Fox News Invents Dangerous Disinformation Following Chauvin’s Trial

Are you the least bit bothered by influence peddlers questioning the integrity of police-brutality claims against Black people in America? Watching a Sean Hannity segment compelled me to draft this brief article. Notably, I don’t watch him often; however, I wanted to see how he’d cover the day’s glaring human-interest story.

It shouldn’t be a surprise when immediately following Derek Chauvin’s “guilty” verdict for murdering George Floyd, political conservatives couldn’t wait to diminish the murderous U.S. police problem against African Americans. On Fox News’ prime-time Sean Hannity Show, right-wing filmmaker Ami Horowitz brazenly claimed that the media and Black leaders were lying about the police killing African American people.

Without citing any sources, Hannity’s guest claimed that in 2020, merely 18 Black people died at the hands of the police!

Further, Horowitz argued without offering a shred of evidence that most of them incited the violence that justified the police taking their lives. Moreover, he spent his segment mocking the Black Lives Matter movement. Horowitz used his film editing skills to splice his on-the-street interviews with Black demonstrators out of context. He also cherry-picked unflattering sound bites to fit his intolerant agenda.

The following are documented evidence opposing Horowitz’s baseless claims:

For 2020, Statista’s research found that the U.S. police shot dead 241 Blacks (https://bit.do/killed_by_cops). Statista specializes in market and consumer data and compiles more than 1,000,000 statistics on more than 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources.

According to data from the research group Mapping Police Violence, the number of 2020 Black people killed by police was 247 (https://bit.do/killed_by_police). That firm features a collection of interactive tools, maps, and figures that illustrate U.S. police violence.

Minor discrepancies between these two research organizations might result from how researchers categorize individuals representing more than one race. Their frequent citations in academic papers highlight the credibility of both these firms.

Of the police killings documented in 2020, a Newsweek article found that traffic stops were the initial police encounter of 121 deaths (https://bit.do/death-by-cops_since_Floyd). For a 2019 National Academy of Sciences academic research paper, Edwards, Lee, and Esposito found that police violence was a leading cause of death for young U.S. men (https://bit.do/police_kill_risk). Via descriptive statistics, their research showed that about 1 of 1,000 Black men should expect the police to kill them. Thus, we should demand that Fox News and Hannity ask their trusted source—Horowitz—who or what is his data source showing that the police killed merely 18 Black people last year and that they might have been responsible for their own deaths!

For a bit of background on Horowitz, this is the same character that influenced then-Pres. Trump in 2017 with the puzzling argument for border security against immigrant terrorists when he urged his MAGA disciples to “look at what’s happening last night in Sweden.” That ridiculous, debunked claim led to widespread confusion and mockery. The Swedes assured the world that no terrorist attack had taken place there the previous day or even recently. The Times of Israel referred to Horowitz as “a gonzo Jewish-American filmmaker who spoke about Sweden’s problem with Muslim immigrants” (https://bit.do/gonzo_Horowitz).

Jewish American filmmaker Ami Horowitz (Screenshot YouTube).

This Fox News contributor has little credibility, and the public should require him to reveal his sources. I’m willing to guess that he completely fabricated his truth claims. This truth claim is another example of how uncited, false propaganda may still devolve into another right-wing conspiracy theory. A large swath of the American public assumes such disinformation as fact. A percentage of them may further weaponize it for their hate-filled satisfaction.

CALL-OUT FOX NEWS, HANNITY, AND HOROWITZ!