Ari Melber Targets Fox News for Endangering Audience by Downplaying Coronavirus

MSNBC host Ari Melber highlighted the potential for the coronavirus to disproportionately harm viewers of Fox News because of the nature of the network’s coverage and its key demographic.

“This is a pandemic wiping out lives everywhere it goes,” Melber said Friday. “Wiping out more lives in this country than any other on that map behind us here. This has frozen life as we know it. It’s tanked the economy because the alternative would be even worse, a higher death toll that would also still be tanking the economy.”

“But let’s be clear. For Fox viewers, it’s especially perilous,” he added. “The median age there is 67. That mostly older audience [is] especially vulnerable if they contract this virus. And as we just showed you, they’ve been told to basically downplay it.”

Melber noted how the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine has been talked about more frequently on Fox News than any other network, with relatively few warnings about potential side-effects compared to the number of claims promoting its use.