Never mind that Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of the Fox News parent company, supports taking “bold leadership” to restrict access to assault weapons, executives at Fox News have dictated that the subject of gun control is forbidden on their network. Sources told Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine that…
“David Clark, the executive producer in charge of Fox’s weekend coverage, gave producers instructions not to talk about gun-control policy on air. ‘This network is not going there,’ Clark wrote one producer on Saturday night, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange.”
This is the sort of overt bias that is practiced at Fox News on a regular basis. There is nothing new about Fox demanding that their anchors and contributors follow the marching orders from the executive suites. They receive a morning memo informing them on the topics of the day and what their positions will be. Even loyal Fox associates like pollster Frank Luntz have revealed that failing to “comport with the outlet’s orthodoxy” will result in getting you blacklisted. Sherman’s sources went on to say that…
“During the weekend, one frustrated producer went around Clark to lobby Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice-president for news editorial, but Clemente upheld the mandate. ‘We were expressly forbidden from discussing gun control,’ the source said.”
Sherman noted that there was a bit of discourse on gun control on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. However, he did not mention that the program airs on the Fox Entertainment Network, not Fox News (although it is repeated later in the day on Fox News).
This is how Fox directs the editorial content of the network. They have a heavy hand enforcing what people may, and may not, say on the air. It is not a coincidence that nearly everyone on Fox spews the same talking points throughout their broadcast day. It is by design and it is imposed by an editorial politburo that monitors the dissemination of their propaganda.
Since Fox CEO Roger Ailes is against gun control, then everyone at Fox must be. And if they think that discussing a subject is not in the interests of their agenda, then discussion is shut down. In this case, the network’s censorship is in lock step with the NRA, who have been maintaining media silence ever since the tragedy on Friday. The NRA’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have gone blank. And so has free speech on Fox News, not that it was ever there in the first place.
It’s also worthwhile to note that while Fox has banned all talk of gun control, they have not similarly banished talk of other explanations for the atrocity in Connecticut. For instance, they had no problemn with laying the blame on movies and video games. And Fox host Mike Huckabee was permitted to go on the air and blame the killings on the absence of God in the classroom. That’s is a particularly idiotic theory when you consider that other mass killings have taken place in churches where there presumably was no shortage of Godliness.