This Monday, Brave New Films held a press conference with three of the women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. The very brief report on Fox News seemed designed more to provide Trump’s response than the women’s accusations.
As you can see below, the press conference lasted about a half hour. Fox’s report lasted a little over one minute. There was no audio of what any of the women said. Anchor Bill Hemmer spoke over the footage, which also included b-roll footage of Trump.
HEMMER: A group of women now who have publicly accused President Trump of sexual harassment and assault now speaking out about their experience. This is a news conference: Lexington Hotel, New York City, hosted by Brave New Films. The women expected to call for accountability and a Congressional investigation of alleged sexual misconduct by the president.
That was it for the press conference. If you wanted to know any of the women’s experiences or feelings, you were SOL if Fox was your only source of news this morning.
However, Hemmer spent just as much (in fact a tad more) time on Trump’s response.
HEMMER: While that’s happening, we got a statement from the White House about an hour ago. This is pretty much what it says: “These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts were addressed at length during last year’s campaign and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory. The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes and the publicity toward that only further confirms the political motives behind them.” That from the White House.
Then Hemmer moved to talk about the Senate race in Alabama.
Hemmer did not note the ambiguous use of the term “totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts.” Nor did he note that despite repeated promises to produce eyewitness accounts, as Think Progress pointed out, only one “eyewitness” has ever surfaced and he has a “long history as a fraud and a liar.” Think Progress further explains who that "eyewitness" is:
That man, Anthony Gilberthorpe, is a serial fableist with a history of pushing false stories for a few minutes of attention.
Gilberthorpe claims that he was in the first-class cabin with Trump and Jessica Leeds during a cross-country flight in 1980. Gilberthorpe presented no actual evidence that he was on the flight, “just his self-described excellent memory.” He also did not explain why he might have been on a first-class domestic flight in the U.S. as an 18-year-old British boy. He also did not explain why, if he had been on such a flight, he would remember an interaction between Trump and Leeds in which “nothing inappropriate” occurred. He also claims that Leeds, who was in her 30s at the time, confided in him during the flight that she wanted to marry Trump.
Still, it must have annoyed the heck out of at least some people at Fox to even mention Brave New Films or any of its projects. In case you don’t recall, they are the folks who produced the groundbreaking documentary “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.” (Full disclosure: I worked as a volunteer researcher on that film as well as several other Brave New Films projects.)
Watch Fox’s coverage of the press conference above, from the December 11, 2017 Happening Now. Underneath that is the full conference with all the details of Trump’s sexual misconduct Fox would prefer its viewers not to know.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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