FOX’s dereliction of duty.

 “The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.” - Thomas Jefferson

On the night of the January 6th House Committee's last prime time hearing on July 21st, which nailed the former President’s dereliction of his constitutional duty to send troops in to quash the insurrection, one of his most avid supporters was also derelict in their responsibilities as a member of the 4th estate.

While the committee was hearing testimony from two life-long Republicans who voted for Donald Trump and who had worked devotedly in his administration, and were explaining why the former President had shattered their faith in him, forcing them to resign their White House posts, FOX’S prime time talking heads of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were not only avoiding this critical public service, but, in Sean Hannity’s case at least, portraying it as a sham investigation.

MAGAites may feel comfortable falling back on their oft baseless views that all Democrats lie and that any negative thing “the media” reports about Spanky Bonespurs is merely fake news.  The people who were exposing Trump in these hearings, however, as a lying fraud who put our constitutional democracy at great peril on January 6th, 2021 were his own White House staff, congressional Republicans and even three family members.  The very people who had helped sustain his presidency through thick and thin during his four years were now being accused of “so many lies and misrepresentations” on Trump’s own flatulent social-media network, Truth Social.

But as bad as the attempt by the Carlson/Hannity/Ingraham trio was to dismiss these congressional hearings, it was the Rupert Murdoch News empire which had abandoned any genuine connection with objective journalism years ago, that is perhaps guilty of collaborating with a wanna be dictator and should be viewed not only as a traitor to journalistic core principles, but a traitor, not unlike Trump himself, to this nation.

Words have consequences and those willing to share them, despite their absence of reality-based evidence, are complicit in any claims that evoke violence.  Equally damaging is when a large platform like the FOX Network chooses to avoid reporting on sworn testimony given under penalty of perjury if they lie, denying their viewing public an opportunity to draw their own conclusions on the veracity of what the January 6th  Committee is presenting to all Americans.

FOX’s deliberate choice to not air the full slate of the Commission’s hearings sends a misinformed signal to their very large viewer share that what transpired on January 6th, 2021, is the “sham” Hannity called it and propped up Trump’s own duplicitous view of it as a witch hunt.

Their actions are so transparently dishonest and disingenuous because had the same behavior been played out by any Democratic President and their coterie of devoted loyalists, there would’ve been uninterrupted reporting 24/7 and hair-on-fire vilifying by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, along with all the other FOX doe-eyed pretenders who saddled up to Trump over these last 4-5 years.

American activist and educator, Bill Dixon once stated that “while everyone has a right to his or her opinion, the people who are informed have more of a right.”  FOX chose to deny their viewers that right because it suited their perception of who mattered most to them - the megalomaniac who they wanted to help keep in power because it no doubt aligned with their financial and political interests.