Fox News and their war on terror. And refugee’s. And Syria. And the Middle East.

Fred Vultee in his article “Jump Back Jack, Mohammed’s Here: Fox News and the construction of Islamic peril” explains how Fox news systematically paints the picture of Us vs. Them or the West vs. Syria and the Middle East. He found that Fox consistently had a negative focus on Islam, to a point where one could not separate Islam from Muslim and Muslims from each other where they made one mass of people.

Vultee describes orientalism as a ‘unique threat’, something not seen before in the Western World and therefore something that should be feared. He says that the danger of Fox news lies in its presentation as a reliable news source. The construction of typical news conventions creates the feeling of familiarity where people will trust this site. With this in mind, Vultee explains that although Fox is presented in such a visually favourable way, the content can still be skewed to favour certain viewpoints without the audience noticing anything wrong or gaining much backlash (although they do get a bit of that).

To test this theory, I went to the Fox News website and this is what the home page looked like:

Screen shot taken on 24/03/2016

The top story was “ISIS has sent 400 fighters to attack Europe, officials say” as well as a programming alert with a special on the “Deadly ISIS bombings in Belgium” plastered in bold at the top of the site. Below the major headline was a list of related headlines to ISIS including a report posted on the same day titled “Brussels attacks reignite Syrian refugee debate on Capitol Hill” A clear ‘us vs. them’ agenda is set from the first paragraph, where Fox writer Adam Shaw refers to the opening of boarders to Syrian refugee’s an opening for the Islamic State to ‘threaten the homeland’, where the homeland is theirs and open to no one else. Focus is put on Republican senator Ted Cruz and his opinion that Syrian refugee’s must be stopped from entering the US altogether. Shaw also includes a description of the new “Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act” which will put a cap on the amount of refugee’s entering the US and give states the right to deny refugees.

The reaction to the Brussels bombing shows that Fox cares very little about anything that isn’t terrorism news. Plastered all over the site days after the event had occurred was news and reactions to the terrorism and the threat of refugee’s to the USA.

Fred Vultee’s concerns over Fox News’ agenda with the Middle East is valid in that Fox uses terrorism as their main news source. They play on the terror that groups like ISIS aim to instil in Western (and particularly North American) citizens, resulting in fear and exclusion of all Middle Eastern refugee’s, not just terrorists themselves.