Fox News is hosting a GOP primary debate on Wednesday night, and good for them: They do an incredible amount of work every day to elect Republicans and maybe also sell some gold coins to comatose 80-year-olds.
A GOP debate is a fitting reward for a propaganda network, right? It’s like when you watch a Yankees game on the Yankees channel and the Yankees announcers land an interview with Derek Jeter.
Everyone is on the same team and it’s all good fun.
The Washington Post, however, has a different take on Wednesday’s event. Apparently it’s a chance for Fox News to improve its poor journalistic reputation:
The headline states that the “GOP debate gives Fox News a chance to burnish its image.”
Here’s my question: Does it, though?
Quick followup question: Like…DOES IT???
For most of us Fox News does not have an image to burnish, because its reputation is so lousy. It’s like saying CPR gives you a chance to revive a patient who has been dead for a year. You’re doing chest compressions on dust.
One question raised by this headline is: Burnish its image with whom?
I would like to meet a human being who will be watching this upcoming debate and thinking that it might change their mind about Fox News’ journalism credentials.
Like, “Yeah, for the past three decades they’ve been peddling conspiracy theories and wacky Right-wing propaganda at the behest of an Australian billionaire who looks like a bleached California Raisin. But that’s water under the bridge if this debate goes well!”
The backdrop for this article is the damning Dominion lawsuit that, among other things, cost Fox News $787 million and also proved for the infinitieth time that Fox is not a real news network and shouldn’t be treated like one.
Basically everyone at Fox knew that Trump lost the election but decided to push forward with news coverage that implied otherwise because that would be good for ratings.
That’s not something that happens in a real newsroom? If CNBC was like “Hey, you know what company still has a shot? Theranos,” you probably wouldn’t trust their business coverage anymore.
But I digress. Here is Chief Image Burnisher Martha MacCallum urging you to ignore the clowns and bigots who get the high ratings:
“I think that Fox has fantastic political reporters,” MacCallum said. “We have great war correspondents. We have a very strong news division, and I’m proud to be part of it, and I’m proud to be co-moderating this debate with Bret, and I’ve always felt really good about what we do.”
It’s a bit like saying McDonald’s is a health food restaurant because it offers a salad. 99 percent of your customers are there to shovel double cheeseburgers and jumbo fries into their guts.
They do not care about your war correspondents. They probably think the war in Ukraine is a false flag meant to force children to take the Trans vaccine.
Besides which, it’s not like the Bret Baier Salad is THAT healthy. Here is what this Real News Guy was saying before the first Trump-Biden debate in 2020:
[W]ith just hours to go until the event kicks off in Cleveland, Ohio, [Trump’s] surrogates are trying a new, more batshit tack: Biden is going to have a secret earpiece so his campaign can feed him the answers.
Chatting during America’s Newsroom, anchor Bill Hemmer and reporter Bret Baier, who are supposedly part of Fox News’ “straight news” team, floated the conspiracy theory. “Peter Doocy is reporting some interesting things. I don’t know if you’ve got these nuggets yet or not, but I’ll read them for our viewers,” Hemmer said. “The Trump team asked to inspect the ears of each debater for electronic devices or transmitters; the Biden team has not consented to that.
Suggesting Doocy’s report was in any way remotely true, Baier responded, “Those are significant…As far as the listening devices and the Biden campaign’s response to that, I think that’s interesting, and we’re going to have to follow that through the day to, you know, what comes out of that.”
We’re going to have to follow that throughout the day! Go live to a field reporter who is standing outside Joe Biden’s ear canal! Bring on a right-wing ENT to offer analysis about which billionaire Jew could be speaking into the microphone!
Work the phone, call your sources, hit the pavement and see what you can dig up on whether Joe Biden is wearing a Mission: Impossible AirPod and being fed lines from the Antifa Control Room in San Francisco, California!
Maybe on Wednesday night Bret Baier will give us an update on his 3-year investigation into Joe Biden’s debate earpiece. A landmark scoop like that would surely burnish the image of Fox News.
Anything else that happens will be inconsequential to my understanding of Fox News, and should be inconsequential to yours, too.
Apologies to the Washington Post, but you cannot polish a turd. And a couple of tough followup questions to Nikki Haley aren’t going to put Fox News in Pulitzer territory.