"Fair and balanced" Fox News is Anything but in Coverage of Tea Parties

Despite its promise to deliver
"total fair and balanced network coverage" of the April 15 tea party protests,
Fox News repeatedly promoted the protests on that day, while hosts and guests,
including those on Fox Business, engaged in inflammatory rhetoric during their
coverage of the protests. As Media Matters
for America documented, Fox
News aggressively promoted the protests prior to April 15, encouraging viewers
to get involved across the country. The network also featured at least 20
segments on the protests and at least 73 in-show and commercial promotions for
them from April 6 to April 13. Indeed, Fox News has repeatedly
described the protests as "FNC Tax Day Tea
Parties."

Examples of Fox News' and Fox Business' April 15
tea party coverage included:

• Discussing how to show
  support for tea parties, Fox &
  Friends'
  Gretchen Carlson claimed:
  "You can hang [a teabag] from your mirror, too, like fuzzy dice."

• Fox News host Megyn
  Kelly claimed
  that "you can join the tea party action from your home if you go
  to the FoxNation.com ... a virtual tax day tea party."

• Fox Business anchor
  Cody Willard asked,
  "Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to
  be permeating this country?"

• Willard further stated
  that conservatives and liberals are "both fascists who are taking all of my money and
  building up corporate America with my welfare."

• Fox News host John
  Gibson expressed "hope[]" that
  millions of people" would participate in the protests.

• Fox Business anchor
  David Asman told
  viewers they "need[ed] to go" to the tea party merchandise website "no matter
  what side of the issue you're on."

• Willard asked
  a protester: "Are you
  worried about me taking these dollars from you ... or destroying those dollars? I
  mean that's what the government does anyway."

• On The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News
  contributor Dennis Miller claimed
  that "the average American taxpayer feels like they've just been
  shot in the head in a deck chair on a sinking boat."

• Fox News host Sean
  Hannity asked
  contributor Newt Gingrich "one serious question": "Is this now a battle between
  capitalism and socialism?"

• Hannity also asked:
  "Why don't we have more anger towards government, or is this the anger that
  finally is beginning to emerge?"

• Discussing the protests
  on Hannity, RedState's Erick
  Erickson stated,
  "[I]f we don't do something, if we don't turn the corner, we're going to be
  enslaved to the government."

• Also on Hannity, radio host Bill "Bubba" Bussey
  said
  it was "time for a revolution."

• Hannity also featured
  a Thomas Paine imitator to plug the tea parties.