Fox News' Brit Hume warns the media not to call Steve King a 'racist.' Like Fox News

Fox News' Brit Hume warns the media not to call Steve King a 'racist.' Like Fox News did.

6:11 a.m.

Fox News senior analyst Brit Hume doesn't think Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) should get a pass for defending white nationalism and white supremacy, he told Marth MacCallum on Tuesday's The Story. "I'm sorry, the juxtaposition of what's wrong with those terms and white supremacism is just too close for comfort." But journalists have to be careful not to go "throwing the word racist around with abandon," he argued, because while the Civil Rights movement rightfully stigmatized racism in the 1960s, the word "racist" has since been "weaponized."

Hume singled out The New York Times for running an article listing "racist" things King has said, objecting to their inclusion of anti-Islamic statements, and he criticized NBC News for rescinding its guidance that NBC journalists shouldn't call King a racist. The media should just "accurately" quote what people say and let people "make up their own minds" if it's racist, he said. "I think it is absolutely one of the things it is wrong with the news media today and why we as an institution stand in such low esteem," Hume said. "People think we are biased, and this suggests that indeed we are."

As it turns out, Fox News is one of the few news organizations that called King's remarks racist.

"Fox News earned some credit on Twitter when its news alert called King's comments racist," but "the conservative network hasn't given the story much air time," notes HuffPost's Lydia O'Connor. "King's quote got a 30-second mention on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning, in which the hosts referred to his statement as 'comments about white supremacy and white nationalism.' For comparison's sake, the show spent 12 minutes discussing a razor commercial that day." Peter Weber

https://theweek.com/speedreads/81797...e-fox-news-did