After searching their site and even all of their sister sites, the disheartening verdict is in: FOX News isn’t reporting on the pro-America demonstrations in Libya. 

In fact, the only thing remotely related to the hundreds of Libyans who gathered in the capitol city of Tripoli is a 54-second video clip from Shepherd Smith’s Studio B, an online webcast that doesn’t air on normal television when he hosts his weeknight show FOX Report. Smith, who is already is hot water with FOX News owner Roger Ailes, is said to promote hard left views to help offset the right-wing bias FOX News is often labelled with. Regardless, a tiny snippet of video broadcast online is not enough to keep Americans informed about the true circumstances of Libya — especially if they only get their news from major outlets. 

FOX News is one of the most popular sources of information for Americans, and the network has devoted zero attention to the pro-American culture that exists in Libya. That’s not surprising, considering the amount of pro-war propaganda that has allowed Iraq and Afghanistan to be the longest combat operation in the US’s history. The reporting is so poor that major news outlets might as well be purposefully trying to bait Americans into getting on board with a full-scale military offensive in northern Africa. 

Here are a few of FOX’s front pages over the past few days:

These were headlines, despite the pro-American protests taking place in Tripoli, and despite the fact that a recent Gallup Poll that showed an overwhelming majority of Libyans supported disarming local militia earlier this year. In fact, most Libyans consider Islamic military groups and Gadhafi Loyalists to be a significant threat to the development and longevity of a peaceful democracy. So while unrest in the Middle East is unfortunately to be expected, to what extent does more first-world military intervention in Libya serve a purpose? 

It’s worrisome that news outlets are purposefully painting Libya in the same light that they painted Iraq and Afghanistan before the US invaded on the grounds of fighting terrorism. In 2008, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) posted a list of the Dirty Dozen Islamaphobes, each of which had a separate hand in the installation of anti-Muslim and pro-war sentiments in the minds of the American public. And now, nations still forming after the Arab Spring are fearing that events like the the 9/11/12 embassy attack in Benghazi may be what sets off US interference – and that the government may be encouraging negative public opinion to further their own goals.