman set up the footage by saying, “Thousands march with Al Sharpton against the police,” and later promised “more from Sharpton's 'March for Justice.'”
But the footage of protesters chanting anti-police slogans was not from Sharpton's December 13 march, which The Washington Post described as a “peaceful civil rights march led by families of the slain and organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network.”
In a later segment flagged by liberal news site Raw Story, Fox sandwiched -- without explanation -- a clip of the “dead cops” chant in between two clips of Sharpton speaking at the “Justice for All” rally, conflating the two events.
Although an on-screen graphic identified the “dead cop” chant as coming from the New York City protest, co-host Tucker Carlson strongly implied that all the footage shown was from Sharpton's event, stating, “Huh. So the first clip you heard people are saying, 'We want the cops dead.' And the second you heard Al Sharpton say 'We're not against the police.'”
Co-host Clayton Morris later questioned Sharpton's claim not to oppose law enforcement and suggested that Sharpton was “calling to kill cops.”
MORRIS: But Al Sharpton says, “Wait, wait, wait a sec, you are blowing this out of proportion. We're not anti-police at all.” Listen to Reverend Sharpton.
SHARPTON (CLIP): We're not saying all police are bad. We're not even saying most are bad. We're not anti-police. But we're anti-brutality and the federal government must have a threshold to protect that. Second, the Justice Department must have a division funded to deal with this. Thirdly, we must have the power of special prosecutors, not the local prosecutors.
MORRIS: So does that square with you? You're not anti-police, but you're calling to kill cops.
CARLSON: Well the guy has no idea what he is talking about.
MORRIS: And you're anti-brutality too.
CARLSON: If you take seriously what he said, you can't even understand it. It just doesn't make any sense