Fox News: Fascist traitors and lying propagandists in our midst

Media bias fact check rating of Fox News

On 12/13/2021 – It was revealed that several Fox TV personalities texted Trump Chief of staff Mark Meadows to encourage Trump to stop the Capitol Riot, which contradicted their reporting later that evening that Antifa was involved in a false flag operation

It is no secret that Fox News is an anti-democracy, pro-fascism propaganda operation. The damage that Fox alone has done to American society, government, democracy and the rule of law is probably unmatched by any other source, including the Russian government, other radical right news sources, Facebook, Twitter and anything else. Maybe Facebook and Twitter come close. 

Recent revelations from the House committee investigating the 1/6 coup attempt include text messages from Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham to the White House urging the traitor ex-president to stop the violence. Now, Fox is pushing back. The New York Times writes:

Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham vociferously defended themselves for sending text messages on Jan. 6 that urged Mark Meadows, the last White House chief of staff under Donald J. Trump, to persuade the then-president to take action to stop the Capitol attack.

The texts made vivid something that was already not a secret — that key players at the network have acted as informal advisers to Mr. Trump. It is a situation that flouts journalistic ethical norms but does not appear to dissuade Fox viewers. In November, Fox News was the most-watched network not just in cable news but in all of cable television, with an average audience of 1.5 million.

The text messages also suggested that the hosts believed that Mr. Trump — who had delivered a combative speech on the Ellipse near the White House to thousands of his supporters in the hours before the breach — bore some responsibility for what took place that day.

“Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Ms. Ingraham wrote. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

Brian Kilmeade, a host of “Fox & Friends,” echoed that concern. “Please, get him on TV,” he wrote in a text to Mr. Meadows. “Destroying everything you have accomplished.”

Mr. Hannity texted: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”

Ann Marie Lipinski, a former editor in chief of The Chicago Tribune who runs the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, said that the Fox News hosts had violated journalistic norms in sending advice to a White House official as news was unfolding.

“For there to be an ongoing, live violent riot playing out at the Capitol during which anchors are communicating their preferences about what the president should do with the president’s staff is inappropriate in the least, and highly unethical by my lights,” Ms. Lipinski said.

“I think that’s part of the bargain that Fox News offers its viewers — ‘We have a different relationship with the government and a different relationship with the Republican Party,’” she added. “I think viewers in large part go there for it.”

That makes a few things clear. One is that journalistic ethics do not constrain Fox, just like inconvenient facts and truths do not matter to Fox.[1] Another is that Fox was aware of the coup attempt and believed the ex-president bore significant responsibility. Another is that Fox is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party inside and outside of government. Yet another is that most Fox viewers do not care about any of those things and/or do not believe any are true.

Question: Is it reasonable to believe that Fox is mendacious, anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian and treasonous?

Footnote: 

1. Fox is a major global anti-democracy, pro-fascist propaganda presence. For example, many Australians are alarmed at the possibility of Fox doing to Australian society and politics what it has done to America. One source published this on Sept. 1, 2021: 

Over the past two weeks, the flagship current affairs program of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Four Corners, ran a two part series under the title “Fox and the Big Lie” investigating how Fox News in the United States became complicit in spreading false and misleading information about the 2020 presidential election. The program’s argument was that Fox News was an influential actor in the events of January 6, when an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election result.

To most observers the program was unremarkable. The transformation of Fox News from a news organization — with a particular political lens — to a propaganda outlet has been quite obvious and well documented by numerous reputable sources. However, to the Australian media outlets owned by News Corp — Fox News’ parent company — the program was instead a demonstration of the ABC overstepping its role as a public broadcaster (to put their hysterics mildly).

News Corp in Australia runs an incessant campaign of belligerence against the ABC. They do this for reasons related to their own business model, as they don’t like having a competitor that is publicly funded, believing this to be an unfair advantage. But they also do this for ideological reasons: They believe that the ABC is a den of left-wing degeneracy, unwelcoming to “conservative” political parties and perspectives.  

But at present these very principles have become a partisan issue. It is no exaggeration to state that liberal democracy is suffering a crisis of confidence. This is occurring globally, but most influentially in the United States. Liberal democratic societies have reached a stage of complexity that is proving difficult for many people to handle. This is leading to a suspicion toward long-standing norms and institutions as now being incapable of providing emotional certainty. Somehow this need for emotional certainty found its expression in the chaotic personality of Donald Trump, and led to the events of January 6.