2 weeks ago Tucker Carlson was canned and watched Fox News’ evening line-up with Abu Ghazaleh and five of her Media Matters colleagues in his Navy Yard office overlooking the Anacostia River. The space is large, with free seating and large meeting rooms, and few employees. (Most of the team has been working from home since the pandemic began.)
Tiny, blonde and blue-eyed, Abghazaleh easily passed for one of Fox News’ talking heads. Indeed, Abghazaleh has a pretty good idea of what it takes to be the right darling in one of the shows she watches daily. and tweet ‘I stand by JK Rowling’ and escalate again and again,” she said. “Complain, rinse, repeat.
“A lot of people do it because it’s so easy and there’s so much money in it,” she continued. For clarity, I would rather goug out the eyeball.”
Abghazaleh joked that he was born to be a “conservative sleeper agent.” She grew up in a “wealthy” area of Dallas, and she attended private school until her sophomore year of high school. Her father is a Palestinian immigrant and she is her seventh generation in Texas on her mother’s side. Their conservative family listened to her on Fox News regularly.
As a child, Abu Ghazaleh also watched his maternal grandmother. long time member Texas Federal Women of Republican Women – worked on multiple Republican campaigns and listened to her impassioned account of the party’s ideology. inherited.)
Abghazaleh was a Republican until his teens. She credits her progressive political awakening to moving to Tucson, Arizona during those years. “At least half of my high school was low income or illegal,” she says. “The bootstrap myth shattered before my eyes.”
During President Donald Trump’s presidency, she attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., majoring in international security in addition to studying journalism. about what i do. ” The position at Media Matters was perfect for her.
media issues explain yourself As a “progressive research and information center” dedicated to “comprehensive monitoring, analysis, and correction of conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” The group’s website archives footage from television shows and online broadcasts, which it uses to track false claims and how particular issues are being reported. I collect
Part of Abughazaleh’s job involves taking television clips of Fox News moments from assigned shows and sending the transcripts to colleagues so they can track what’s being said about various topics on cable news channels. to send.
Unlike some of his colleagues who use multiple desktop monitors, Abughazaleh does all his work on his laptop. She switches quickly from one tab of hers to another, sends emails, posts clips to her Twitter, and gives acerbic reactions to people mentioned.
In the evening I saw her at work. One of her first grabbed segments was Carlson’s “racist rantAbout Tennessee politician Justin Pearson. “You’re here for a night of fun,” she said, exporting a clip from Carlson’s opening monologue.
Media Matters employees have been criticized for platforming problematic content by posting Fox News clips. Abghazaleh sees it differently. “Fox is the most watched cable news channel in the country,” said Abu Ghazaleh. “They already had a platform, and just getting them off the hook would do more damage than it does.”
