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- Critical race theory is dominating Fox News coverage, according to a new study.
- Media Matters for America, a left-leaning nonprofit, tracked the buzzword going back to last year.
- It was mentioned nearly 1,300 times in three and-a-half months.
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As critical race theory has emerged as a central talking point and fundraising tactic for Republicans, Fox News has been flooding the zone and mentioning it at an accelerating pace.
A new study from Media Matters for America, a left-leaning nonprofit, found nearly 1,300 mentions of the term over the course of three and-a-half months.
-Media Matters (@mmfa) June 15, 2021
The Internet Archive database also found a sharp uptick in segments under the term over the past few years.
-Matt Grossmann (@MattGrossmann) June 15, 2021
In academia, critical race theorists focus on how America's history of racism and discrimination continues to impact the country today, particularly in how racism may have been brushed aside in previous historical accounts.
"Critical race theory is a practice. It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it," said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor at UCLA and Columbia University, told CNN last year.
Although critical race theory is not part of K-12 education in the US, local squabbles and highly specific campus incidents have been at the heart of Fox's coverage.
The critical race theory segments dovetail with the network's other big focus in 2021, cancel culture.
Unlike when former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were the leaders of the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden has proven more difficult for the network's most viewed opinion hosts to caricaturize.
Critical race theory mentions have grown at a near exponential pace in recent weeks, with Fox personalities mentioning it a record 244 times last week alone, more than the entire month of May and twice as many than for all of March, according to the study.