We’ve seen a lot of classless and outrageous behavior from Fox News Channel over the years. But Ring of Fire noticed earlier this morning that just hours after Jimmy Carter announced his liver cancer has begun spreading, the fair and balanced network saw fit to trash the 39th president on its corporate Twitter account.
Sometime around 10:30 Eastern on Wednesday night, this appeared on the Fox News corporate Twitter feed:
The tweet was quoting Charles Hurt, a columnist for the New York Post and Washington Times and a frequent contributor to the Drudge Report.
I was dumbfounded when I saw this on my Facebook feed. I realize that Fox News is a news organization in name only. But I would have liked to think that just this once, it would have had the decency to join the thousands of people across the spectrum who extended condolences to Carter. Apparently I was wrong.
Several things are very telling about this. First is the fact that this isn’t just coming from a Fox News personality’s Twitter feed. This is the official, CORPORATE Fox News Twitter feed. Additionally, this tweet is still there almost 48 hours later. You’d have thought that somebody on Fox News’ social media team would have had the decency to take it down. Apparently not.
But most of all is that as of this morning, this tweet has been favorited over 100 times and retweeted over 200 times. Let’s not mince words here–anyone who would retweet or favorite something like this has no sense of decency. However, with few exceptions, the replies have all deservedly condemned Fox News for seeing fit to tweet this pigweed. Can you imagine if, say, the corporate Twitter account of either Mother Jones, The Nation, Slate, The New Republic, or MSNBC trashed George H. W. Bush in this way, given his recent health problems? It would be no less outrageous than what Fox News has done here.
For its entire two-decade existence, Fox News’ corporate slogan has been “We report. You decide.” Apparently, they also trash cancer victims as well. If Fox News and corporate parent 21st Century Fox have anything left in them, they will delete this tweet immediately and fire whoever thought it was a good idea to tweet this in the first place. Additionally, Fox News and Hurt need to issue a full and unreserved apology to Carter and his family.
