Fox News Fraud

[David Morris]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/13/1952867/-Fox-News-is-making-up-images-because-they-can-t-stand-the-fact-that-Seattle-is-not-in-chaos

Fox News hasn’t just been making up stories—it’s been manufacturing images
and video. As the *Seattle Times
<https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/fox-news-runs-digitally-altered-images-in-coverage-of-seattles-protests-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone/>*reports,
Fox has “digitally altered” images to make the situation in the area seem
dire. That includes putting together elements from multiple images to
create a misleading collage, lifting signs and symbols from one area to
impose them on another, and it means that many of the images Fox is
using to present the image of chaos in Seattle … aren’t even from Seattle.

Images that appear to show masked and armed men inside the zone are in fact
composites taken on different dates and in different places. Burning
buildings are actually from shots taken in St. Paul during the first days
of the protests there. Some of the pictures Fox has merged together in
their “coverage” of the current Seattle are actually two weeks old—or
elements from two-week old pictures have been inserted into current scenes
to make the situation appear worse than it is.

Fox has also continued to report, and other sources have repeated, claims
that businesses inside the zone are being extorted for protection payments,
even after the police chief in Seattle investigated these claims and found
nothing to them.

The protesters within the zone are anarchists in the sense that there is no
formal leadership, which has led to numerous voices claiming to speak for
the group and issue various lists of demands (some of which have appeared on
Daily Kos <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1952321>). But the most
prominent demands of those in the zone are a defunding of the Seattle
police, charges against police involved in violence toward Black
people, reparations for past victims of police violence, and a dismissal of
charges against protesters. In the last few days, representatives from the
police have met with some of those inside the zone in hopes of finding
points of agreement.

The decades, the Seattle police have been involved in repeated acts of
violence—from an assault on peaceful protesters
<https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/15/1905821/-Seattle-cops-ride-bikes-into-pedestrians-in-violent-melee-with-anti-Trump-protesters>
during
a 2019 protest, to a brutal, unnecessary arrest
<https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/2/18/1365156/-Thanks-to-police-dash-cam-Seattle-man-exonerated-in-brutal-unnecessary-arrest-VIDEO>
captured
on video, to even suing to be able to use *more violence*
<https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/10/23/1338625/-Seattle-cops-trying-to-sue-for-their-constitutional-right-to-use-excessive-force>.
The department has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for using
unnecessary levels of force. That’s why, under the Obama administration,
the department was investigated for Civil Rights violations
<https://static.squarespace.com/static/5425b9f0e4b0d66352331e0e/t/5436d96ee4b087e24b9d38a1/1412880750546/spd_findletter_12-16-11.pdf>
and
required to take steps to address systemic problems. Against that
background, many in Seattle, including many Seattle officials, seem open to
the idea of making the Capitol Hill area an ongoing experiment in operating
without police, and for how shared community resources can be mixed with
ordinary shops and businesses.

Conservatives aren’t upset because Seattle is burning. They’re terrified
because it is not.