Letter to the Editor: The moral of the story

To the Editor:

A society in which its citizens are unable to agree on what constitutes the truth will find it difficult to reach agreement on pressing issues. That is why the recent revelations documenting the intentional spreading of false information by one of the most popular news sources for many Americans is so troubling. Fox News is watched by 1.6 million people each night and led millions of Americans to believe that Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election.

One of the major claims pushed at Fox was that the Dominion voting machines had been programmed to switch votes cast for Trump to Biden. Leading Fox commentators including Bret Baier, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dodds continued after the election to repeat the Big Lie and to give airtime to election conspirators Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.

Thanks to the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, we have learned from internal Fox documents, text messages and emails that they all knew at the time it was all a lie. For example, Carlson wrote to his producer, “Sidney Powell is lying”, and Bret Baier wrote to an executive, “There is NO evidence of fraud.”

And yet, because they feared they would lose their Trump viewers, they continued to air false claims.  And because Trump supporters were angry with Fox for being the first network to call the state of Arizona for Biden on election night (even though they should have been proud of their accuracy and speed), they fired Bill Sammon, the man in charge of making that call. Rupert Murdock, Chair of Fox News, said his firing would “be a big message with Trump people.”

This sad episode proves what critics of Fox News have been saying for years: it is a conservative propaganda network, not a true news network. In fact, if viewers exclusively watch Fox, they will never learn the details of this sordid business because the Network will not allow the story to be covered. Even Howard Kurtz, whose Fox show is “Media Buzz,” told viewers he could not address the case because as an employee of the company he must comply.

The moral of the story: if Fox viewers wish to learn the truth, they must go elsewhere for accurate news.

Thomas Hill
Lansing