Ingraham on Fox News, Jan. 6: We know how to ‘cater to our audience’

Prime-time Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday mocked critics of the network who have this week expressed outrage that the conservative media company will not carry live coverage of the first hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol live on its main cable channel.

“They’re all upset that Fox’s isn’t covering it live,” Ingraham said on her show. “We actually do something called, ya know, cater to our audience. Our audience knows what this is. We’ll cover it, and we’ll do plenty of coverage … but it’s the theater, total theater.” 

Fox earlier this week announced it would provide coverage of the hearing on six of its eight platforms, including live continuous coverage on Fox Business Network and on its streaming platforms. It will also make its live coverage available for its various local affiliate stations throughout the country.

But the top-rated network will not preempt its prime-time lineup of opinion shows on its primary Fox New Channel, each of which draws millions of viewers a night and dwarfs the audiences of competing networks and Fox’s the other platforms.

Hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Ingraham will “cover the hearings as news warrants” the network said in a press release on Monday. Each of the three hosts has at various points dismissed the committee and its investigation as illegitimate and partisan.

Members of the committee and some Democrats this week have blasted Fox News over its coverage plans.

“Few things obstruct the American people from hearing the truth more than Fox News’s cowardly decision not to broadcast Thursday’s hearing,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference on Tuesday. “After all of the false facts that Fox News has allowed to be put on the air by its commentators and everyone else, they have an obligation to show the true facts by allowing the hearing to be seen by their listeners.”