Fox News Betrays the Fourth Estate

On Friday, December 11, when news broke that the Supreme Court had rejected the Texas lawsuit challenging the election of Joe Biden, network and cable news channels were broadcasting the story, so I turned to Fox News to see their take on this story.

Fox was not mentioning the SCOTUS story. Rather than offer any hint that they would recognize this attestation to a free and fair election and what it could mean for healing the nation and maintaining Democracy, Fox had instead pivoted to the issue of allegations against Biden’s son, catering as usual to their right-wing base.

The role of a fair press is to ensure that the electorate has accurate, fact-based information based on transparency and driven by truth. When media functions in this manner, it serves as a hedge against tyranny and authoritarianism run amok to the detriment and usurpation of our democratic institutions.

As an influential media outlet Fox News has failed in its role as a member of the “Fourth Estate” to relay facts about the political process of checks and balances between our Judicial, Legislative, and Executive branches of government in a balanced way.

Preserving our Democracy demands an editorial censure and repudiation by the American polity as a whole of the ultraconservative right wing of the GOP, represented by the 106 signatories to the Texas Attorney General’s seditious lawsuit filed against 17 states. The free press – that vehicle trusted with safeguarding our government’s checks and balances must act on behalf of Democracy and its institutions and never prove beholden to corporate interest as embodied in any one individual or special corporate conglomerate.

Seventy-two million voters for Trump who rely on Fox News to bring its editorial perspective of policy and governance cater to Fox for their news and views. Fox News, more so than any other major national news network, has been closely identified as the media outlet favorable toward Trump’s vision and has served as his platform for the nation.

Fox News and the free press have a moral and patriotic obligation to offer factually based critique of factors that led to the SCOTUS’s ruling to stand-down Trump’s baseless lawsuit, yet in the hours ensuing the ruling, the network has failed miserably in its responsibility as a corporate citizen.

The United States has just emerged from perhaps the most contentious political era in its history. If our nation is to heal and return to some semblance of bipartisan civility, then Fox News has a moral obligation to transmit truth and clarity surrounding Trump’s failed attempt to usurp an election proven to have been “by the people, for the people, and of the people.”  Rigorous journalistic analysis of the events that have led us as a nation to the brink of constitutional crisis can ill afford paid flame throwers hell-bent upon stoking the fires of our nation’s toxic partisan electioneering.

Rather than stir dissent by spinning Trump’s defeat as some conspiratorial socialist plot, the Fourth Estate free press and electronic Media – the nation’s thought-shapers – must now, more than ever, reinforce the efficacy of our nation’s most valued institutions. Those entrusted with fortifying our democratic principles and values have spoken.

To ignore the gravitas of this moment without addressing its broader lessons is shortsighted. Fox News’s failure to comprehend its role in fomenting divisiveness does a disservice to national unity and healing of the nation from both physical and spiritual contexts. While Fox and crew gear up for the network’s next partisan skirmish aimed at nullifying Biden’s presidency visa vis son Hunter’s alleged business dealings under investigation, Fox ignores its moral and professional obligation to inform, educate, and report the broader significance of Trump’s post-election challenges. Fox downplays the significance of this seminal moment in history.  As a nation we are at a time like no other in which the breach of deep partisan angst threatens to further tear asunder our fragile Democracy, a Democracy tested over the past four years a much as it has been during any era since the Civil War. Yet make no mistake, we the people have prevailed. The laws of the land, our public institutions, and the statutes that help undergird these have withstood a great national crisis.