A cohort termed “social media users” by Fox News on Friday “thrashed” ABC News “after the outlet presented a campaign ad from former President Barack Obama in favor of a Virginia redistricting measure as an ‘exclusive,'” with the Fox article of the “thrashings” leading with a tweet by Real Clear Investigations writer Mark Hemingway asking “Why the hell does a major news network consider an extremely partisan campaign ad an ‘exclusive’?” and containing six of the replies to that tweet.
Hemingway’s outlet last year published an in-depth investigation into the 2023 Biden White House cocaine “scandal” five months after convicted felon President Trump was sworn back into office. His wife, Mollie, writes for the Federalist and in 2023 falsely claimed that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed Twitter for every person who ever liked a Trump tweet.
Anyway the Fox News article then detailed six of the replies responsive to Mark Hemingway’s gripe about the now-deleted @ABCPolitics tweet that apparently had painted the reporting of the Obama ad as an “exclusive” at the time. The article it apparently linked to does not anywhere contain the word “exclusive” and in italics at the bottom says it had been updated afterward but not specifying why. One of the replies to Hemingway hints at why, saying “It’s so exclusive I saw it on YouTube before my video started about 20 times in the past week.” So yeah sick burn and it is not at all implausible that the Disney-owned news outlet had been cowed into editing “exclusive” out of the article by Hemingway and the five other Twitter users who had agreed with him. The sixth was a lib who wrote “Because it’s an exclusive I guess? What does partisanship have to do with it?”
The following is a not at-all-comprehensive list of Fox News “exclusives” from recent years:
🇺🇸 “Cruz introduces bill to bring immigrant processing centers ‘where Democrat elites host their cocktail parties,'” printed on October 17, 2021 about a bill that never passed Congress.
🇺🇸 “Liberty University president cries foul after leak of Dept of Education report on school’s safety compliance” printed on October 16, 2023, after the Biden Admin exposed campus sexual abuse.
🇺🇸 “House GOP moves to name US coastal waters after Trump” printed June 13, 2024. It does not appear that fanboy Florida Congressman Greg Steube reintroed the bill during the next Congress.
🇺🇸 “Trump to sue DOJ for $100M over Mar-a-Lago raid, alleging ‘political persecution'” printed August 12, 2024. The government has yet to settle with the head of the government on that complaint, which he has since increased to $230 million, separate and apart from the $10 billion he’s demanding the IRS pay him as a settlement for allegedly leaking his tax returns.
🇺🇸 “Stefanik steamrolls top conservative in New York gubernatorial race” printed on November 29, 2025, three weeks to the day before she quit the race and reelection to Congress.
But let’s hear more about ABC’s abuse of the “exclusive” marque as laundered political messaging.