Shooting the Messenger

Did Fox News fail to report former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s indictment in favour of a story about cheeseburger emojis?

Today saw the first charges in the investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who is examining allegations of collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government.

Yet while CNN and other news networks reported about the imminent indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Fox News was reporting a story about…cheeseburger emojis?

That’s according to photos and screenshots that were circulating on Twitter this morning.

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And it wasn’t just Twitter users helping spread the story.

Here’s The New York Daily News reporting that “The big story at @FoxNews today isn’t Paul Manafort’s indictment – it’s the ‘emoji cheeseburger crisis’”:

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But did the famously Trump-friendly news network really fail to report Manafort’s indictment in favour of Google’s apparent emoji cheeseburger crisis?

The answer, unfortunately for Hannity-haters everywhere, is no.

As this clip from this morning’s Fox & Friends shows, the bulk of airtime was spent in anticipation of the indictment, with the emoji story briefly appearing to pad out the show between updates:

The story later made an appearance as part of a brief news round-up that aired immediately before a commercial break. That’s when this screenshot started making the rounds on Twitter:

However, the show then returned a few minutes later with a breaking news alert about Manafort.

Fair and Balanced? Perhaps not. But this nothing burger appears to be a whopper.