Talking About Republican Propaganda: Should Fox News suspend Laura Ingraham for her constant false, petty, partisan attacks on Democratic candidates who criticize Trump's racial rhetoric?
Above: A typical rant from Laura Ingraham.
Should Fox News suspend Laura Ingraham for her constant false, petty, partisan attacks on Democratic candidates who criticize Trump's racial rhetoric?
No.
First of all, Fox News Channel is not a true newsgathering organization free from bias. On the contrary; with the exception of some news breaks and coverage of “breaking news,” Fox News devotes much of its prime time programming to opinions-based content. (So do CNN and MSNBC, because opinionated presenters generate higher ratings than traditional news reports. This has been true since the early 2000s, and since ad revenue is the driving force of every free-to-air or cable/satellite channel, as long as Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, and Anderson Cooper get eyeballs and $$$ on their 8–11 PM programming, it’s not going to change any time soon.)
In the case of Fox, which is Rupert Murdoch’s version of a propaganda network for the post-1994 Republican Party, Laura Ingraham is doing what she’s supposed to be doing: being petty, partisan, and attacking Democratic Party members and liberals in general.
Fox News only suspends its “talent” when one of them does something so unsavory that advertisers threaten to withdraw commercials to, say, The O’Reilly Factor or The Ingraham Angle. In the case of Bill O’Reilly, his behavior toward women was just too egregious to ignore after the resignation of the late Roger Ailes as Fox CEO, so his show was canceled. Ingraham ruffled some feathers when she picked on Parkland High’s David Hogg last year; when Fox got a lot of pushback over that, Ingraham was taken off the air for a week. The network said it was a suspension; she said it was a scheduled vacation anyway.
O’Reilly had become a liability to Fox due to the #MeToo movement; Ingraham, on the other hand, was just being her acerbic, anti-liberal self. Fox News understands this very well. And because the network is, after all, a right-wing propaganda outlet, it doesn’t do itself any favors by suspending Laura Ingraham for doing her job.
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