Fox & Friends Fights Back Fairly. Crowder Is Extra Slimy. Biden’s Town Hall Gets Mixed Reviews. | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

THE DAILY NEWSLETTER – FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2021

MEDIA WINNER: Fox & Friends

At a CNN town hall Thursday night, President Joe Biden once again expressed amusement over Fox News having a “vaccine mandate,” but wasn’t accurate in the way he described their corporate policy.

Biden has made this mistake before, describing Fox’s policy as a “vaccine mandate, but contrary to his statements, the network has not mandated the vaccine, but instead has established a vaccine pass system in which employees who are unvaccinated or do not disclose their vaccination status must submit to frequent testing.

A clip of Biden speaking about Covid-19 “misinformation” was aired Friday morning on Fox & Friends, and Brian Kilmeade responded by asking “what about the misinformation he said about Fox? He said I think it’s funny that Fox has a vaccine mandate. We have a testing option at Fox. So what he said is totally inaccurate.” It’s a fair point and the president should be able to get his facts straight by now.

Fox & Friends’ Friday show also featured an interview with Paris Hilton, who has been using her celebrity status to draw attention to the issue of teenagers being abused at congregate care centers. Hilton has been sharing her own traumatic experiences at such centers to lobby for reform.

MEDIA LOSER: Stephen Crowder

Stephen Crowder has a long and sordid history of saying outrageous, stupid, and bigoted things to get attention, but the nasty insults he directed at San Francisco-area CBS affiliate KPIX reporter Betty Yu stand out for their aggressive racism and misogyny.

Yu was covering the controversy over In-N-Out Burger being shut for indoor dining there because they were not checking patrons’ vaccination status. Crowder played a clip of the KPIX report and broke out into laughter as soon as Yu appeared on the screen.

“Oh! That is an aggressively Asian face!” he said — and it didn’t stop there. Crowder also referred to Yu as “full Asian” as opposed to the “kind of Americanized Asians” that reporters “usually” were.

“I wish she would have kept her fan,” commented one of Crowder’s co-hosts. “Well, yeah, a little bit of geisha,” Crowder replied.

KPIX condemned Crowder’s “horrible and racist attack.” There’s a debate to be had about how government and businesses should respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, but none of Crowder’s slimy little comments had anything to do with Yu’s reporting. He was mocking her appearance, attacking her race, and peddling in bigoted tropes that sexualize Asian women.

Read the full Mediaite Green Room Newsletter here, including full coverage of President Joe Biden’s CNN town hall.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!