On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains how right-wing media's coverage of crime and appeal to the fringes lead to a heightened threat of violence

Angelo Carusone: They are “taking an already simmering cauldron of anxiety, of fear, of hate, of rage, and they are ratcheting up that temperature, bit by bit.”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

PUBLISHED 04/22/23 8:38 PM EDT

Citation From the April 22, 2023, edition of MSNBC's American Voices with Alicia Menendez

ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Angelo, I am so glad that Andy reminded us that 1/6 is a part of this continuum here. Philip Bump at The Washington Post reports, quote, "Fox News's coverage since mid-2020 has disproportionately involved clips of isolated criminal activity to generate a sense of unconstrained violence in urban areas -- despite evidence that the increase in crime since the pandemic also occurred in rural areas." You touched upon that, but what I want to come back to is the fact that this week, you had the GOP-led House leading a field hearing about crime in New York City, which then Fox News covers, and it just becomes part of this endless feedback loop where the circus becomes reality.

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT AND CEO): Yeah, and I think the part that concerns me the most is -- I think, that it's one thing when it's just a misinformation, feedback loop, that itself is a problem, but in a way, it's actually less scary than the current scenario because a couple of years ago -- and now, it's really just fully formed -- there was a switch. And basically the Republican party, via the right-wing media, decided that they were going to organize power on what used to be considered the fringes. And so once they sort of moved those fringe and set them right and directly front and center in the Republican core, it actually basically pulls in people that are most likely to act on these types of ideas, on this misinformation feedback loop. So what they're basically doing is taking an already simmering cauldron of anxiety, of fear, of hate, of rage, and they are ratcheting up that temperature, bit by bit. And so every time they sort of misrepresent, missample the threat of crime, who's actually responsible, that it's coming for you, they are basically raising the temperature on that cauldron. So it shouldn't be a surprise that it's increasingly starting to spill over and boil over. It's kind of what they're doing. They are organizing power on the fringes. This is what you get when you move the fringes front and center.