As the old adage goes: Take what you hear with a pinch of salt. It's a motto more than appropriate for our times, especially since Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit against Fox News dominated news coverage this week, exposing the grave threats of a toxic media landscape.
Dominion fought tooth and nail with Rupert Murdoch's cable network, but settled for $788 million, over lies the former was involved in an electoral fraud conspiracy that helped President Joe Biden get elected in 2020. To set the record straight for the over 60 percent of Republican voters who still label that election as stolen, Biden won against a twice-impeached Donald Trump on a sizeable scale.
Who was to blame for the almighty lie that duped millions? None other than Fox News. Well, it's radical right-wing pundits to be precise. Paranoid shock jock Tucker Carlson derided the 2020 election as "a grave betrayal of American democracy." His colleague, Laura Ingraham, took his absurdities even further by interviewing a masked poll worker who claimed to have witnessed voter fraud happening first-hand.
To the traditional Fox-sceptics among us, this delusional ire treating Trump as the defeated messiah is something to eye-roll at, or better yet, prompt a mad dash to switch TV channels. However, maybe Carlson is not so paranoid after all. It seems those same hosts that shamelessly spread these propagated falsehoods poured scorn on them off-air. To put Trump on a pedestal is clearly a tactic to drive profits, one also used by former CBS chair Leslie Moonves, who lauded the proliferation of Trumpism as a ratings winner for his network, no matter how disruptive it was.
In court filings that leaked before the settlement, Carlson slated Trump behind the scenes by calling him "demonic." Meanwhile, cables revealed Murdoch was concerned the bogus claims surrounding the Big Lie actually "went too far."
This is not the first time Fox News used its influence as a supposed news network to orchestrate smear campaigns against its detractors, whether staff believed in them wholeheartedly or otherwise. It's as if the media forgot the Birther movement; a conspiracy theory that insisted former President Barack Obama was born overseas. The fact that the 44th president was able to inhabit the White House was deemed objectionable. Yet no one asked someone like George W. Bush for proof of his birthplace before he focused on the job at hand.
Birthers tried to make a mockery of Obama's tenure, which was exacerbated by a right-wing commentariat hellbent on the downfall of any Democratic president. Luckily, the crazed theory didn't hamper Obama's efforts to seek two terms, although it made a shocking comeback this year on Fox. When ranting about classified documents being found in Biden's possession, host Greg Gutfeld said, "What if he has Barack Obama's real birth certificate, and that's what got him the VP job!"
As a spate of anti-trans laws take hold, alongside the attack on drag queens for reading stories to children, Fox News is weaponizing these issues by resorting to panic mode. Whether comparing drag queens to child groomers, or accusing the trans movement of escalating violence toward Christians, the terrifying rhetoric continues writ large.
There should be consequences for spewing misinformation and ratcheting up divisions amid a treacherous political climate. America is clearly a nation imperiled by an existential identity crisis, as racism and hate toward the other come out to play. It's not polarizing figures like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that are to solely blame. The onus is also on Fox News for spotlighting right-wing zealotry and slandering Democrats, minority groups, and progressives.
With a settlement reached following a last-ditch attempt from Murdoch, Fox News will go back to what it does best. But it must be held to account to protect news, and most of all, the sanctity of truth-telling.
As the trial loomed, Fox News was the one asking us to take what we heard with a pinch of salt ... but we weren't buying it.
Liam Barrett is a freelance politics and culture writer based in London. His Twitter is @LiamMBarrett.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
