Memo to The Washington Post: Greg Gutfeld’s “comedy” show is the same as Fox’s “straight news”

Written by Eric Kleefeld

Published

The Washington Post ran a glowing profile Monday of Fox News late-night host Greg Gutfeld, depicting him as the channel’s “disruptive court jester.” The Post missed the real story: Gutfeld’s comedy talk show deals in right-wing talking points that are not only the same as any other Fox News opinion program — they are really the same things that any Fox viewers would find on the network’s purported “straight news” side, too.

One problem, of course, is that the article falsely referred to Gutfeld’s home at Fox as a “dominant news network” — when Fox is really a partisan propaganda machine, whose purported “straight news” side just kept getting worse in 2021 before losing one of its last few stars late in the year.

John Kerr // Media Matters

Instead, the Post should have taken a closer look at this paragraph, describing Gutfeld’s perspective on current events:

In Gutfeld’s America, President Biden is a doddering geezer. The mainstream media is essentially a house organ for the left. And the nation isn’t engaged in a necessary national conversation on race, and racial disparities in housing, health care and employment. Instead, he aims to persuade his audience that the nation is consumed by destructive and divisive “reverse racism” and an insidious campaign against Whites.

But these narratives in Fox’s programming aren’t just coming from Gutfeld. Fox News’ “straight news” coverage has long attempted to depict President Joe Biden as senile, ranging from groundless allegations by a Fox medical expert during the 2020 campaign, to continued speculation in 2021 on “straight news” programs from Fox senior political analyst Brit Hume. In doing so, their comments are simply indistinguishable from the network’s regular opinion hosts.

Fox News has also waged an extensive propaganda campaign demonizing any discussion of systemic racism. The network’s “straight news” side was fully involved in tying the issue to last year’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, and it repeatedly hosted Republican activists while describing them as simply being local parents. Following the Republican victory in that election, Fox then set its sights on yet another level of education — the purported teaching of “critical race theory” in daycare.

For another example of Gutfeld’s “comic jabs,” the Post describes: “During a recent segment critical of Biden’s handling of the economy, Gutfeld declared that Trump ‘would have nuked the supply chain crisis like it was a hurricane.’” Yet Fox’s “news”-side coverage has also gotten the story completely wrong on the global supply chain disruptions, which have been caused by markets in different areas of the world acting out of sync with one another due to outbreaks of COVID-19 variants.

Fox anchor Trace Gallagher suggested that clearing out backlogged ports could be a bad thing, while Fox contributor Kimberly Strassel claimed on Your World with Neil Cavuto that child tax credits and vaccine mandates were to blame. (The CEO of toy company Mattel later appeared on the network and debunked the narrative by explaining how the Biden administration ws helping to clear out supply chain congestion.)

In short, the entire Fox News network is just an entertainment channel, with even the most straight-laced “news”-side personalities echoing the same inane talking points as their supposedly comedic colleagues. (Their jokes are all bad, too.)