Trump's racist ad is too racist even for Fox News

Trump’s false and racist ad that smears Democrats on immigration has been deemed too offensive even for Fox News.

“Upon further review, FOX News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either FOX News Channel or FOX Business Network,” Fox News’ head of ad sales, Marianne Gambelli, told CNN’s Brian Stelter.

Fox followed the lead of other news outlets, including NBC, which pulled the ad on Monday morning.

The ad, produced for Trump’s campaign and tweeted out by Trump himself, features video of convicted cop murderer Luis Bracamontes and falsely blames Democrats for allowing him into the country.

It has been compared to the infamously race-baiting “Willie Horton” ad produced by outside groups supporting George H.W. Bush in 1988 — except this new ad was approved by Trump himself.

It’s not quite clear why Fox News is suddenly shying away from airing odious and hateful commentary. Rupert Murdoch’s fear-mongering outlet has led the effort to demonize and dehumanize a group of migrants and refugees who are slowly traveling to the U.S. border — many or most of whom won’t end up completing the journey.

Fox host Sean Hannity has tried to terrify viewers by baselessly claiming that the traveling migrants were “planning to firebomb anybody that gets in their way,” while Fox’s Jeanine Pirror ramped up the reckless hysteria by suggesting the refugees were “pedophiles,” “career criminals,” and “people who think they can beat their wives.”

Outside of the Fox News hate bubble, however, Trump’s ad was widely and swiftly condemned — even by mainstream outlets that are typically reluctant to label something “racist.”

“The Trump campaign ad is the latest example of the President’s willingness to lie and fear-monger in order to tear at racial and societal divides; to embrace demagoguery to bolster his own political power and the cause of the Republican midterm campaign,” CNN reported last week under the headline, “Trump shocks with racist new ad days before midterms.”

CNN has refused to air the ad as a paid commercial.

NBC, however, did air the ad Sunday night. After coming under intense criticism for that, NBC announced Monday that the company recognizes “the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible.”

There’s no word yet on how much money NBC pocketed from Republicans for the ad buy — which ran during NBC’s highly-rated “Sunday Night Football,” seen by more than 20 million people this week.

Facebook also announced Monday that it was yanking the ad from its site.

The good news is that major television news outlets are refusing to run the odious ad. The bad news is that some of them gave the commercial lots of free TV time last week in reporting on it as news.

“In the two days since the president posted the ad, CNN aired the clip with its audio at least 19 different times, totaling more than seven minutes of free airtime for the video between the network’s normal programming and reruns,” the Daily Beast reports.

Media outlets need to be more vigilant than ever to make sure they don’t help Trump traffic in hate.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.