Fox News Continues To Feature Anti-trans Propaganda
From activist to Texas AG, network allows disinformation to go unchecked
It may have to pay out more than $787 million. And it may have cut ties with one of its hard-right propagandists.
But Fox News still finds time to feature anti-transgender hate and disinformation on its network.
Just in the last 24 hours on Monday, the network which decided to pay $787.5 million to settle an historic defamation lawsuit and just weeks ago ousted primetime host Tucker Carlson, still managed to present at least two instances of anti-trans disinformation.
Fox's remaining primetime host, Sean Hannity, featured swimmer-turned-anti-trans activist Riley Gaines on his evening program.
The pair began talking about sports regulations which day that young transgender athletes who experience male puberty by age 12 cannot cannot compete with other girls, and then Gaines makes the claim that is somehow “almost encouraging someone to transition by that age,” which “is abysmal.”
However, their discussion is unmoored by either the established protocol of care for trans folks, as well as the reality that there are hardly lines of young trans athletes lining up to transition in order to compete in sports.
When he initially vetoed a ban on trans youth playing sports in Utah last year, Republican Gov Spencer Cox highlighted data showing that out of some 75,000 children participating in high school sports in the state, only four student athletes identified as transgender with just one playing in girls' sports.
There was no attempt made to fact-check what either Hannity or Gaines asserted as truth.
Further, Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany had Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on-camera to promote his virulent anti-trans agenda.
Specifically, Paxton discussed investigations his office is opening on Texas hospitals which offer gender affirming care.
The attorney general also talked about turning his state's laws against child abuse against those Texas parents who facilitate getting appropriate gender-affirming care for their children.
As with Hannity's segment with Gaines, there was no mention of the long-standing and medically approved standards of care which govern such gender-affirming care.
And McEnany also did not mention Paxton's own checkered history with the legal system, including felony indictments for securities fraud.
What this says is that, despite its deal to provide Dominion Voting Systems with a massive payment or the ouster of the hard-right Carlson, Fox News remains just as available to traffic in hate and readily refuted and debunked disinformation.
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