Why Fox News Had The Best Baltimore Coverage: In its coverage of Baltimore, Fox News, the Fair and Balanced network had its world turned upside down.

When there’s a riot going on, what channel do you turn to? Watch MSNBC if you want information packaged in the language and symbols that echo the story you already know to be true. Watch CNN for the bland dilution of information into items of mild interest, always footnoted to the official story.

But, if this past week, you wanted to see the clash between the official story of white America and the actual lived experience of black Americans, you should have watched Fox News.

In prime time, as the protests turned to riots at the start of the week, the network’s on-the-ground reporter, Leland Vittert, gamely tried to find black Baltimore residents willing to testify to what the coiffed hosts back in New York alleged: That the looting and destruction in their city was somehow a greater tragedy than the systematic violence of the police against the populace.

Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, their studio guests, bedazzled by fire and broken windows, sought validation that the riots were the story, and whatever moral high-ground that came with almost 400 years of oppression was lost when people start stealing liquor and throwing rocks. Surely, the producers thought, these neighborhood residents, those standing silently in the wake of the shouting and smashing—debris visible on camera, fires burning in the background—surely, they would attest to the inappropriateness of the uprising. These civilized black neighbors will stand in for the real victims—the white audience at home—and indict the criminals and thugs with borrowed righteousness.

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