If you work for Fox, you are a whore for the Orange Asshole! Enough said, period!
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Because Fox’s polling and election division has paying customers who care that the pollster they choose has a solid, accurate methodology.
Public polls (not commissioned by a candidate or PAC) are actually advertisements for a company’s polling operations. If you can call them early and accurate during the elections, it leads to more clients choosing your company for surveys.
Chris Stirewalt (the fired Fox News editor) mistakenly thought he was building a successful business rather than a Trump propaganda outlet.
When I went on-air in 2020 to defend the Decision Desk’s call that Joe Biden would win Arizona, I was supremely confident. The Decision Desk team that director Arnon Mishkin had built was the best in the business. And we had better survey data than the competition, thanks to our partnership with the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center.
So Arnon & Company built a better mousetrap, and that was even before we found out that the coronavirus pandemic would increase the share of mail-in ballots by as much as 50 percent. You can’t do an exit poll if nobody is exiting the polls, so while our competitors were scrambling to put together a system to accommodate the change, we had already tested our superior product in the 2018 midterms. It turned out to be a capability that the network would regret developing.
Competence is punished in the modern conservative propaganda networks if it goes against the current orthodoxy.
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Correct, journalists report the news. Journalists do not make the news. A lesson that Fox “news” as a whole needs to learn and take to heart . . . if they have one.
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Well FOX didn’t “do it” (call AZ for Biden) as a monolithic entity–Chris Stirewalt set up a decision desk headed by an actual professional (Aaron Mishkin) and gave him autonomy. That accurate call was a rare display of journalistic integrity that bit them in the ass, from a propaganda perspective. Deflated the whole balloon. The MAGA goons have been smearing Mishkin as a “Democrat operative” ever since, naturally.
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Bret, being the consummate journalist, just wanted the horse race to last a little longer.
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Just cut the cord. You won’t regret it, and you’ll even save money. I’m getting all of the channels I want for a $30 flat rate Internet connection and about $40 in streaming channels. I used to pay $150 for FIOS.
It’s a nice feature that it means Fox doesn’t get my money.
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As if he wanted his honorary Tim Russert whiteboard.
Spot-on … absolutely perfect! … you’re a natural!
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I don’t think it’s done Fox any harm. Once everyone is finished voting it doesn’t really matter, and Fox could simply make the calls as they saw them. There was a call in one of the Obama elections when they did the same thing and Megyn Kelly was sent down to talk to the digitheads about their call . . . Ohio maybe?
I think Fox News actually does better when their party is in the minority. Making the call first is good advertising.
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So the real question for Fox News host Bret Baier is:
- Does a journalist have any obligation to report with factual integrity?
- When asked what is 2+2 …?
… does a reporter simply say - what does our favorite candidate want it to be? 5?.. 6? …14?
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Completely agree with “Bret Baier and Chris Wallace have been given a free pass and have not been held accountable for their actions as part of the Fox machine.”
I mean when compared to the rest of FOX news, ignoring that they were still part of FOX and their role was to lend credibility to the entire network by not being total hacks, they only look like other than hacks because of who they are compared with.
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I was actually watching FOX in 2012 when what you speak of happened.
The difference was in 2012 when Megan Kelly went to the “digitheads” to discuss their call, everyone like me not only watching FOX news but rather was skimming the channels knew Obama was going to win. In fact, unlike the Arizona call, some of the other networks may have already called the election for Obama and the only reason I was watching FOX was to hear them cry.
That is 2012 at that point, everyone but Karl Rove and Dick Morris realized that Romney was going to lose. Rove and Morris had put their reputations on the line by predicting a big Romney victory.
What happened was, and I think it was Ohio but I do not remember for sure, would put Obama over 570 electoral votes. Romney was actually leading in Ohio when the call was made for Obama.
Morris and especially Rove argued that the call would be wrong and should be ignored. Rove in particular was adamant Romney was going to win Ohio and the election. So Bret Baier and Megan Kelly agreed for Kelly to go to the room where the predictors were in and interview them about the call. But again, at that point everyone except for a few die hards knew Obama was going to win.
That is a far difference from what happened in 2020 with Arizona where the election was far from over, that is the election was far from over until FOX called Arizona for Biden at which point it became difficult to see how Trump could win.
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It’s always been my observation that once people start backing up on the really crucial ethical things, they rarely ever stop, and whatever integrity they had leaches away. Trump was correct, because he wanted to be, and reality was wrong, and had to be escorted out, maybe with a trace of regret, even if it gave them “major egg.” Trump dictated what was real, for his followers, and Baier wasn’t going to fight city hall on that. So it really doesn’t matter if he pushed back at other times. Integrity is not caving even if caving would be more comfortable. So much for you, Bret Baier.
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Fox News host Bret Baier was truly desperate to pacify then-President Donald Trump on election night after Fox called Arizona for Joe Biden, according to a new book by New Yorker journalist Susan Glasser and New York Times reporter Peter Baker.
… … … … …
Look Bret, WE VOTERS make the choice , not some fucking deranged asshat in Florida.
Tell it like it is or get out of the news business Bret.
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100%. You can’t be partially ethical- partially ethical is unethical.
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If you don’t know me by now…you will never, never, never, know me
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I mean, I’m kind of describing ethics here not as everything you might wish to do as much as the core, essential things that go to your integrity. If the essence of the job is that you purport to be describing reality as you see it, you can’t un-call a state that you would ordinarily have called, just because the losing candidate is raging and storming and a lot of people will call up and yell at you. You’re denying the reality that you saw.
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It’s very easy to cut the cable. Just call them up and say bye bye. You are then free to order whatever you want.
There’s journalistic integrity for you. Deserves some sort of award from the WH Correspondents’ Association. Maybe the Golden Toilet Bowl, stuffed with all the other stories Fox has killed because they might have hurt TFG’s feelings.
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Fox called AZ well ahead of the other networks. While it was ultimately the correct call it was probably an overconfident one considering how close that race turned out to be. I don’t think it was especially outrageous or unethical that Bret B was concerned they might have gotten out ahead of themselves on AZ. Fox’s decision to fire election forecaster Chris Stirewalt after after the election was much worse and much less defensible.
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