The Media Wakes Up And Calls Fox News A Political Organization Not A News Channel

“So I was going out on what I thought were dates. Chris, I thought these were dates. These were not dates. She was actually reporting back to Fox News about me,” CNN’s Brian Stelter said on the August 9th edition of CNN’s New Day, while discussing reports that Fox News spent Fox News money to target “enemies”. Stelter also referred to Fox News accurately as a “political organization”.

Watch here via Media Matters:

Transcript from Media Matters, my bold:

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BRIAN STELTER: In terms of the money, this is Gabriel Sherman’s reporting in New York magazine. He’s been a leader on this story, wrote a book about Roger Ailes a number of years ago. A lot of what he’s reporting I think reporters have suspected for a while. I’ll give you an example. About ten years ago I had a crush on a woman at Fox News. She was a low level staffer. I was in college at the time. So I was going out on what I thought were dates. Chris, I thought these were dates. These were not dates. She was actually reporting back to Fox News about me. She was reporting back about what I thought of her and about CNN and MSNBC and Fox. Because I was a reporter on the beat, they were actually spying on me that way. Now I didn’t think that was a big deal at the time. I thought it was the way Fox operates. Fox is a political organization. But now we know they were actually sending out private investigators. They were tailing other reporters.

BILL CARTER: They were following reporters around. We knew covering Fox you’d have to deal with that. You’d get a call from them saying, “You better be right on this story” or the implication was, “We’ll dig into your past, we’ll dig into your private life.”

STELTER: So we sort of knew but now we know much much more. Because these reports, like from Gabriel Sherman, saying that money, that Ailes was using Fox News money, for his own private spending.

Brian Stelter is on fire these days. He schooled the media in their responsibility while covering Donald Trump. He also tore down the Hillary is sick conspiracy by pointing out that Fox News’ Hannity was using sources who were using an image from February.

Stelter is one of the few to say publicly that Fox News is a political organization. This is not exactly the same thing as having a political bent or ideology, although the two are conflated often. A political organization is involved in the political process. Fox News is an activist organization, rather than a news organization. This was a huge difference between Fox News and the “liberal” MSNBC< back when they were "liberal". MSNBC didn't engage in making things up to help Democrats. They didn't stalk reporters. If you are hiring PIs to intimidate reporters covering your "news organization", you're not really doing news. If you're using the "news organization's" budget to do so, things are even more troubling. Fox News paid a woman to date Brian Stelter and mine him for information. Yeah, that sounds Nixon-esque, and for good reason. Ailes was a media consultant for Nixon. Imagine Nixon running a news room. With a billion dollar yearly profit and no one asking where the money was going.



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