Fox News is notorious for its close affiliation with President Donald Trump and the network’s infamous tendency to approach the truth from a conservative, closed-minded perspective.
Now, the news station is experiencing severe attrition as anchors, analysts and researchers resign. Most recently, longtime news analyst and former United States Army colonel Ralph Peters castigated the outlet as distorting the truth and becoming a “propaganda machine.”
Representing the conservative mindset of Republicans has been the mission of this news outlet, but with this recent administration, the aim of the channel has become more directed at appeasing the alt-right and the president, rather than spreading news. Coverage of events and breaking news, especially regarding possible collusion with Russia, jumps to the defense of the president and his administration before addressing the reality of the situation.
This is crucial to understanding that Peters was not making this decision on political grounds but rather moral ones. The ethical responsibility that rests upon all news reporters to maintain truth in their coverage is a responsibility that Fox has shrugged off. Fox News has devolved into a propaganda machine, employing anchors as mouthpieces of disinformation.
The FBI, special investigative councils and Robert Mueller, who Peters referred to as a “genuine war hero,” are frequent victims of Fox’s distorted broadcasting. The notion of any Russian collusion, for which there is evidence, is immediately denied by the news channel as if they are in competition with Trump for who can most contest the possibility of Russian election meddling.
Peters’ two decades of experience in the Army where he specialized in Russian intelligence makes the former analyst especially sensitive to the danger of neglecting to report on Putin’s influence in our election. Russian interference transformed from a conspiracy theory to a commonly accepted fact in a matter of weeks as indictments and investigations went on. Fox covered this in the most ridiculing manner as if their main demographic was the Trump administration.
They’ve appeased the president, who holds them in very high regard for their fake news. Fox has managed to remain the number one cable news show, which makes their twisted version of reality even more dangerous.
Peters was a regular on Fox News and Fox Business Channel. In his parting letter, he emphasized he maintained the utmost respect for his colleagues and ascribed the terrible quality of reporting to the poisoned environment they were working in.
Ralph Peters is no epitome of morality nor is he any friend of the left. He pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in typical warhawk manner, fiercely criticized former President Barack Obama’s entire tenure and was suspended from the network for using a vulgarity directed at Obama.
The most indicative action of his career is an article he wrote in 2006 for Armed Forces Journal where he proposes redrawing the entire Middle East in efforts to attain peace. This map was later found in a mosque in Iraq where it was represented as the Zionist end goal for the Middle East. His article unsettled many and increased the tension between American and Middle Eastern relations.
The awkward names for new countries in the map, such as “Arab Shia State” and “Saudi Homelands Independent Territory” spell out incredibly offensive acronyms that are even more degrading when put in the context of the article.
Peters did all of this to make an insolent and derogatory joke at the expense of people whose lives are actually in danger in those territories. This is an accurate representation of the quality of staff of Fox News.
If someone at this level of immaturity and offensiveness finds Fox News something they should be ashamed of, that says quite a lot.
Opinion Editor Anusheh Siddique is a finance freshman and can be reached at [email protected]