Meet Kat Abu, The TikToker Mocking Fox Information “Simply For Funsies”

Two weeks earlier than Tucker Carlson bought canned, I frolicked with Abughazaleh and 5 of her Media Issues colleagues of their Navy Yard workplace overlooking the Anacostia River to observe them watch Fox Information’s night lineup. The house is huge, with open seating and huge convention rooms — and only a few workers. (A lot of the group has labored from house because the pandemic started.) 

Blonde, blue-eyed, and petite, Abughazaleh might simply go for one in all Fox Information’s speaking heads. Certainly, Abughazaleh has a reasonably good thought of what it could take for her to change into a darling of the proper on one of many reveals she screens every day. “Rant about cancel tradition on Twitter, make some ‘I stand with J.Ok. Rowling’ tweet, escalate it again and again,” she mentioned. “Complain, rinse, and repeat.

“It’s really easy and there’s a lot cash in it, which is why so many individuals do it,” she continued. “All you need to do is whine and be a little bit racist. To be clear, I’d somewhat gouge out my eyeballs.”

Abughazaleh joked that she was born to be a “conservative sleeper agent.” She grew up in a “well-off” space of Dallas and attended non-public colleges up till her sophomore yr of highschool. Her father is a Palestinian immigrant, and he or she’s a seventh-generation Texan on her mom’s facet. Their conservative family frequently tuned into Fox Information.

As a toddler, Abughazaleh additionally watched her maternal grandmother — a longtime member of the Texas Federation of Republican Girls — work on a number of GOP campaigns and listened to her glowing descriptions of the get together’s ideology. (Upon her grandmother’s demise, Abughazaleh inherited the mink coat that she wore to President Nixon’s inauguration.) 

Abughazaleh was a Republican up till her teenagers. She credit her progressive political awakening to a transfer to Tucson, Arizona, throughout these years. “At the least half my highschool was low-income or undocumented,” she says. “The bootstrap fantasy simply shattered earlier than my eyes.”

She attended George Washington College in Washington, DC, throughout Donald Trump’s years in workplace, majoring in worldwide safety along with finding out journalism. Upon graduating in 2020, she mentioned, “I needed to work for a corporation that aligned with mission, a mission that I believed in, and I didn’t need to work someplace that might simply be a job — I needed to care about what I do.” The place at Media Issues was good for her. 

Media Issues describes itself as a “progressive analysis and knowledge middle” devoted to “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation within the US media.” The group’s web site archives footage from tv reveals and on-line broadcasts alike, which it makes use of to trace false narratives or draw consideration to how sure points are being lined.

A part of Abughazaleh’s job is to tug TV clips of Fox Information moments from her assigned reveals and ship the transcripts to her colleagues in order that they’ll maintain observe of what’s being mentioned on a variety of subjects on the cable information channel.

Not like a few of her colleagues, who make the most of a number of desktop screens, Abughazaleh does all of her work on a laptop computer. She flips from one tab to a different with lightning velocity, sending out emails, posting clips to Twitter, and firing off biting responses to individuals in her mentions.

On the night I watched her at work, one of many first segments she grabbed was Carlson’s “wildly racist rant” about Tennessee state politician Justin Pearson. “You’re right here for a enjoyable evening,” she mentioned whereas exporting the clip from Carlson’s opening monologue. “Robust stuff — he’s having a standard one immediately.”

Media Issues workers are generally criticized for platforming problematic content material by posting clips from Fox Information. Abughazaleh sees it otherwise. “Fox is the most-watched cable information channel within the nation,” Abughazaleh mentioned. “They already had the platform. And simply letting them get by scot-free does extra harm than it helps.”