On MSNBC's All In, Angelo Carusone points to Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch as the culprits behind Fox News' anti-vaccine coverage
Published
Citation From the October 5, 2021, edition of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): The original sin is the original denial. And that -- and the never getting out from under that except for about a two-week period, right? Where Trump got a little spooked and he came out and said, you know, he looked to those charts and we have to do something. But the original sin and the only thing that kind of keeps grinding this along as an intellectual project, if you can call it that, Angelo, is, like, it's just not that big a deal, they're lying to you about what a big deal it is, and everything gets -- needs to get reverse-engineered around that. Even to the point, you know, what I'm so struck by by your study of Fox is, like, they could just not talk about it. Right? They --
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): That's right.
HAYES: They could just leave it be. They don't have to go and undermine it if they don't want to be out there saying, look, it's -- but they don't do that. And it's -- I think it's because, A, it rates. Right? And B, because that -- they have to keep this mythos going.
CARUSONE: That's right. And I think that that's the part, that's the key piece here. It's actually, it demonstrates the intentionality, the deliberateness of this, and why it goes all the way to the top, right? This is beyond just a couple of segments now. I mean, this can only continue at the scale that it is if the highest levels of Fox News, which would be Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, at minimum are giving it tacit consent and if not more than that. And that's -- that I think is the first part.
And the more broad thing is that it does tie into the broader right-wing narrative of control, right? Why do you -- why should you fight against the ACA? Why should you fight against any legislation? It's always some, you have to step back because Democrats or the other or somebody is trying to control you. And that's what this is boiled down. They get to tie this into a broader right-wing narrative and then pump it with all sorts of misinformation and a lot of it is about getting power.