Conservative media is living in the past as unrest subsides across the US

Watch Fox News for a few hours, and you might think rioters are still prowling America's biggest cities, smashing windows and stealing handbags. You might think Minneapolis is still burning. You might think the unrest is getting worse.

In the "Fox & Friends" and "Hannity" alternative universe, the rioting is still a present-tense threat and could restart at any time. This is contradicted by every news report from every other outlet. The story now is about peaceful, powerful, sustained protest all across the country. But "riot porn" video is irresistible to Fox's producers and hosts, even though the video is out of date now.

I've been noticing this for several days now. Sometimes the video has a little label in the corner with the date, like "May 28" for fires in Minneapolis, but not always. And if you think the label is sufficient, you're kidding yourself. The video is often accompanied by talk of "unrest," violence and inner-city chaos. One of the banners on Sean Hannity's show Tuesday night said "GROWING LAWLESSNESS IN MAJOR CITIES." His show, and others, have been blurring the unrest seen in the wake of George Floyd's death with other, generalized types of crime. Statements like "we have to restore law and order" have implied that law and order has not been restored.

Look, I live in Manhattan and I hated what happened in this city on May 31 and June 1. The looting and mayhem was appalling. But it was more than a week ago. The graffiti has been scrubbed off the bodega on my block. The broken windows have been cleaned up. And today I noticed the city's garbage can -- taken away last week because vandals were lighting fires in them -- back on my building's corner today. I took it as a small but telling sign that things are getting back to normal. It is grossly misleading to show old video of looters on a loop while omitting what's going on today.

These are editorial choices

Brian Kilmeade kind of gave up the game on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday morning. "I thought when George Floyd was killed, we were going to be talking about racial equality in this country and George Floyd's life," he said. "We could not get to that because our first four stories were all about the massive destruction on the biggest cities." The control room cued up video of Minneapolis chaos from May 29, a week and a half ago. Kilmeade said "now people are looking around and saying 'What is the message again?'"

Well, the message from the video was that Minneapolis is in shambles. The message from the on-screen banner was about "THE THREAT OF ANTIFA." Other networks have found plenty of time to talk about racial equality and Floyd's life, so Kilmeade should look inward...

Trump perpetuates the lie

On Tuesday morning the president retweeted a three-day-old post from a right-wing columnist in Europe who said Minneapolis is "looking like the aftermath of a war." Again, notice the use of present-tense. The tweet was old and the video was even older -- it was a compilation of ugly scenes from the end of May.

Folks who live in these cities know the truth about the swift recovery from the sickening but short-lived riots. Do Fox viewers in rural areas know the truth?

All three of Fox's prime time shows delighted in an audio tape of Chicago aldermen arguing with the mayor about the May 31-June 1 violence. The conference call took place on Sunday, June 1. WTTW, the PBS affiliate in Chicago, obtained the tape and published it last Friday. Yet on Tuesday night Fox treated it like it was brand new.

The riot lie is related to this next item...

The "Antifa fantasy"

That's what Anne Helen Petersen calls it in her must-read story for BuzzFeed News. She explores how rumors about "roving bands of Antifa have followed small protests all over the United States." It's nonsense, of course, nonsense fueled by Facebook posts and fringe websites, but the rumors give militias something to guard against. As Petersen writes, "it doesn't matter if antifa was never coming in the first place. They didn't come, and that's evidence of victory."

>> The reality: "NPR has reviewed court documents of 51 individuals facing federal charges in connection with the unrest. As of Tuesday morning, none is alleged to have links to the antifa movement..."

>> Historian Mark Bray, who has studied the leftist groups, made this point on CNN the other day: "You can see that when these groups in major cities mobilize, they don't get more than a couple hundred people. And they're more active in some regions than others..."

>> In the past two weeks, Fox News programs have mentioned Antifa more than 325 times, per TVEyes. Fox Business: 173+ times. Antifa has come up 67+ times on CNN and 88+ times on MSNBC...

Trump's poisoned well of info

Trump's crazy tweet on Tuesday morning — "Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur" — came straight from what he was watching on TV. An anonymous post on the Conservative Treehouse blog led to a kooky segment on One America News, and Trump tagged OAN in his Tuesday morning tweet. So OAN is funneling conspiratorial nonsense from the fever swamps of the web into Trump's lap, and he's sharing it with the world.

The protester who was shoved, Martin Gugino, has been in the hospital for days. He is said to be in fair condition. His attorney told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night that "Martin holds no ill will toward the officers in this matter and he believes that better police training and reform can prevent issues like this from happening in the future." So he's taking the high road while others take the low road.

Garbage in, garbage out

Brian Lowry writes: Trump's search for friendly news coverage continues to produce a garbage-in, garbage-out dynamic. Namely, if you rely on outlets like OANN and random Twitter accounts that will provide the sought-after adulation, the quality of the information you put out will suffer accordingly...

Top Twitter reactions

-- CNN's Jake Tapper: "It doesn't take courage to say that the president shouldn't smear anyone, much less victims of (alleged) assault; or to condemn him for sharing lies from the fever swamps of the internet. Just a modicum of honesty and self respect. It's astounding to see folks unwilling to do so."

-- Political scientist Brendan Nyhan: "If you had a family member believed this stuff, you would try to help them. Instead, we gave them the nuclear codes."

Some OAN staffers upset

Oliver Darcy writes: While OAN publicly doubled down on its conspiracy theory, it "exasperated" multiple people within the little-watched network, WaEx's Mike Brest reported. "Several people in the newsroom spoke out about the story," one employee told Brest. Another described it as "freaking awful" conspiracy theory and said that a "majority" of staffers felt the same way...

Conservative media distances itself

Oliver Darcy writes: Even in conservative media, Trump's claim was met with resistance. The Washington Examiner and National Review dismissed it as a "conspiracy theory." Breitbart called it an "unsubstantiated claim." Fox News published a story extensively quoting journalists and pundits on both the right and left denouncing it. And the Drudge Report outright mocked it...

The same movie stuck on loop

Oliver Darcy writes: How many times have we seen this movie? The horror film in which Trump sees a conspiracy theory being peddled by one of his favorite right-wing outlets and then tweets it out without a care in the world about the potential consequences of his words? I'd honestly try to count how many times it has played out for the world to see, but I've lost count.

We've also seen the equally disturbing sequel play out far too many times. The one where Republican senators are questioned about the President's reprehensible behavior, but don't have the spine to directly address it. So we watch endless footage of these senators pretending to reporters that they simply haven't seen the tweet at the center of controversy or don't know much about it.

The final installment of the trilogy is the saddest of all. It's the one where the innocent person caught up in Trump's web of lies, and often unable to defend themselves, has their reputation smeared by the President of the United States. In this case, an elderly man who still remains in the hospital after being pushed to the ground by police. It's a sad end to a set of movies, one no one wants to watch. Unfortunately, for the country, it's stuck on loop.