Did Fox News Incite Violence Before Jan. 6 as Rep. AOC Claims?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Fox News (Right Bias) and Tucker Carlson (Right Bias) of inciting violence and called on Congress to hold media companies accountable through legislation.

Key Quote: In an interview with MSNBC (Left Bias), Ocasio-Cortez said, “I believe that we leave it to the courts to solve issues that politics is really supposed to solve, that legislating is supposed to solve. We have very real issues with what is permissible on air, and we saw that with January 6th and we saw that in the lead up to January 6th, and how we navigate questions, not just a freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence. This is the role we have to really explore through law as well.”

For Context: Ocasio-Cortez was asked about the settlement announcement in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News, in which Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million dollars. Dominion accused Fox News of defaming the company by covering allegations of voter fraud and election tampering in the 2020 election.

Response From the Right: An analysis from The Blaze pointed to Ocasio-Cortez’s “inability to provide such examples” of incitement of violence on Fox News. An opinion piece in the Washington Examiner (Lean Right Bias) accused Ocasio-Cortez of hypocrisy, asking how “any member of the Democratic Party” could “claim to oppose the incitement of violence following the explosion of racialized violence across the country from 2020 onward?”