There are no bodies, or even missing persons, but that didn’t stop this Fox guest from speculating the Idaho slayings weren’t the perpetrator’s first murders.
The Fox producers and on-air hosts have their fingers in this pie, too, because they solicited his appearance, put him on their show, and aired his allegations.
Granted, there’s lots of media speculation about the case, but I haven’t heard anyone else accuse the suspect of other murders. (Update: Until I read this.) Until law enforcement does, that’s over the top and baseless. It’s also problematic, because it inflames potential jurors.
The show was “Fox and Friends,” and the guest was Jonathan Gilliam, a former Navy SEAL, FBI agent, and federal air marshal who now makes his living as a media personality. Gilliam markets himself as a security expert, has a podcast and website, and does TV commentary (see his C.V. here). He was interviewed by Ainsley Earhardt, who’s a talk show host, not a journalist (see her profile here).
Gilliam makes that allegation at 2:00 minutes into the video below. He doesn’t stop there. At about 5:15 minutes, he gratuitously suggests the police are “succumbing to peer pressure” and rushing the investigation. There’s no reason to believe that.
Fox isn’t a news channel, and its hosts aren’t journalists. This is entertainment, and factual reporting isn’t their aim, nor that of its guests; bringing in viewers and dollars is. I wrote this post to remind this blog’s readers of that.