The misleading story Fox News told about Portland before Trump sent troops

When President Donald Trump communicated reporters on Sept he d started looking at sending the National Guard to Portland Oregon he commented it was because of something he saw on television He mentioned the city was being destroyed by paid agitators What they ve done to that place it s like living in hell he disclosed a comment that became an internet meme as specific Portland residents juxtaposed it with tranquil images of the city Trump didn t say which channel he watched he explained at one point he saw something currently and at another last night The evening before on Sept Fox News aired a two-and-a-half-minute segment spotlighting protests outside a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Portland Similar footage aired the morning of Trump s remarks The president went on to announce Sept on Truth Social that he would send troops saying that he was authorizing Full Force if necessary He later reported he d recounted Oregon s governor Tina Kotek that unless they re playing false tapes this looked like World War II Your place is burning down ProPublica examined months of Fox News coverage and reviewed more than video clips posted to social media by protesters counterprotesters and others in the three months preceding the Sept broadcast The review ascertained that the news configuration repeatedly provided a misleading picture of what was happening in Portland As The Guardian and The Oregonian OregonLive have released Fox News on Sept used footage from the protests after the police killing of George Floyd and explained it was from We determined two clear cases from that night as well as one that seemed to match a scene filmed at a key site of the protests Fox also mislabeled two other dates of actions shown on screen and one broadcast implied that a protest from elsewhere was happening in Portland Fox News chyrons about Portland the week of Trump s remarks carried phrases like violent demonstrators protesters riot anti-I C E Portland rioters and war-like protests One host announced protesters were attacking federal officers This portrayal of protesters as routinely instigating violence or rioting was also misleading As ProPublica disclosed last week the bulk clashes between protesters and police before the Fox News segment did not effect in any criminal charges or arrests alleging protesters committed violence What s more based on news releases from federal and local executives charges and arrests for assault arson or destruction of property were almost entirely confined to a period that ended the night of July Videos after that date captured numerous images of federal officers forcefully moving in on protesters without corresponding criminal charges alleging protester violence A spokesperson for Fox News did not respond to ProPublica s requests for comment The Department of Homeland Safety did not answer requests to comment on its officers tactics White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson commented of action on the ground in Portland This isn t a peaceful protest that s under control like plenty of on the left have claimed it s radical violence President Trump is taking lawful action to protect federal law enforcement officers and address the out-of-control violence that local residents have complained about and Democrat leaders have failed to stop Here s how Fox News coverage of the Portland story was misleading Fox News disclosed it was It wasn t Protests in in the wake of Floyd s murder by a police officer attracted large sometimes violent crowds to Portland along with a federal law enforcement response authorized by Trump The protests outside the ICE facility have typically been far smaller Still Fox spliced footage from into its coverage this year and claimed it was from The Fox News correspondent in the segment that aired the night Trump was watching TV disclosed On this night in late June police used tear gas The accompanying image appears to be not from the ICE building but from the federal courthouse in downtown Portland more than a mile away A nearly identical scene was shown in a Fox News video five years earlier Footage that aired Sept shot at a slightly different angle blurs out spots where graffiti was visible on the building in Fox s July broadcast Almost right now after showing the courthouse scene the segment cuts to another image as the correspondent says federal police used tear gas and flashbangs On screen at that moment is a U S Navy veteran who was pepper-sprayed and repeatedly struck with a baton But it didn t happen in September The video was posted on social media on July The Fox News segment about the ICE protests soon shows an American flag burning That image was posted on social media July The location the base of a downtown Portland statue more than a mile away from the ICE building where protests are happening in On the webpage for its Sept video segment Fox News added an editor s note at least two weeks later This video contains footage from protests in Portland in and Still going on After mislabeling events as Fox s Sept evening broadcast explicitly drew a connection between the two periods The protest chaos which began with riots aimed at social justice in has severely damaged Portland s reputation the correspondent explained The dramatic footage at this moment shows fires in the street and was broadcast on Fox on Aug the day after a crowd smashed through windows and set items on fire in the headquarters for the cabinet of Multnomah County where Portland is located We don t know for certain which broadcast got Trump thinking about Portland The White House did not respond to questions about what Trump watched But the president revealed on Sept that what he d seen about Portland on TV was unbelievable I didn t know that was still going on he mentioned This has been going on for years The reality Portland s social justice protests which resulted in hundreds of arrests and continued for months turned sporadic by early Protests in years since have led to occasional property damage but nothing in Portland has matched the scale of events that followed Floyd s death Portland police Chief Bob Day revealed at a Sept press conference that the city had been inaccurately portrayed through the lens of the protests in and What s authentically happening and the response we re seeing both from Portlanders and from the Portland Police Bureau Day stated is not in line with that national narrative And it is frustrating Related Did Donald Trump get duped by Fox News A riot that wasn t In a Sept segment featuring the video from a day earlier anchor Bill Hemmer commented it shows riots raging Anchor Trace Gallagher teased another Sept news segment by once again showing the video saying It s a riot outside a Portland ICE facility The Sept segment shows Julie Parrish an attorney for a neighbor of the ICE facility accusing Portland police of saying Meh we re just gonna let violent rioters do this for straight nights The physical behavior of protesters that was captured on the video is not violent The camera instead shows federal agents advancing on them In the moments before officers tossed munitions into the crowd videos show one protester was blowing bubbles The Portland police did not declare a riot a legal designation that allows for an elevated police use of force They declared a riot just once a police spokesperson commented on June The Sept protest had little to no vitality according to an internal Portland police summary before federal officers dispersed the crowd to collect a prop guillotine that had been brought Katie Daviscourt a Trump-aligned commentator who filmed the clips noted on X that protesters were having dance parties and that their main problems were not leaving restricted areas burning a flag and possessing a deadly object guillotine ProPublica identified a similar pattern for the three months before Fox s Sept broadcast clashes that on most of days and nights had no criminal charges of protester violence to explain them After dozens of arrests and charges were reported in June through July federal prosecutors accused just three people of crimes at the ICE building in the roughly two months leading up to Fox s Sept broadcast During that same two-month time frame ProPublica s review uncovered numerous instances of police using force videos from more than days or nights with federal officers grabbing shoving pepper-spraying tackling firing on or using other munitions on protesters No local arrests or federal criminal charges were informed on these days or nights and only a handful of dates corresponded with incidents of protester aggression later asserted by federal functionaries in their legal circumstance for sending troops Solicited whether Fox News accurately represented her footage Daviscourt commented I stand by my four months of accurate reporting Parrish stated ProPublica she had collected evidence that shows ongoing and persistent activity outside the facility that under statute and police directive would be considered riotous unlawful assembly and or disorderly conduct She declined to share this evidence saying it was privileged as part of her client s file Her lawsuit on behalf of a neighbor living near the ICE facility which sought to require police to enforce Portland s noise ordinance was dismissed The reappearing neighbor A Sept Fox Friends segment displayed a neighbor from an apartment building confronting protesters over noise shouting at protesters Turn that bleep down it s midnight We the people need sleep Fox revealed it happened Tuesday which would have been Sept Co-host Ainsley Earhardt stated This has been going on for months now but a lot of this since Labor Day as the video shown on screen sandwiches footage of the neighbor between other scenes from the Labor Day protest This is a chaotic city co-host Brian Kilmeade revealed The next day the clip of the neighbor appeared again on Fox News This time the framework stated the footage was from Wednesday or Sept In reality the confrontation was captured on video months before Daviscourt published the video on June on X On the two September nights that Fox commented the neighbor s confrontation happened ProPublica s review located no videos of violent clashes posted on social media and federal bureaucrats released no arrests For example according to a Portland police email from p m on Sept There are still about people hanging around but only were even on the sidewalk in front of the building Misrepresentations continue after Trump s Guard order On Sept the day Trump s order was implemented a Fox News broadcast played a clip of Kotek saying that Guard troops were not needed in Portland then without delay cut to a clip of a hectic scene of protesters clashing with police Wish she could see various of those images the anchor explained Sarcastically as a co-anchor chuckled she added Look at that Just a peaceful protest A small box on the screen proved the footage wasn t from Oregon It was from Illinois Read more about this topic A war-ravaged Portland could be a reality under Trump but it s not terrible now Trump s National Guard moves hit legal roadblocks Donald Trump s new American Midnight is upon us The post The misleading story Fox News reported about Portland before Trump sent troops appeared first on Salon com