April 6-7, 2009: Fox News Anchor Touts ‘Tea Party’ Protests, Decries ‘Obama’s Radical Shift to Turn [US] into Europe’

’America’s Newsroom’ advertisement featuring Bill Hemmer. [Source: Zap2It (.com)]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, host of Fox News’s flagship news program America’s Newsroom, interviews several people involved with the April 15 “tea party” protests (see April 8, 2009), including Felicia Cravens, the organizer of an April 15 “tea party” in Houston. During the interview, Fox News displays information about the protest on screen. Though both Hemmer and Craven call the protests “non-partisan,” Fox displays protest footage throughout the interview criticizing President Obama. At the end of the segment, Hemmer directs viewers to go to the Web site of his program for more information about the protests. Hemmer also interviews FoxNews.com contributor Andrea Tantaros, who says of the upcoming protests, “People are fighting against Barack Obama’s radical shift to turn us into Europe.” The program also states that “Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations” and part of a “Growing Revolution” (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/8/2009]