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The Fox Sports account on X drew criticism — but mostly anti-Semitic trolls — in response to a post about Israel’s baseball team competing in the World Baseball Classic.
The WBC is an international baseball tournament that was first held in 2006 and has happened five other times since (2009, 2013, 2017, 2023, and this year). Teams from the United States and Dominican Republic have each won once and Japan has won three times. This year’s contest began on March 5.
Fox Sports’ MLB account posted ongoing updates about the WBC on its X account Monday, noting each time a country’s team was eliminated from the tournament.
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The tweets displayed a simple graphic that stated in all-capital letters which country had been “eliminated,” the country’s flag, and along the bottom, tiny logos representing the WBC and Fox Sports.
For example, this was the graphic that Fox Sports posted when Australia lost, along with the text, “A heartbreaking end to Australia’s WBC run as their 5-run loss to Korea eliminates them from quarterfinal contention”:
Screenshot via X.
Fox Sports’ graphic design choices attracted little notice until the team from Israel lost.
“Israel has been eliminated from WBC title contention after their loss to the Dominican Republic,” the tweet said, including the “ISRAEL ELIMINATED” graphic with the Israeli flag.
The post quickly drew several replies questioning the wisdom of a graphic that only said “ISRAEL ELIMINATED” with the flag (the WBC and Fox Sports logos are cut off in some of the ways the tweet is displayed online), and a number of jokes, but many of the replies also expressed varying degrees of anti-Semitism, voicing support for the idea of “eliminating” Israel.
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“Perhaps not an optimal graphic,” wrote New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush.
“Read the room, Fox Sports. Jeesh,” scolded Newsmax anchor Andrew Craft. “Good thing Germany didn’t make the WBC this year,” quipped another commenter. Several others posted comments suggesting Tucker Carlson would enjoy the post.
Many of the other responses took on a more ominous tone, including some from known anti-Semites and other political extremists.
White supremacist pundit and conspiracy theorist Stew Peters declared that Fox Sports was “based” for the graphic, getting lots of concurring replies from his followers.
Shaun King pronounced the Fox Sports tweet “literally my favorite graphic they have ever made.”
