The top-clicking article at The Washington Post this morning is about the media and democracy…and now Fox News is the Enemy of the People. This is the headline on media columnist Margaret Sullivan’s war cry:
Fox News is a hazard to our democracy. It’s time to take the fight to the Murdochs. Here’s how.
It starts by defining Fox as the Lies Network:
Apparently, at a network that specializes in spreading lies, there was a price to pay for getting it right. (“Fox News isn’t a newsgathering organization,” surmised press critic Eric Boehlert, arguing in response to the purge that its White House credentials should be revoked.)
That's the same clownish leftist Eric Boehlert who wrote a whole book claiming the liberal media under George W. Bush were....Lapdogs. Doesn't everyone remember how much Dan Rather loved Dubya? What these people want is a boisterously radical-left press, not so much holding microphones as pitchforks and torches, tar and feathers for the conservatives.
Fox News is a “monster” that needs to be brought “under control.” Imagine anyone saying the Post was a raging Frankenstein that needed some harsh discipline. That would sound authoritarian, right? Oh, Sullivan says she doesn’t want to be flagrantly undemocratic about it, and censor them outright:
How to get the Fox News monster under control? I do not believe the government should have any role in regulating what can and can’t be said on the air, although I often hear that proposed. That would be a cure worse than the disease. But let’s not count on the hope that the Fox-controlling Murdochs will develop a conscience.
Translation: We would like Fox to be more like a Mitt Romney than a Tom Cotton. Now that Joe Biden is president, their insolence against the Democrats should not be tolerated. Sullivan urges the growing trend of Woke Corporations to administer discipline to the Murdoch clan:
No, the only answer is to speak the language that the bigwigs at Fox will understand: Ratings. Advertising dollars. Profit.
Corporations that advertise on Fox News should walk away, and citizens who care about the truth should demand that they do so (in addition to trying to steer their friends and relatives away from the network).
Big companies would never do that, you say? Don’t be so sure.
The Post reported last week that the 147 Republican lawmakers who opposed certification of the presidential election have lost the support of many of their largest corporate backers. General Electric, AT&T, Comcast, Honeywell, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Verizon all said they would suspend donations to members of Congress who voted against certifying Biden as president.
This shows, at the very least, that there is a growing understanding that lying to the public matters, that it’s harmful — or “insidious,” in the words of James Murdoch. And that some corporations don’t want to be a part of that.
When you think about Fox News’s role in the 400,000 U.S. lives lost to the pandemic and in the disastrous attack of Jan. 6, it’s even fair to call it deadly.
Apparently now, Democracy Dies in Fox News.
