After a long weekend of speculation following reports of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s first indictments in his ongoing Trump-Russia collusion probe, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his aide, Rick Gates were ordered to surrender. The story quickly dominated the major cable news and broadcast networks, though as many media watchdogs quickly noticed, Fox News didn’t cut away from its opinion-heavy Fox & Friends morning show for coverage. Instead, they gave the floor to co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade. Also, a “cheeseburger emoji controversy” was involved.
“If you’re just joining us right now,” Doocy said briefly, “the breaking news, according to the New York Times: Paul Manafort and a former business associate by the name of Rick Gates were told to surrender to federal authorities, and apparently they will sometime this morning.” After passing the ball to Earhardt and Kilmeade, the latter immediate noted the time and moved on to other subjects. Frequent Fox News contributor Alan Dershowitz did come on the program briefly to discuss the indictments against Manafort and Gates, which were still sealed at the time, but Fox & Friends and the subsequent morning news programming ultimately avoided the topic. Unsurprisingly, everyone monitoring the channel noticed.
Especially since, per Doocy, a “controversy” involving Google cheeseburger emoji — which placed the cheese below the meat instead of on top — was brewing. “I Googled it and it showed the cheese should be on top of the burger,” he explained.
Paul Manafort just agreed to turn himself in to the FBI. What should we report on?
CNN: Manafort
MSNBC: Manafort
Fox News: Hamburger emoji pic.twitter.com/Wjsvkb2coW— Roberto Aram Ferdman (@robferdman) October 30, 2017
Fox News bbs I promise this is not the biggest news today pic.twitter.com/R9iHLyPrYh
— Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani (@AdrienneMahsa) October 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/ChrisReimer/status/924948269872148486
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/924980049186607104
This is FOX News currently… pic.twitter.com/4yInN7exr5
— Joshua Sánchez (@jnsanchez) October 30, 2017
Aside from the cheeseburger emoji nothingburger, both Fox & Friends and Fox News’ additional morining programming covered an array of topics that ranged from the Hillary Clinton campaign’s apparent collusion with Fusion GPS and the Trump-Russia dossier, to whether or not the Obama administration was responsible for any of this.
Fox gave the indictment news a good six minutes of discussion before changing topics to this: pic.twitter.com/1uZCETNHEX
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) October 30, 2017
Meanwhile, Fox News: pic.twitter.com/6zLs3T1QrB
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) October 30, 2017
Fox and Friends is now doing a segment criticizing an article in The Economist
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) October 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/poniewozik/status/924976650739167232
https://twitter.com/matthewjdowd/status/924983600772198400
CNN: Manafort!
MSNBC: Manafort!
Fox News: President Hillary Clinton arrested on Russian pizza collusion pedophilia emails charges!
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) October 30, 2017