A reader writes to comment on the March 6 Star Tribune editorial throwing stones at FOX News from inside a glass house. He characterizes the editorial as possibly “the greatest example of media hypocrisy in the history of mankind,” which is hyperbolic, but the man has a point.
Exploiting the continuing embarrassment of FOX News in the Dominion lawsuit, the editorial is tough to swallow. It’s not just the schadenfreude, although there is that, it’s the continuing avoidance of the mirror.
The editorial is headlined “The disgraceful lies of Fox ‘News.'” They put “News” in quotes — hey, I know the feeling.
Our reader quotes the Star Tribune editors instructing FOX News:
News organizations shouldn’t have a “side” or be co-opted to engage in “loyal opposition.” But Fox became an unofficial arm of the Republican Party, propagandizing instead of walking the talk of its old slogan…
The symbiotic FOX-Republican relationship was reflected in the disgraceful decision by current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to release thousands of hours of surveillance footage of the Capitol attack to Carlson, who previously produced a documentary suggesting the U.S. government used the insurrection as an excuse to persecute conservatives, suggesting that it was a “false flag” to discredit Trump supporters.
There is much that could be said about this beyond tu quoque, but tu quoque isn’t bad. He comments:
This is the same newspaper that just hired Walz flack [Steve Grove] as its publisher, refused to cover the Twitter Files revelations, and has no interest in the emails discovered by the House GOP showing Fauci commissioned the “Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper he cited to the public as evidence that the lab leak was “improbable.” But they’ve now run five articles on Fox News.
And just this morning [March 7] here is their featured story [by Jim Tankersley of the New York Times, “Republican votes helped Washington pile up debt”]. That must be Star Tribune’s way of showing us how they don’t take “sides” and act as an unofficial arm of Democrats.
Their utter lack of self-awareness in criticizing McCarthy for releasing the January 6 footage to Tucker when no other MSM outlet requested it, and then not covering the videos once Tucker aired them, just goes to show who the propagandists are. And yet the Star Tribune editorial board is too obtuse to see the irony.
I think the editors might dispute their responsibility for the paper’s news coverage, such as it is, including its noncoverage. They run the opinion side of the paper. From outside the glass house, however, the news and opinion operations can be difficult to distinguish. There is much more to say, as I have labored at irksome length to demonstrate over the years — see, e.g., “The role of the Star Tribune” — but we will leave it here this morning.
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