Like all the other US news networks, Fox News covered the Democratic National Convention last night (July 28). Some of it, anyway. On the right-leaning news channel, certain parts of the event were left out, as the shows cut away from the main action on the stage to a rotating cast of right-wing talking heads.
One particularly notable omission from Fox’s newscast was the decision to skip one of the night’s most acclaimed presentations—a speech by the father of Captain Humayun Khan, a US Army soldier who died at age 27, near Baghdad, while supporting Operation Iraqi freedom. The family immigrated to the US from Pakistan, and are Muslim.
Rather than airing Khan senior’s emotional speech, in which he told the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, that he had “sacrificed nothing” for America, Fox’s show The Kelly File continued with its regular commentary, and then cut to commercials. Those included a Benghazi-themed attack ad on Clinton, Media Matters reported.
The programming decision infuriated some:
Quartz asked Fox News about the omission, and it shared a statement issued on Friday (July 29) from Jay Wallace, its executive vice president of news and editorial: “We reported on the speeches and cited them throughout the evening and into today, as well.”
Earlier in the week, Fox News’s decision to cut away from the convention proceedings during the emotional “Mothers of the Movement” presentation, in which mothers of black Americans killed in police-involved shootings spoke, drew criticism. (The network did air some audio of that moment later.)
Another element missing from Fox’s coverage of the convention’s final night was the laudatory intro video preceding the night’s main speech by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.
This story has been updated with the statement from Fox News.