More Gifts from Dominion

The Dominion lawsuit is the gift that keeps on giving. Fox News is having its worst week ever; conversely, Media Matters might be having its best week ever. All week I’ve had the Fox News tag page on Media Matters’ website in my browser, refreshing it multiple times a day just so I can keep up with the news!

There’s a lot to snark about. My personal favorite is Tucker Carlson’s texts about how he hates Trump “passionately” while continuing to promote Trump’s election denial conspiracies every night in prime time. Carlson and his co-workers apparently disdain both Trump and their own viewers, but that didn’t stop them from pushing Trump’s lies about the election to an audience that was thirsty for it and cashing their oversized paychecks week after week.

But the most interesting revelation was that Fox News executives and on-air talent panicked over their own network’s correctly calling Arizona for Biden on Election Night. They debated if the blowback for actually reporting the news on a news channel was worth the blowback from their audience. Finally, Fox News opted not to call other states or even the Election for Biden until it was absolutely necessary to placate their viewers and keep them tuned in. Weeks later, the network finally considered a plan to denounce election denial myths on air but, in the end, didn’t.