It may be tempting to roll your eyes and say, “there they go again.” But please don’t shrug your shoulders at the now notorious “Fox and Friends” segment from over the weekend, during which the MAGA media outlet tried to pull a bait-and-switch, showing video of a hatless Donald Trump at the dignified transfer of U.S. service members at Dover Air Force Base. As the astute X account, “Bad Fox Graphics” quickly pointed out, that video (see above) was from a similar ceremony last year. Fox apparently did not want to play for its viewers what actually occurred. Trump wore one of his tacky “USA” baseball caps at last Saturday’s dignified transfer (see below) - yet another sign of disrespect from a president with a track record of thumbing his nose at the idea of military service. Fox has since apologized for what it has described as an honest mistake. Please. Nobody is buying that. But this is more disturbing than just another example of Fox blocking and tackling for Trump. This Orwellian incident of bending reality to fit a pro-Trump narrative should be regarded as a cautionary tale for what Americans can expect if this nation continues down the path toward state media in the U.S.
First, let’s deal with the meat of Fox’s defense - that a producer grabbed an old piece of video from its archives and mistakenly played that clip during the Dover segment. Hogwash! There would be no need to do that. As a veteran of cable news, I can assure you the authentic Saturday footage at Dover, featuring Trump in his baseball cap, was easily available in whatever platform the network uses for playing graphics and video on its shows. Remember, the video came in Saturday. With a few keystrokes, any control room team should be able to call up the same clip the next morning. There was no need to dig into the archives unless somebody directed a member of the production team to find the 2025 footage. Further, that old video would have been clearly marked as entered into the network’s internal digital storage system last year. Pardon the double negative but there is no way that this was not flagged to the F&F producers in charge of the Sunday program. The Saturday video would have been easy to find. The old footage would have required some legwork. Sorry Fox, but this doesn’t add up.
Then there are the countless times, of course, that Fox has betrayed the public trust. Let’s not forget this is the same network that was forced to pay a nearly $800 million dollar settlement to Dominion Voting Systems for baselessly parroting the claim that Dominion was involved in an effort to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden. Dominion lawsuit Add to that the revelations unearthed by the January 6th committee whose members discovered that some of the biggest stars at Fox understood Trump had indeed lost his first bid for reelection and, yes, instigated the attack on the Capitol. Fox and Jan 6 The crown jewel of the Murdoch media empire is, for all intents and purposes, a partisan house organ for Trump. I’ve seen the outlet’s anchors cozying up to Trump at administration events. As former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham once told me, Fox works “hand in glove” with the Trump White House. Sure, we know how “The Five,” Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity would have covered Barack Obama wearing a baseball cap at such a somber occasion. Yes, it would have been nonstop outrage. But the stakes are bigger than that. Today’s Fox acts in many ways like Trump’s ministry of information. And its coverage of Trump’s undignified trip to Dover underlines the dire state of American media today.
In the aftermath of Paramount’s purchase of CBS, that network’s news leadership has already demonstrated a willingness to perform as a kind of state media for the Trump administration. The anchor of the CBS Evening News recently ended that broadcast saluting Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a bizarrely obsequious tribute to the cabinet official’s performance during the military removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. The network’s legendary news magazine show, “60 Minutes” also paused the airing of a critical report on the notorious El Salvadoran CECOT prison used by the Trump administration for some of its migrant detainees. Paramount has recently purchased the parent company of CNN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and will likely make similar editorial decisions at the 24-hour news network once its executives, such as the conservative CBS boss Bari Weiss, have settled in at the cable outlet. Add to that the specious settlements paid by CBS and ABC to Trump and it’s no wonder Americans are taken aback by the suddenly compromised state of media in the U.S. today. With Fox, CBS, and potentially now CNN under a pro-Trump umbrella, the U.S. could soon be the home to a powerful confederation of MAGA-friendly news outlets, controlled by corporate owners who prefer that these channels serve as propagandists for the Trump White House. Now imagine all three of those companies under one roof. Imagine a pro-fascist media juggernaut of that magnitude deciding whether to play the true video of Trump wearing a baseball cap at Dover over the weekend or turning to the archives to find more flattering video of the Dear Leader. How many Americans would be deluded into believing the lie, instead of seeing the truth? The way things are going, that is not much of a stretch.
As a principled conservative, if those still exist, might say, that is not what the founders intended. Democrats seeking the presidency in 2028 would be smart to start talking about breaking up these media conglomerates. The Murdochs are fine to own Fox on cable. But they shouldn’t own so many TV stations too. The Ellisons can buy CBS. But they ought to give up CNN. Allowing billionaire elites, aligned with the White House, to control vast portions of the information we consume is dangerous. This is much more serious than a baseball cap. This is about defending the truth and the freedom to report it. It’s the whole ballgame.
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