Concerns about media bias and the potential wishes of some to disrupt the democratic process are swirling after a Fox News station aired a graphic showing Republican candidate Kari Lake losing the upcoming Arizona Gubernatorial Election to Democrat candidate Katie Hobbs.
The problem? The election is 12 days in the future.
Perhaps the most pointed part of the debacle is that the station in question is Lake’s former employer.
The clip circulated on Elon Musk’s Twitter on Oct. 27 showing that Fox10 had embedded a sidebar graphic into a segment on Scottsdale earning the inglorious moniker of being the 15th most expensive city in America to rent showing that Lake had officially lost to Hobbs by 6 percent.
The graphic was titled “Arizona Governor” and clearly showed both the names and pictures of Hobbs and Lake, but with Hobbs’s placard burnished with a red checkmark.
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In a tweet, Fox10 admitted to the public that the occurrence had happened and was not any kind of election misinformation, and suggested that the error originated with the Associated Press.
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“These were generated by the Associated Press which distributes results to clients,” the pilot of the outlet’s account wrote.
“This graphic was never meant to go on air — the numbers were only part of a test. The station has taken steps to make sure this cannot happen again,” they added.
When Lake saw the clip enter her feed, she tweeted in response, “WOAH.. right after my press conference going after the Media. Retaliation?”
The conference Lake referred to appears to have been an event the same day where she blasted Arizona media for bias after her campaign was accused of being involved in a break-in at the Hobbs campaign headquarters, Washington Examiner reported.
During the event, Hobbs said, “My desperate opponent, who is sinking like lead weight in water, pulled a stunt, and you guys fell for it. She put out a defamatory statement, and you all ran with it. You didn’t do your journalistic duty. It was malpractice of journalism that I’ve never seen before.”
Lake was herself a 22-year veteran news anchor of Fox 10 before resigning in March of 2021 amid the wave of narrative control surrounding the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
In a two-and-a-half-minute video published to her Rumble account, Lake criticized the direction she believes mainstream has taken: “Journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom…I don’t like the direction it is going…I’m sure there are other journalists out there who feel the same way.”
“The media needs more balance in coverage and a wider range of viewpoints represented in every newsroom at every level and at each position…In the last few years I haven’t felt proud to be a member of the media. I’m sure there are other journalists out there who feel the same way,” she said.
“I found myself reading news copy that I didn’t believe was fully truthful, or only told part of the story, and I began to fear that I was contributing to the fear and division in this country by continuing on in this profession…It’s been a serious struggle for me and I no longer want to do this job anymore.”
According to polling aggregator website Real Clear Politics, Lake leads Hobbs in the race across 3 of 5 polls, the most notable of which is ironically one conducted by Fox10 that found a massive 11 point lead.
Two of the remaining four cast Lake with a 3- or a 4-point lead, while the other two cast Hobbs with a 1 point lead, for comparison.
The contest has been notable in that Hobbs has refused to debate her rival, who is a professional public speaker.
Hobbs told CNN in a mid-month interview that, “Look, Kari Lake has made it clear time and time again that she’s not interested in having substantive, in-depth conversations about the issues that matter to Arizonans.”
“She only wants a scenario where she can control the dialogue, and she’s refused to sit down in a one-on-one, lengthy conversation to really clarify with Arizonans where she is on the issues. She’s the one who’s afraid of talking to voters where she’s at.”
