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Fox News’ most popular host, Sean Hannity, took to the airwaves last week after the latest horrific shooting — this time at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis where five journalists were killed. Blaming African-American Congresswoman Maxine Waters for the murder spree, Hannity said, “I’ve been saying now for days that something horrible was going to happen because of the rhetoric. Really Maxine?”
Hannity was roundly criticized on social media. Ben Collins, a reporter for NBC News, tweeted:
“When is it enough for the real people in the daytime news division at Fox News to step in and denounce this guy?”
Who are these real people in the daytime news division at Fox? News anchors include Shepard Smith, Bill Hemmer, Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, Ed Henry, and Eric Shawn. Fox has long claimed there’s a firewall between its news journalists and opinion hosts like Hannity.
“They are analogous, Fox suggested, to the editorial and op-ed opinion pages of newspapers, which ought not be confused with the straight news coverage,” reported Columbia Journalism Review in 2010.
But Fox uses its “straight news” anchors as human shields to deflect criticism about the network’s raison d’être: propaganda arm for Trumpland.
Bill Maher asked Geraldo Rivera in his April interview on Real Time on HBO, “Why Fox News?”
Rivera defended the network, citing the “straight news guys,” Smith, Hemmer, and Baier. This ruse is known to every three-card monte hustler on the street. Fox News journalists are paid shills. They’re plants whose purpose is to create the illusion of journalistic legitimacy. They’re role players in the Fox-Trump con game.
With the exception of a mild joust from Smith, Fox's real journalists haven’t publicly criticized the network. Smith said in a TIME magazine interview in March, “They don’t really have rules on the opinion side. They can say whatever they want.”
Smith occasionally unleashes two minutes a day of Trump criticism, and in doing so, he enables the other 1338 minutes a day of Fox propaganda.
Calls on social media for Fox to fire Hannity in the wake of his Capital Gazette shooting commentary will likely go unheeded. Back in April, when Hannity revealed he had a business relationship with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, Fox doubled down on Hannity, announcing that he had the network’s “full support.”
Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote in April that journalists at Fox were “angry and disappointed” about the network’s handling of the Hannity-Cohen matter. But Fox journalists insisted on remaining nameless — they talked to Farhi on condition of being background.
I emailed Farhi, asking why Fox journalists wouldn’t go on-the-record. Farhi responded: “They like their jobs and don’t feel like losing them… Do you go around publicly criticizing your employer?”
But Fox News is an employer like no other.
Among its many transgressions, the network fuels “deep state” conspiracy theories, and props up Trump’s “fake news” attacks on the free press. Trump has called the news media the “enemy of the American people” — endangering journalists and undermining the foundation of democracy.
Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) tweeted last week about the battle against Fox News misinformation:
Scary. A constituent just confronted me and told me I support open borders. I told her that’s not true and I’ve never said that. She said “@FoxNews said you do.” Guys, this is what we are up against. We aren’t battling ideology. We’re battling misinformation.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 30, 2018
While Fox real journalists remain silent about their employer, other headliners and Fox on-air personalities are speaking out.
Producer/director Judd Apatow has mounted an online activist effort, encouraging Fox entertainment talent to speak out against Fox News. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has joined the row, saying he’s embarrassed to work for Fox. Steve Levitan, creator of Modern Family, said he won’t renew his contract with Fox.
Former Fox News analyst Ralph Peters said Fox anchors “understand that they are doing propaganda” for Trump and that the network has become a “destructive propaganda machine.”
Last week, Fox frequent commentator Bruce Turkel announced the end of his relationship with the network, writing in an open letter:
“I quit. Quite simply, the position Fox has taken on our government’s policy of separating children from their parents is too heinous for me to accept.
“Ann Coulter claimed that videos of crying children feature ‘child actors.’
“Sean Hannity suggested that these children are part of a ‘rolling invasion’ of our country.
“And more than one announcer has suggested that these kids are actually better off in cages than they were with their parents. One heartless commentator [Laura Ingraham] dared say locking innocent children away was like ‘sending the kids to camp.’”
Journalism experts largely agree: Fox is anything but a legitimate news outlet.
Dan Gillmor, professor of practice at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, wrote in an open letter, Dear Journalists, Stop Being Loudspeakers for Liars: “I’m not addressing Fox ‘News’ here, since Murdoch’s channel has chosen to be chief propagandist for the Trump administration.”
Still, Fox “straight news” journalists maintain the facade, insisting they’re siloed from opinion hosts. But cracks in the firewall are visible.
Fox journalist and chief national correspondent Ed Henry does double duty, co-hosting Sunday Fox & Friends. The show is Trump’s partner in the propaganda feedback loop.
Henry interviewed right-wing reactionary Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch on Fox & Friends on Sunday. Fitton is a frequent guest on Fox opinion shows where he amplifies the JW core message: “‘Shut it down!’ Mueller investigation ‘Out of Control.’”
I reached out to Henry, asking him about breaching the Fox firewall between news and opinion. His only response was to block me on Twitter.
Besides Henry, are the other real journalists unbiased — unaligned with Fox News ideology? Not necessarily. For example, right-wing luminaries blurbed Eric Shawn’s 2006 book, which criticized the United Nations. Book blurbers included Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rudy Giuliani — a triumvirate of far-right zealots.
In April, Shawn lent his platform to Fitton. Even if Shawn’s producers made the decision for him to host Fitton, history has taught us that “following orders” is an indefensible excuse.
Understandably, Fox journalists don’t want to risk their livelihoods by criticizing their employer. But by serving as enablers for Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson and the network’s purveyors of propaganda, Fox anchors are selling their moral backbones — like body parts for paychecks.
Given the stakes, the enormity of lethal danger posed by Fox News, real journalists at the network must go on-the-record with their anger and disappointment at the network.
By sprinkling a little real news into the Fox propaganda machine, journalists there are only lubricating its gears.
Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones tweeted in April:
Anybody who works at Fox and thinks they're doing anything other than help a lying propaganda machine that's helping to rip the country apart is delusional. You work there, you're complicit.
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) April 17, 2018
Silence is an act of complicity. Those who don’t speak out against wrongdoing are culpable. As philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself…in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Fox journalists are not exempt from accountability. Real journalists who work for Fox News must speak out against the network. Otherwise, they may keep collecting paychecks from Fox, but they are morally bankrupt — as are all enablers of evil.
NOTE: Guest writer Nancy Levine submitted this editorial, also published on Medium (with some minor changes here).
(Hannity image via screen grab)
