Fox Reporter Ben Swann: Sandy Hook Truther?
Journalists are supposed to question official accounts and probe for hidden evidence, but does questioning the media and police’s account of the Sandy Hook massacre go too far?
It’s a question worth asking in regard to Ben Swann, an anchor at the local Fox affiliate in Cincinnati, who uses his personal YouTube channel to ‘question this whole narrative’ and advance alternative theories about the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings.
Swann, who has attracted a national following by appealing to the Ron Paul-ish ‘liberty vote,’ anchors two newscasts every day for Fox 19, and produces the thrice-weekly ‘Reality Check’ segment, which is billed as a fact-checking series, but can sometimes feel like a conservative-libertarian opinion segment. His interview with President Obama, in which he grilled the commander in chief on the legal underpinning of the ‘kill list,’ captured national headlines, and he’s won an Edward R. Murrow award. He’s been praised alternately by RT and the Atlantic for his fierce coverage of civil liberties issues, but criticized by the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple for being too friendly to Ron Paul and ‘allow[ing] his affection for constitutionalist politics to corrupt his judgment.’
On the side, Swann hosts ‘Full Disclosure,’ a slickly produced Web series featuring him talking straight to the camera about mostly national stories. After I wrote about Sandy Hook truthers last week — people who hold various conspiracy theorists about the shooting — a Swann fan sent me a recent episode of ‘Full Disclosure,’ produced Jan. 3, which questions the ‘official narrative’ of the shooting spree.
Swann starts off the segment by mentioning the three mass shootings that have received widespread media attention this year: The Aurora, Colo., theater shooting; the Sikh Temple massacre in Oak Ridge Ridge, Wis., and the Sandy Hook spree. ‘Earlier this year, I told you that there are major problems with the theory that the Colorado theater shooting was a lone wolf attack, is that true of these other two shootings as well? This subject deserves Full Disclosure,’ he says at the beginning of the six-minute episode as the bumper graphic plays.