'The People's Tapes': McCarthy's Sweetheart Deal Over 1/6 Footage Criticized
Republican speaker gives Fox News host exclusive rights to riot video
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is being taken to task for the deal he struck with hard-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson for exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of video from the day that violent supporters of Donald Trump's stormed the US Capitol Building.
The California Republican granted Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the January 6, 2021, riot. And Carlson's producers were on Capitol Hill last week digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.
Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of January 6, downplaying the insurrection.
The deal is being roundly panned from several perspectives.
Giving a propagandist like Carlson exclusive rights to the video could set-up fresh security concerns, according to a former high-ranking FBI official.
“And Fox News, Tucker Carlson, have a track record of not handling such things in an honest, good faith effort,” said Frank Figliuzzi, the one-time assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI. “The other concern of course, obviously, is the security concerns that arise from false conspiracy theories. We know they are dangerous. We know they lead to violence.
“So if, for example, this host on Fox decides to play only things that indicate or allow him to blow up conspiracy theories: ‘Oh, look, that looks like a fed.’ ‘Oh look, it looks like someone instigated this.’ ‘Oh look, there’s an hour of people doing nothing peacefully.’ If that keeps going forward and it’s ginned up into the notion that all the prosecutions are witch hunts against people who were violent on January 6, then it could really pose a danger and a threat in terms of violence,” Figliuzzi said during an on-camera panel discussion on MSNBC.
Another key issue is a matter of correct ownership of those tens of thousands of hours of footage.
“One of my concerns here is that this footage actually, I believe, belongs to the American people. This is property of the U.S. government. So, I don’t see any justification for only releasing that footage to Tucker Carlson,” said Mara Gay, journalist and member of the New York Times editorial board. “So, I think, you know, one of my concerns as a journalist is: Okay, let’s make sure that we can have legitimate news organizations who actually function as news organizations with all of the responsibilities that journalism entails. Let’s have all the rest of us take a look at this footage. And before we release it, make sure that there are no security concerns. That’s a process that regularly takes place in most journalism organizations. And that’s not to withhold key information from the public, but that’s to make sure that we are, of course, addressing security concerns that Frank is laying out. That’s a regular practice.
“Fox News doesn’t really engage in regular news practices, and that’s not actually an issue of partisanship of far right or far left. That’s just the reality of them not acting as a news organization does,” Gay added. “They are not known for presenting facts. They’re known for playing with them and often dispersing propaganda. And in this case, conspiracy theories. That’s extremely dangerous, but I also just want to stress, that’s not journalism.”
That's a position that another former journalist and ex-State Department official emphasized.
“Yes, I want to foot stomp what Mara said. It’s the people’s House. Those are the people’s tapes. Those tapes and cameras are paid for by taxpayer money. A responsible speaker of the House would say, ‘This is owned by the people of the American public. I’m releasing this to every journalism organization or I’m putting it in the cloud where everyone has access to it.' That would be a responsible thing to do,” said Rick Stengel, former managing editor of Time magazine who served as President Barack Obama's under secretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs. “His statement on its face is laughable, and he says the exact opposite of reality, saying this is not a partisan thing to do, unlike what the Democrats did.
“What he did is absolutely partisan, using material that’s owned by the American public and giving it to a partisan news organization that will look at it to support its own particular viewpoint. That’s really a sacrilege,” Stengel added.
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