February 9, 2017

Fox News Tries to Prove Steve Bannon Isn’t as Bad as ISIS

The worst game of “Who Did It?” ever.

Kevin Lamarque/ZUMA

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Over the weekend, USA Today published an editorial that suggested senior White House adviser Steve Bannon and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shared “similar world views” that included “apocalyptic visions of a clash” between Islam and the United States. 

Among those upset by the unflattering comparison was Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who on Wednesday invited USA Today‘s deputy editorial opinion editor, David Mastio, to join his show and debate Bannon’s record. That’s when Carlson offered up the following chart:

The graphic was roundly mocked on social media, where many skewered Fox News’ absurd effort to present Bannon as an innocent in comparison to a despot and generally missing the point of the editorial.

Sunday’s editorial followed the reports—including this Mother Jones story—outlining Bannon’s record of promoting anti-Islamic propaganda during his tenure as Breitbart CEO and his long-standing predictions of the arrival of a “Judeo-Christian war” against Islam.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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