According to a Pew Research survey in 2021, almost three quarters of Americans consider Fox News to be part of the mainstream media, along with familiar brands like ABC News and the Wall Street Journal. That’s interesting because Fox is different in many ways. It’s not only easily the most profitable cable news network and the only one trusted by most conservatives; it is also the only one whose leaders admitted, under oath, that the newsroom deliberately promoted a theory they knew to be false, namely that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.

Brian Stelter has chronicled Fox News and its impact on political discourse for years. A media reporter for the New York Times and then CNN, his unrelenting criticism of the network on his own program, Reliable Sources, may have cost him his role at CNN, but it has not shut him up. In his latest book about Fox, Network of Lies, he goes deep into the revelations about Fox that showed up in the Dominion Voting Systems libel suit and in Congress’s January 6th Committee hearings. Brian and I talk about journalists’ role in today’s polarized politics; about Fox’s promotion of election lies; about Tucker Carlson’s ouster; and about the challenge we all face in finding trustworthy news in a world of disinformation.

This podcast was produced by Tom Platts

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Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
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Alliance for Trust in Media
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