CNN's John Avlon: Fox News “is not a news organization. This is a partisan operation primarily.”
Published
Citation From the March 6, 2023, edition of CNN's CNN This Morning
DON LEMON (CO-HOST): The New York Times is reporting that Fox News' CEO Suzanne Scott said that they should have changed their coverage of the election results for bigger ratings saying in part this to The New York Times, “listen," -- this is what The New York Times' reporting, -- “Listen, it's one of the sad realities: If we hadn't called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger, Ms. Scott said. The mystery would have still been hanging out there." Is that a fair assessment of a so-called news network?
JOHN AVLON (CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST): No, of course, not even a little bit. I mean this New York Times article by Peter Baker, as Poppy points out, is details and conversation inside Fox News, among executives, in the days after the election where they're lamenting the fact that they followed the facts.
POPPY HARLOW (CO-HOST): Well, he saw a Zoom, of them saying --
AVLON: Yeah, so they got the receipts. These were not characterizations of comments, these are comments.
LEMON: These are supposedly their news folks who are saying, “maybe we should have considered" -- talking about MacCallum and Baier.
AVLON: In some ways, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum are the people who the network points to to be their real news anchors. And indeed there are some bonafides in that direction, as a contrast to their opinion anchors. What this conversation shows is Martha MacCallum saying, well, “in this Trump environment, maybe we shouldn't follow the facts so fast." That's incredibly dangerous. I think the curtain has been pulled back by this lawsuit on the fact this is not a news organization. This is a partisan operation primarily. But the fates of Fox News, the fear they have of their base, the fear of losing ratings -- which is also about greed -- is a parallel to what we're seeing inside the Republican party right now. The fear to confront Donald Trump. It's a form of Stockholm syndrome. They're all afraid to tell the truth, even though they know it to be the truth, and that's not just bad for the Republican party, that's bad for the republic. That's what we need to focus on right now.