Right-wingers have blown a great deal of smoke about “grooming” and child sex abuse over the past few years, but you’ll be shocked to learn that when it comes to actual systemic abuse, they don’t actually seem to care.
A report released Tuesday from the media analysis nonprofit Media Matters for America has found that since May 23, Fox News programs spent a combined two hours and 12 minutes discussing Target’s Pride Month merchandise, with much of the discussion focusing on “expressions of outrage” that children were being exposed to pro-LGBTQ+ messages — or as the network falsely referred to the items, “Satanist kids’ clothes.”
Meanwhile, in the same seven days, Fox spent only 22 seconds covering Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s bombshell investigation which found that nearly 2,000 children were sexually abused by 450 Catholic priests in the state over the last seven decades.
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“While Fox repeatedly fearmongered about this supposed threat to children, the network almost completely ignored the reports of sexual abuse in the Illinois Catholic Church, airing only one segment on the attorney general’s report,” Media Matters researchers found.
Most other broadcast news networks reported on the story, of course, and some aired comments from survivors of the priests and brothers’ abuse. “We were treated with such disrespect by a church that was supposed to love and cherish us and honor us, and they didn't,” journalist and survivor Dan Ronan told NPR on Saturday. “And then they covered it up.”