Viewers Slam Fox News For Celebrating Pride Month After Boosting Target Pride Boycott Outrage

Fox News hosts and guests have spent weeks repeatedly pushing false claims that Target is selling “tuck-friendly” or “tuck-’em” swimsuits for children as part of its 2023 Pride Month collection, fueling the right-wing outrage machine and sending outraged viewers after companies that are supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

Calls from conservatives to boycott popular brands including Bud Light, which partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, and Target, which came under fire for its LGBTQ+ Pride Month merchandise, have gained some traction over the past month.

“This is just one side of this extremist playbook,” Eric Bloem, Human Rights Campaign senior director of programs and corporate advocacy, told Salon. “As we enter Pride Month this year, it has been the most historic anti-LGBTQ+ legislative year. We’ve had over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation across different states across the country – most of them targeting the trans community.”

Now, Fox News is being targeted with calls to boycott the cable network after it celebrated Pride month online and on the air.

Far-right commentator Matt Walsh went viral when he tweeted a screenshot of a page on the Fox News website that celebrated diversity, including this month’s celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride.

Under its “America Together, Celebrating Diversity” initiative, Fox News wrote: “Fox News Media celebrates the contributions to America by the LGBTQ+ community.” Other minority groups celebrated on that page include Women’s History Month and Black History Month, among others.

“Your trusted conservative news source is celebrating diversity this LGBTQ+ Pride Month,” Walsh told his followers, alongside the screenshot.

“The woke bandwagon beckons,” replied one person and another added: “I’m glad I cancelled our Fox Nation subscription. I wish I could cancel it twice!”

Despite the absurd hypocrisy here, Fox News managed to somehow make a page about Pride month that pretty much features only white gay men. pic.twitter.com/DR6W0blR9R

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) June 7, 2023

Viewers were also outraged that Fox News would celebrate “pride month” with a story about a transgender teen who shared his transition journey in hopes of inspiring others like him.

Fox News celebrating pride month with a story about an underage girl who ‘transitioned’ to being a boy.
Fox News is dead.
IT’S GAME OVER 😡 #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/cWQXL47DCa

— Paul Golding (@GoldingBF) June 7, 2023

Some online pointed to a recent report from media watchdog group Media Matters that revealed Fox News dedicated more than 2 hours of hysterical coverage on the backlash to Target’s Pride Month displays while running less than a half-minute of coverage on a new bombshell report detailing sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Illinois.

According to the report, the right-wing TV network spent two hours, 12 minutes, and 32 seconds covering the Target backlash between May 23 and May 30, coverage which included multiple Fox correspondents expressing outrage that Target would expose children to clothing with positive messages about the LGBTQ community.

Newsweek notes that this isn’t the first time Fox News has come under fire for celebrating Pride month.

In June 2022, the cable network aired a promotional video to “celebrate Pride month with Fox News” and to “meet important voices of the LGBTQ+ community.”

MANUFACTURED OUTRAGE: Fox News has devoted countless hours to targeting companies that celebrate Pride, especially those that have Pride products for kids.

Yet Harper Collins, a publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has an entire section on their website… pic.twitter.com/50dad0J26y

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 2, 2023