Fox News on Friday posted an offensive graphic tracking stock market gains in the wake of several infamous attacks on Black men.
In an image labeled “SP 500,” the multicolored graphic showed stock market increases after racist events that rocked the nation, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the deaths of African Americans Michael Brown and George Floyd at the hands of white police officers.
The Fox News graphic, presented during news coverage and not on one of the channel’s right-wing commentary shows, calculated “percentage change” in the market “one week after event.”
Each event was followed by an uptick in the stock market, ranging from a boost of 3.4% after Floyd’s death late last month to a 1.2% gain following the acquittal in the Rodney King beating case.
It noted stock market gains in the U.S. in 1968 — the “year that shattered America,” according to Smithsonian magazine — which included widespread protests against the Vietnam War, a deadly flu and King’s assassination.
