Fox News CEO: Fact-Checking Trump Is ‘Bad for Business’

“This has to stop now. This is bad for business and there is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”

— Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott in an email to Meade Cooper, executive vice president of prime time programming, regarding correspondent Eric Shawn fact-checking then-President Donald Trump’s lies after the 2020 election, reports CNN.

Most Republicans Say fact-Checkers Are Biased

70%

A new Pew Research survey finds 70% of Republicans say fact-checkers tend to favor one side, compared with 29% of Democrats — a 41 percentage point difference. Conversely, 69% of Democrats say fact-checkers deal fairly with all sides, a view shared by just 28% of Republicans. Independents are more split, with 47% saying fact-checkers tend to favor one side and 51% saying they deal fairly with all sides.

WaPo Creates a New Fact-Checker Category Just for Trump

20


The Washington Post has instituted a new fact checking category — called “Bottomless Pinocchios” — for President Trump’s false claims that have been repeated at least 20 times and were originally rated Three or Four Pinocchios. “The Fact Checker has not identified statements from any other current elected official who meets the standard other than Trump. In fact, 14 statements made by the president immediately qualify for the list.”

Fact-Checking Trump Doesn’t Work

“If reporters dedicate time and energy to investigating whether known lies might be true, they will continue to cede control of the news cycle to Trump. … It’s a numbers game. The more he can get his key terms and images repeated in the media?—?even as ‘fact checks’?—?the more he wins. That’s just how our brains work. The more we hear about something, the more it sticks. Even if it’s not true.”

George Lakoff

Max Boot Adds to the List – Five Trump Atrocities against Democracy in One Week

Amy Siskind tracks the crimes committed by Trump, his family and his administration on a weekly basis at her site, “The Weekly List.” Now Max Boot, one of the thousands (millions?) of Republicans who have left the party in disgust since Trump was elected, has an op-ed up at the Washington Post in which he lists five criminal outrages committed by the so-called president in just the past week.

[…]

Clinton Sees ‘Assault on Facts and Reason’ in the U.S.

“There is a deliberate, very well-organised, sophisticated assault on facts and reason and evidence. In our country, it’s driven originally by a cabal of billionaires and religious fundamentalists, and their view is that it doesn’t matter what they say. If they say it often enough and they put enough money behind it, they’ll convince a significant number of people.”

— Hillary Clinton, quoted by The Guardian.