This incident brings up, once again, the question that constantly dogs me: how much is ‘too much" for right wing (fake) news generators? They’re ready to spew the same old lies, up to a certain point, and then they balk. T**** seems to be the main reason, but really, he’s just a bigger liar than even they are. Maybe that’s it.

Somehow, I typo’ed “vice” for “voice”.

I’d like to also note that there are such things as real journalism networks. Like CBS News. The New York Times. CNN. They employ reporters to research and present current events every day. They have done this for their entire existence, going back hundreds of years for some newspapers. There was never any “need” to inflict a Fox News.

Fox News is not, and never was, a real journalism network. It was always intended to be angry Right Wing propaganda that could counter any inconvenient facts and truths, and thus give an angry Right Wing audience a safe space where they could have their prejudices reinforced “on the news” every day and night. And it was designed to make enough of a negative space that when sane people called it out for its behavior, angry Right Wingers could retort that it was the real journalists who were the propagandists.

In the longer term, outlets like Fox News have not simply begot their more extreme progeny like OAN – they’ve allowed more cynical Right Wingers to push the false narrative that EVERY news organization is pushing biased propaganda. And too many people are falling for that line today.

Hayes joined Fox News as they were hunkering down for their attacks on President Obama and the 2009 Congress. This had been started with sneering nitpicks at the landmark 2009 Inauguration, and then officially kicked off by unrepentant bigot Rush Limbaugh with his infuriated scream of “I Hope He FAILS!!!!” at CPAC that year. Hayes was one of the “serious faces” brought in to buttress the Fox News hosts. The host would get things rolling with the Line of the Day, usually predicting or just stating a major failure for the Obama White House as part of the constant repetition of “Obama’s a failure” coverage. Hayes would then be there to provide some cherry picked stats or analysis that would sound very reasoned and thoughtful as to why President Obama was a failure in this situation. If there was a Dem consultant on hand, they’d be given 30 seconds to bleat a protest before being corrected by the serious thinker (Hayes) and then they’d wrap up the segment.

Hayes was not at Fox News to provide actual analysis – he was there to give a scholarly vice to angry Right Wing propaganda. And he knew it. He happily took their money to do this for a decade. As such, he was part of a long term effort by angry Right Wingers to push American discourse as far to the Right as they could, and to cheapen that discourse to the lowest denominator. (In fairness, most Right Wing debate is held at a fairly simple level, with the pundits regularly posing to just be “one of the folks”.) Hayes repeatedly dignified openly specious talking points about President Obama and the Dems, and he knew they were specious. But they allowed angry Right Wing pundits to rile up the GOP base and set the stage for the 2010 midterms.

The change we’ve seen since 2016 is that Fox News and the Right went all-in for the Pence White House, because they were literally getting every policy win they wanted, and because they enjoyed watching Pence’s childish former spokesman bullying their mutual enemies. Hayes was part of this too. It wasn’t until after they lost the 2020 election that Hayes soured on the program. In that aftermath, many Fox News viewers abandoned ship for even fringier angry Right Wing outlets like Newsmax. So Fox News has lurched into the fringe territory to try to get them back. And it’s causing more “serious” faces like Hayes and Chris Wallace (and a less serious one like Carl Cameron) to flee to actual journalism networks, presumably to get some of the stench off of themselves. (At the same time, multiple Fox News rejects have jumped at the chance to appear on the smaller fringe propaganda outlets – Eric Bolling and Ed Henry come to mind…)

It’s fine for Hayes to get a talking head position at a real network. They just need to introduce and couch him properly. Perhaps they could give him an on-screen placard of “Right Wing Propagandist, Formerly on Fox News” every time he answers a question.

There are times when I (almost) feel sorry for the media …. ( did say, “almost”).

Looking back, I’ve realised that the so-called conservative voices haven’t been that good at delivering conservative messages. Rather the contrary. The likes of Jeffrey Lord (ugh), Kayleigh McEnany (embarrassingly ugh), Rick Santorum (sanctimoniously ugh), Scott Jennings (ditto), etc. don’t do much more than irritate viewers with basic skills in critical analysis. Further, none of these fools has ever provided the daily fix of fact-free, hate-full rhetoric needed by the faithful. That may be why conservative pundits have such a brief shelf life.

When the hosts have had enough with their silliness, the “conservative pundit du jour” is replaced by an equally inane new face. Conservative pundits who sound even a tad reasonable have a brief shelf life on MSM.

Karen Barton, I haven’t seen any coverage but what Fox typically does is to give that kind of bad (for them) news brief coverage and then ignore it on their opinion shows. That’s how they bury it and claim to have covered it at the same time.

If they come up with a way to spin it into pro-MAGA propaganda, it will suddenly start popping up like weeds.

O/T, has Fox News, or any right-wing media, covered the subpoenas issued to the fake Trump “electors” who falsely claimed they were duly elected? Odd that conservative media seem to be ignoring this story.

I have some thoughts on this that I did not wish to insert into Brian’s post:

NBC is hiring someone who thought Fox was “good for the country” pre-Trump. Here’s what Hayes and Goldberg wrote about their resignations for The Dispatch. (https://thedispatch.com/p/why-we-are-leaving-fox-news)

“We joined Fox News as contributors in early 2009. Combined, that’s more than 20 years of experience, relationships, and friendships. For most of that time, we were proud to be associated with the network, if not necessarily with every program, opinion, or scandal that aroused controversy. We believed, sincerely, that the country needed Fox News. Whether you call it liberal media bias or simply a form of groupthink around certain narratives, having a news network that brought different assumptions and asked different questions—while still providing real reporting and insightful conservative analysis and opinion—was good for the country and journalism.”

Sure, a conservative news network could have been good for the country. And sure, some of Fox’s programming provided real reporting and insight. But as the Outfoxed documentary demonstrated way back in 2004 (https://youtu.be/P74oHhU5MDk), Fox has always been a propaganda machine. That includes the “objective” news programming (https://tinyurl.com/2ba6rwrb). It has just become exponentially worse now and now in service to authoritarian disinformation.

In November, I said about Hayes and Goldberg that in the age of Trump and Tucker Carlson, I believe in taking allies where we find them. (https://tinyurl.com/2pctjd39)
But that doesn’t necessarily mean hiring them as political analysts.

On the other hand, people do learn and grown so I’m willing to give Hayes the benefit of the doubt.