After a deadly shooting in Colorado on New Year’s Eve that left one Douglas County sheriff’s deputy dead and four others injured, a Fox News host omitted reports that the gunman had posted white supremacist “alt-right” memes on his personal Facebook page. While host Eric Shawn noted that the gunman had “posted videos criticizing Colorado law enforcement” on social media, he failed to note that the gunman’s personal “Facebook page is filled with the icons of the white supremacist ‘alt-right.’” Fox’s omission of the gunman’s “alt-right” sympathies echoed its reporting on a February 2017 mosque shooting carried out by an “ultranationalist white supremacist” in Canada, where the network ignored that shooter’s far-right background. From the January 2 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom:
ERIC SHAWN (CO-HOST): There are some new details on the Colorado man who police say shot and killed a deputy and wounded four others. Police were contacted with concerns, they say, about the mental state of the shooter over a month before the New Year’s Eve incident. That suspect, you see there on the right, identified as 37-year-old Matthew Riehl. He was an attorney and an Iraq War veteran. He also, they say, posted videos criticizing Colorado law enforcement. Police responded to a complaint at an apartment building south of Denver on Sunday. They say Riehl fired over 100 rounds at the responding officers who eventually shot and killed him.
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