Seth Abramson wasn’t holding anything back when he unleashed a Twitter post on Fox News political analyst Brit Hume.
Former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney, Seth Abramson, has been publishing extensive Twitter threads and mega-threads regarding the ongoing investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia since autumn 2016.
Outspoken, Abramson has also used his Twitter account to school others on the intricacies of the law when he notices someone spreading misinformation.
Today it was Senior Fox News Political Analyst Brit Hume who needed a little education regarding federal criminal statutes.
It all began when Hume retweeted a post by Axios co-founder Mike Allen linking to an article about the latest chapter in the continually changing story from Team Trump regarding the controversial – and probably illegal – Trump Tower meeting.
🔥 Why it matters: This marks a huge reversal in the Trump team's narrative https://t.co/hVl87Mnrvh
— Mike Allen (@mikeallen) August 19, 2018
Apparently annoyed, Hume tweeted: “Another example of the media’s refusal to recognize the difference between what Trump Jr. was expecting and hoping the Trump Tower meeting to be about and what it ended up actually being about.”
Abramson quickly called the class to order, tweeting: “It has nothing to do with the media, @BritHume. It has to do with the criminal justice system and federal criminal statutes whose requirements you do not understand and are clearly unwilling to accept when they are applied equally to average citizens *and* politicians you admire.”
It has nothing to do with the media, @BritHume. It has to do with the criminal justice system and federal criminal statutes whose requirements you do not understand and are clearly unwilling to accept when they are applied equally to average citizens *and* politicians you admire. https://t.co/4qYjl5t8nA
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) August 20, 2018
Simple enough, but taken in the context of his other remarks about Fox News contributors and the network itself, the story runs much deeper.
A perfect case in point is a thread Abramson posted in April, weighing in on an article by The Hill, which had reported that Fox News was most-watched cable news network for 65th consecutive quarter.
Understandably, at the core of Abramson’s grievance is the fact that Fox News is – at best – “entertainment journalism,” which is “more popular than hard news reporting.”
Abramson began his Twitter-storm with a link to the article by The Hill, and the following statement: “FNC [Fox News Channel] is entertainment journalism—by direct or indirect admission of all its biggest stars at some point or another. So it’s ranked first for 65 consecutive quarters among media outlets that televise entertainment journalism—among news networks it doesn’t rank because it isn’t one.”
He expanded on that idea throughout his 10-part thread, but for the purposes of this article, we are going to relate parts seven, eight, and ten.
In part seven, Abramson calls on CNN and MSNBC to address the fact that Fox News Channel is in no way a legitimate news outlet competing with them or other news networks.
It’s past time CNN and MSNBC put out a joint statement saying, “FNC isn’t a competitor of ours—their competitor is Dancing With the Stars or The Amazing Race. We compete with the nightly news on NBC, ABC, and CBS. We congratulate FNC for beating out re-runs of Punky Brewster.”
In part eight, Abramson addressed the continued presence of Shep Smith on Fox News. Shep Smith has been consistently annoying Fox News viewers since Trump’s inauguration, with The Washington Post reporting on “Shep Smith’s long history of annoying Fox News viewers” in November 2017. The Daily Beast characterized Shep Smith as going rogue in a December 29, 2017 article, reporting that: “While his network daily parrots every absurd Trump talking point, Shep Smith has turned into Fox News’ vestige of fact-based news reporting—much to the chagrin of Fox viewers.”
Abramson likened Shep Smith’s predicament to that of an “international hostage situation,” tweeting that:
Shep Smith’s continued presence at FNC should be handled with the same urgency—and demands the same dynamic bilateral partnerships—as an international hostage situation. CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and CBS should be airlifting Smith out of FNC with a blanket and cookies at hand.
Abramson completed his thread with a reference to George R.R. Martin the author of a series of epic fantasy novels titled, A Song of Ice and Fire, which was later adapted into the HBO series Game of Thrones:
Until we stop treating FNC as being in the same Nielsen category as CNN and MSNBC, we’ll be doing the equivalent of combining the New York Times bestseller lists in fiction and nonfiction and then letting George R.R. Martin brag to friends that he’s America’s top biographer.
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