More than six months ago, a hotel surveillance camera caught Ray Rice beating his now-wife unconscious in an elevator. After TMZ released the surveillance footage on Monday, the Baltimore Ravens cut Rice from the team within hours and the NFL suspended him indefinitely. “Fox & Friends” co-hosts responded to the video with comments including “she still married him” and “the message is, when you're in an elevator, there's a camera." Missouri School of Journalism professors Earnest Perry, Mike McKean and Amy Simons discuss the issue.
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The video of Ray Rice's assault caught the attention of many news organizations. But the co-hosts of "Fox & Friends" took a different approach to talking about the issue.
After reading comments and tweets submitted by viewers about the TMZ video, the first comment from co-host Steve Doocy was about the victim, Janay Palmer.
"We should also point out, after that video, and now you know what happened in there, she still married him."
Co-hosts Anna Kooiman and Brian Kilmeade were quick to agree, comparing the incident to other cases of celebrity domestic abuse. Kilmeade said he felt the lesson from these incidents was "take the stairs" but Doocy disagreed.
"I think the message is 'when you're in an elevator, there's a camera.'"
Missouri School of Journalism Professor Earnest Perry said the co-hosts tried to interject humor into an issue that did not deserve it. He also said the management of Fox Media should have held their staff responsible.
Here was an opportunity for them to actually talk about domestic violence in a way that would have helped spotlight the growing issue that needs to be addressed. And instead of doing that, they tried to turn it into some morning talk show humor
