Fox News v. Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren has been catching flak from internet randoms for her decision to not appear on Fox News. Let’s not mince words about this: Fox News is not legitimate journalism. Fox News is the television equivalent of a tabloid. This analogy is drawn from actual history; Fox News was founded by News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid business, whose foray into the United States in the 1970s included founding the National Star (which was later sold to the National Enquirer’s parent company) and purchasing the New York Post, two utter jokes of bogus news.
This is all Fox News is, the National Star or New York Post in television format. Would you fault Elizabeth Warren for not doing an interview with the National Enquirer? Of course not. So why would you get irate at Elizabeth Warren for refusing to appear on Fox News? It’s the same thing. Any person is entirely within their rights to refuse to conduct interviews with suspect media companies that peddle lies.
But Warren’s stance goes beyond this. Her stance is against the nature of those lies and the damage they do. She does not want to legitimize the likes of Fox News by treating them like they’re a serious journalistic entity engaging in good faith stewardship of the Fourth Estate when they so clearly are not. No matter how many people want to lament about how Warren’s decision is yet another indicator of how divisive everyone has become, and no matter how many times people want to link to the graphs in this Pew study about how Americans have become more polarized in their political views, just remember the entire point of Fox News was to sow that very division and create that polarization. If more centrists had not treated Fox News like a legitimate entity or been willing to “hear them out” on their sensationalist, jingoistic, fear-mongering, racist, climate-denying, anti-reality talking points, instead of treating them like the television tabloid they are, maybe it would be about as newsworthy today that Elizabeth Warren is not appearing on their sham network as it is that Elizabeth Warren is not conducting interviews with The National Enquirer.
