Fox News "mole" Joe Muto visited HuffPost Live the other day (as our Priscilla previously posted) and confirmed something we've long suspected: that not even Fox News believes Dick Morris' predictions.
Muto said:
The people at Fox are not stupid. …They know when they have Dick Morris or one of these other pundits on predicting a landslide victory for Romney, people behind the scenes know that it’s all bluster. They know that this is sort of an entertainment. They know that a lot of these people are just hucksters and they’re trying either to sell a product – I guess in Dick Morris’ case subscriptions to his website or political consulting fees or something like that. …We producers behind the scenes know that this is all kind of a farce. The reason we don’t sort of step in and give more of a reality check to our audience is because that’s terrible for ratings.
As I've previously posted, Dick Morris recently admitted to Sean Hannity that he predicted Mitt Romney's landslide victory in order to help his then-floundering campaign. Although Morris insisted he had believed his own predictions, there is plenty to suggest in his comments that he knew he was exaggerating. At the very least, Morris' remark - that he felt it was his "duty at that point to go out and say what I said" - raises a lot of red flags about Morris' integrity as a Fox News "political analyst" and begs the question, what would he have said under other circumstances?
Now, Muto is saying that not even Fox believes what Morris says but that they promote his bluster because it's good for ratings.
So if Muto is right and Fox knows Morris is full of BS, does this not raise the question as to whether Morris deliberately says things he knows are not true - but sensational - to complete the vicious cycle of good-for-ratings dissembling?
Video is available at HuffPost.