If you're shocked at the news about Fox...

You haven't been paying attention

As evidence grows that Fox News, led by the immensely complicit Rupert Murdoch, was grossly negligent in the execution of their mission as a news outlet, few things are more surprising (to me) than people who are acting surprised.

Who really thought Fox News was a credible news organization? As in, ever? (This Bulwark piece insists things are worse than we thought, but I’d argue that no, they’re every bit as bad as we already knew.)

Fox News was launched in 1996 by Murdoch after he couldn’t buy CNN, and his one of his first hires was Roger Ailes, and a more scandal-ridden Republican consultant you’d be hard-pressed to find. Murdoch paid through the nose to make sure cable companies would carry Fox, which is why we have access to this skunk at the party, when we don’t want it.

The network insisted it would be “fair and balanced,” unlike those other networks (which by “other networks,” Murdoch meant “all of the other networks”). When you start life as an antidote, it isn’t too far a walk to become the screaming mirror of whatever it is you’re trying to cure, at least that’s how things work in Media World.

Each latter-day revelation affirms the last one in a lawsuit launched by Dominion Voting Systems against the cable network for its coverage of that company’s role in the 2020 election. From the Washington Post article linked above:

After losing the election, Trump and his allies had floated several baseless claims to explain the loss. One that particularly gained traction was an accusation that thousands of votes for Trump were switched to Joe Biden, particularly in Antrim County, Mich. (State officials verified with a hand count of ballots that Dominion machines tabulated votes accurately.)

If you sell voting machines, those machines better be trustworthy. Dominion’s case seeks to prove they’re on the up-and-up, and in pursuing the suit, the Denver-based company has allowed the rest of us to see the ugly innards of the extreme right’s most effective propaganda tool.

It is ironic that because Fox pushed the Big Lie so hard, the world gets to see internal evidence see the frauds (Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and so, so many others) behind the nonsense.

Keep it coming, Dominion. We salute you.