Fox News' Reaction to London Tragedy: "Time to Buy!"

Fox News:
Profiting from tradgedy.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on London's Underground train network, the coverage of the 24 hour news channels has been filled with predictable clichéd speculation:

Breaking News Coverage - keeping talking, when you still don't actually know anything yet

Friday, July 08, 2005
...
I'd like to mention the much more trivial issue of the plight of 24-hour ON THE SCENE News Reporters.

Who have to ad-lib for hours as information gradually scrapes in. And who manage this by mouthing CONSTANT and PAINFUL homilies, generalisations, assumptions, theories and guesses to make up for the complete lack of actual facts. Or even pictures.

SOURCE: http://anonymouslefty.blogspot.com/2005/07/breaking-news-coverage-keeping-talking.html

The worst of the bunch, by a country mile, has got to be the right-wing Fox News Channel, whose coverage of the unfolding events was thoroughly disgusting.

First, in the 24 hours before the terrorist attacks on London, Fox News Channel's John Gibson seemingly stated that he would have 'enjoyed watching' France suffer a terrorist attack:

Missed Opportunity

All day long people have been saying to me, "Wasn't it great they didn't pick Paris?" And I've been saying, "No, no, no."

Paris was exactly the right place to pick and the Olympic committee screwed up.

Why? Simple. It would have been a three-week period where we wouldn't have had to worry about terrorism.

First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm.

Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris.

So it would have been a treat, actually, to watch the French dealing with the problem of their own homegrown Islamist terrorists living in France already.

...

But, alas, they picked London. I like the Brits. I like London. I hate to see them going through all this garbage when it would have been just fine in Paris.

C'est la vie. Goes to show the Olympic committee doesn't recognize the perfect opportunity when it presents itself.

That's My Word.

SOURCE: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161750,00.html

Given this, what was Fox News' Brit Hume's first thoughts after the attacks? Apparently, the money he could make as a result:

Hume's "first thought" on hearing of London attacks: It's "time to buy" futures

Posted to the web on Thursday July 7, 2005 at 5:58 PM EST

During Fox News' coverage of the July 7 London bombings, Washington managing editor Brit Hume told host Shepard Smith that his "first thought," when he "heard there had been this attack" and saw the low futures market, was "Hmmm, time to buy." Smith had asked Hume to comment on the lack of a negative U.S. stock market reaction to the London attacks.

From Fox News' July 7 breaking news coverage between 1 and 2 p.m. ET:

SMITH: Some of the things you might expect to happen, for instance, a drop in the stock market and some degree of uncertainty across this country -- none of that really seen today, and I wonder if the timing of it -- that it happened in the middle of the night and we were able to get a sense of the grander scheme of things -- wasn't helpful in all this.

HUME: Well, maybe. The other thing is, of course, people have -- you know, the market was down. It was down yesterday, and you know, you may have had some bargain-hunting going on. I mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, "Hmmm, time to buy." Others may have thought that as well. But you never know about the markets. But obviously, if the markets had behaved badly, that would obviously add to people's sense of alarm about it. But there has been a lot of reassurance coming, particularly in the way that -- partly in the way the Brits handled all this, but also in the way that officials here handled it. There seems to be no great fear that something like that is going to happen here, although there's no indication that we here had any advance warning.

— J.B. & R.S.K.

SOURCE: http://mediamatters.org/items/200507070005

Beyond Brit Hume describing the financial windfall he could possibly reap at the expense of the dozens killed in the terrorist attacks on London, the right-wing Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade described how the terrorist attacks "works to our advantage":

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade: London terror attack near G8 summit "works to ... Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together"

Posted to the web on Thursday July 7, 2005 at 2:07 PM EST

The following exchange between Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and Fox News business contributor and substitute host Stuart Varney occurred during breaking news coverage of the attacks on London subways and buses on the July 7 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

KILMEADE: And he [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.

VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up front all over again.

KILMEADE: Yeah.

— N.C.

SOURCE: http://mediamatters.org/items/200507070005

it is an understatement to say that the reaction of the Fox News presenters in the face of this horrific human tragedy has been thoroughly, utterly disgusting. Plotting financial gains for yourself, and gloating about political advantage in the face of tragedy - how low can they go?How low can they go? Read on to find out!