New York Magazine is reporting that changes are afoot at Fox News following their pitifully inept coverage of the presidential campaign. Fox spent most of the year polishing the bubble within which their viewers, and even many of their favored candidates, resided. They were so averse to reality that they refused to report the results of polls that didn’t support their fantasy worldview, even when those polls were conducted by Fox News.
The anchors and other spokespersons for the channel worked overtime on behalf of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. They were unambiguously biased, which led to some rather embarrassing analyses and predictions. Most notable among these gaffes were the relentlessly anti-Obama/pro-Romney observations of Karl Rove and Dick Morris. And surprisingly, there are consequences for being so reliably wrong. According to Gabriel Sherman at NYMag:
“[Fox News CEO Roger] Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.”
Well, that’s the least they can do – literally. While benching Rove and Morris makes perfect sense considering how dreadful their service to the network was, it doesn’t begin to address the problems at Fox. Bill Shine confirmed that the memo was authentic and that its purpose was to convey the message that “the election’s over.” If so, why is Fox continuing to feature a roster lousy with players who were every bit as disastrous as Rove and Morris.
Sarah Palin is a fixture on the network despite her nonsensical fear mongering about the creeping socialism of Obama and the Democratic Party. Mike Huckebee retains his Fox program even though he was an unrepentant supporter of Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin. Both were prolific fundraisers for a raft GOP candidates who mostly lost.
Then there is John Bolton, Laura Ingram, Tucker Carlson, Monica Crowley, Bill Kristol, Michelle Malkin, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, the entire cast of Fox & Friends, and Fox’s own GOP Carnival Barker, Sean Hannity. How can Fox maintain seriously that they want to move on past the election when their schedule is littered with the same political hacks who played starring roles in the biggest flop of the season?
The answer is that they have no intention of moving on. The wrist-slapping of Rove and Morris will be short-lived and the familiar partisanship at Fox will continue unabated. If anything, the month that has transpired since election day already proves that Fox is still in campaign mode with their attacks on Susan Rice, their sensationalizing of the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” and any number of other trumped up scandals.
Oh yeah, that reminds me. There has been no mention of their sidelining the Billionaire Birther, Donald Trump. So don’t expect to see much change at Fox, other than a bit of window dressing that will all come down when the weather clears.