Ever since Donald J. Trump’s presidency ended in disgrace and violence in January, Fox News hasn’t been as relentlessly fawning and fact-challenged as the likes of OANN and Newsmax. But they’ve tried. For one thing, they employ Tucker Carlson, who can always be counted on to spout dangerous nonsense — like asking viewers to harass people wearing masks. But one of the network’s former execs, who was there at the beginning, is calling them out — or trying, with not much success, to call out its owner, Rupert Murdoch.
In a blistering op-ed published by The Daily Beast, one Preston Padden — who was president for network distribution at Fox Broadcasting Company for seven years, and saw Fox News take off in its infancy — tried to square his longtime association with Murdoch with what his biggest network has become.
“Over the past nine months I have tried, with increasing bluntness, to get Rupert to understand the real damage that Fox News is doing to America,” Padden wrote. “I failed, and it was arrogant and naïve to ever have thought that I could succeed. I am at a loss to understand why he will not change course. I can only guess that the destructive editorial policy of Fox News is driven by a deep-seated vein of anti-establishment/contrarian thinking in Rupert that, at age 90, is not going to change.”
Padden calls Murdoch “brilliant, courageous, optimistic, and a gentleman,” but that what began as a “truthful center-right news network” has curdled into a “bile-filled network,” peddling claims “that no reasonable person would believe.” He singles out their misinformation about masks and vaccines, and about the election. He blames them for stumping for the rally that mushroomed into the deadly but failed Jan. 6 insurrection. “Millions of Americans believe these falsehoods because they have been drilled into their minds, night after night, by Fox News.”
But, Padden claims, not even Fox News’ owner believes the tall tales it spins on the regular:
The greatest irony is that I don’t believe that most of the falsehoods on Fox News reflect Rupert Murdoch’s own views. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by wearing a mask during the pandemic and he encouraged me to do the same. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by getting vaccinated at the earliest opportunity and he encouraged me to do the same. And I believe that he thinks that former President Trump is an egomaniac who lost the election by turning off voters, especially suburban women, with his behavior.
It’s big if true, though surely by now the damage done to a wide swath of America, perpetuated since the 1990s, is already very much done.
(Via The Daily Beast)