Who's Pulling the Levers?
Many of you have complained of late about a noticeable shift in Fox News, not only in its coverage of various political events, but also in its staffing. More and more, they are adding to their paid Fox News contributors with people who are in some way linked to the radical left. People have wondered aloud what could be driving this shift, and while we probably won’t ever know it with certainty, I’d like to call to your attention what could be the basis for a quid pro quo that would offer at least one explanation for it. In the months leading up to the revelations about the phone-hacking scandal at New of the World, another Murdoch news outlet in the UK, we saw the first signals of a change on Fox News, and of course, there have been rumblings of potential investigations and prosecutions here by our own Department of Justice. If Murdoch and Ailes have anything to fear from these scandals here in the US, then it wouldn’t be inconceivable that the corrupt Department of Justice under Eric Holder and Barack Obama could use it as the potential stick to lash Fox News into political compliance.
One of my favorite talkshow hosts, Tammy Bruce, likes to talk about how her listener-supported show and site are advertising-free, and that one of the benefits is that she doesn’t have to put up with the demand of what she calls “Gestapos” who would tell her what kind of content she must or must not have in order to continue her show. It’s rather harder for somebody to take from you the independence of thought on which your success is based if they have no leverage to do so. In that scenario, you’re not worried any longer about advertisers threatening to yank their support. Of course, you could theoretically annoy all of your listeners but that’s not likely if their support was built as much on the character of your ideas as on your personal style and presentation of them, because not many people radically transform their beliefs over night.
The reason I make mention of this is because as a large commercial outlet that makes it money from advertising, and as a corporation operating primarily in the United States, Fox News is subject to all of the laws that the federal government might apply to it. As a subsidiary of NewsCorp, Fox News is subject to political tampering not only by threats of legal action against it directly, but also by virtue of legal threats against the parent company. This would mean that whomever held the prosecutorial sword would be able to exert some influence simply by rattling it a bit. In this case, we’re talking about the most politicized Department of Justice since, well, ever… I have no doubt that the crowd of Chicago thugs in the White House would happily apply pressure to derive the kind of coverage they seek from Fox News. The question then becomes: Are Murdoch and Ailes worried enough about potential legal matters to be man-handled in such a manner?
Obviously, I don’t have the answer to that question, but what I do know is this: Within Obama’s first year as President, pressure of some sort, whether commercial, legal, political, or otherwise seems to have been brought on Fox News and Fox Business. I say this because two things have now happened of which you and I are uncomfortably aware: The lineups at Fox have been changed dramatically, including now the dropping of Glenn Beck, Eric Bolling, and Andrew Napolitano from the line-ups on the two networks. Arguably, these are the three most conservative or libertarian hosts on either of the networks with the possible exception of John Stossel, but his is only a weekly show. It would be hard to claim, for instance, that Beck was removed as a business decision, because his was still the highest-rated news show on cable in that time-slot when he parted company from Fox News. Beck has effectively said that there was some sort of pressure involved. Soros has been waging a public war on Fox News through Media Matters for America, and other shill outfits, but if he could somehow get an “in” at the network, he might be in a better position to change it.
At the same time as this all began, we saw that a number of contributors were brought to Fox News who reflected a much more left-leaning bias, including Jehmu Greene, and Sally Kohn, among others. Greene is a preposterous leftist whose rage is at times barely-restrained as she hurls her defenses of leftists around. Kohn is inexcusable, because she worked for the Soros-funded Center for Community Change. These are just two of a growing number of leftist trolls, just one step from Occupiers, now being picked up by Fox News as they ditch people like Andrew Napolitano? I’m afraid that given all of this, I have to conclude that something is happening, and I doubt it’s a business decision so much as one born of some sort of behind-the-scenes politics. The left wouldn’t want Fox News to go away if they thought they could convert it to their side, and slowly but surely, this seems to be the direction of the the network. While all of this remains supposition, I can’t help but worry a bit about it because so many center-left people have thought that Fox News was a “conservative” network, but in truth it was merely balanced with a slightly right-wing dialogue that would be more amenable to the establishment wing of the GOP.
With conservative and libertarian elements slowly being removed, and rabid lefties being slid into place, one must wonder what is going on, and with all the saber-rattling over at the Obama-Holder DoJ, I think we may have reason to worry. If the leftists have found a way to effectively exert control over Fox News, there’s a real danger that we conservatives may have lost the only television outlet of mildly center-right news we’ve ever had. Many have wondered about the open Romney-pushing going on at that network, and most have assumed it originates with establishment Republicans, but given some of the recent pronouncements of George Soros, one might think again.
