NEW YORK _ Fox News is playing a greatest hits reel to create an illusion of widespread violence and terror, according to a prominent media watchdog group.
Media Matters reports the right wing cable channel used its prime programming to bombard frightened followers with incendiary images of violence that were "days or months old" in August.
According to the nonprofit organization, Fox's prime time lineup of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham ran 3 hours and 15 minutes of "violent" imagery last month that included images or videos of burning objects or fires 81 times.
The watchdog group also said that on "at least" 50 occasions, the images Fox used in its programming about ongoing chaos were more than five days old. According to Media Matters, more than 20 of those images used in August dated back to May and June.
Fox's programming runs parallel to President Donald Trump's campaign message that "Democratic-controlled cities" where he has little support are out of control because they have Democratic mayors.
"Fox News is bombarding their viewers with imagery of violence that is often out of date and place in order to manufacture a narrative that chaos is brewing and that there is an existential threat on the horizon," Media Matters CEO and president Angeloa Carusone told The New York Daily News. "To put it bluntly, they're working their audience into a fear-fueled frenzy with an intent to stoke violence. The network is flirting with violence because they think it serves their political interests."
Carlson, whose popular show airs between Hannity's and Ingraham's, was criticized for his empathetic reporting last week when a teenager from Antioch, Illinois, drove 30 miles to Kenosha, Wisconsin, with an AR-15 type rifle in his vehicle, to patrol the streets where demonstrators were protesting the shooting of a Black man by white police officers.
"How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?" Carlson asked on his Aug. 25 show.
Kenosha's Sheriff's department calls itself the third largest law enforcement agency in Wisconsin. The state's governor had also called in the National Guard before that teen's alleged shooting spree.
Carlson was working without his former head writer Blake Neff, who parted ways with Fox News after CNN reported in June that he'd spent years making racist statements online under a pseudonym.
Also in June, Fox News apologized for manipulating photos online after The Seattle Times reported the outlet's website photo shopped the image of a gunman into a protest where that armed figure was not in attendance. The Times also noted Fox's site ran a photo of an older protest in Minnesota that it grouped into a collection of images calling Portland "Crazy Town."
Trump has claimed that Democratic Joe Biden would "abolish the suburbs" if elected.
While suburban voters were key to Trump's 2016 election, a USC Dornsife election poll published Tuesday showed Biden with a 13-point lead in the suburbs, though the race appears to be a dead heat among white suburbanites.
Fox News did not return a request for comment.
