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Fox News got caught lying. So it's telling its viewers everyone else lies more [1]
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Date: 2023-03-02
That was the theme of a Hannity segment Wednesday night. Here’s former Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway:
x Kellyanne asks a Fox audience: How many times have you been lied to by the people whose job it is to tell you the truth in the media all in the service of getting the president. pic.twitter.com/XtjnGEMSPB — Acyn (@Acyn) March 2, 2023
“I want to challenge people watching tonight who don’t wear red hats, don’t consider themselves MAGA, don’t consider themselves very strong political people,” Conway said. “I want you to ask yourself how many times you’ve been lied to, not just by this government, but how many times you were lied to by the people whose job it is to tell you the truth in the media. All in the service of ‘getting’ the president. Trump derangement syndrome is real, we’ve lived it, there’s no booster, there’s no vaccine. It’s just going to go on and on, and it’s a very serious thing. And if it’s not him, they’ll go after someone else.”
Gosh, Kellyanne, seems like you are uniquely situated to shed some light on the subject of lying for political reasons rather than just asking rhetorical questions about it.
But in all seriousness, this is the same Kellyanne Conway who described the brazen lie that Trump’s 2017 inauguration was “the largest ever” as "alternative facts." The same Kellyanne Conway who invented the "Bowling Green massacre" as a way to defend Trump’s Muslim ban. Lying in service of Trump is what Conway did in the White House and is still doing—now, lying about other people’s lies to help keep Fox News viewers on the hook.
The undercurrent here is that lies are so pervasive and enormous that if Fox News isn’t always 100% truthful, it’s so minor as to be meaningless. That wasn’t just coming from Conway on Wednesday night:
x I swear Fox News is trolling their own audience. Hannity segment tonight complained everyone in the media "lie all the time" and no one seems to care. Another Fox host agreed, then told Fox's audience to be skeptical of everything they hear even on Fox. — Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) March 2, 2023
You may have heard things about Fox News lying, the subtext of these comments goes. Don’t worry about it—we have to lie a little because everyone else lies so much.
In reality, Fox’s lying is exceptional. “All very well for Sean [Hannity] to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?” Rupert Murdoch said to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In his deposition for the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, Murdoch reluctantly admitted that a string of Fox hosts didn’t just have on guests who lied about Dominion’s role in the 2020 election; they lied about it themselves. That included Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, and Hannity. “They endorsed” the claim that the election was stolen, Murdoch admitted, rather than just “reporting neutrally,” as Fox News’ lawyers had claimed.
In one past lawsuit, the network’s official position was that no reasonable person could believe what Carlson says because he’s so obviously engaging in “non-literal commentary.” There’s a reason that a 2012 study of political knowledge of people who watched different news networks found that Fox viewers were the worst informed. A 2020 study found that, while people who got their news from the Fox website understood political process as well as people reading other news websites, there was a “significant, negative relationship between visiting foxnews.com and facts about society writ large.”
Fox News lies. It’s what they do. When they get caught, and their lies are indisputably revealed in public, their response is to try to convince their viewers that everyone else lies more. Which is another lie.
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Yes, electing the president by popular vote is possible! Joining us on The Downballot is former Vermont legislator Christopher Pearson, an official with National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for states to adopt a compact that would award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide. Pearson walks us through the mechanics of the compact, debunks some common misconceptions, and lays out future steps toward hitting the required 270 electoral votes for the agreement to come into force.
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