Fox's 'hard news' anchors reject booking Trump's new coronavirus adviser

On Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that Fox News' "hard news" anchors are avoiding booking Dr. Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump's new preferred coronavirus adviser.

"According to three people familiar with the situation, Fox News producers have been instructed in recent weeks to take extra care when inviting Atlas onto the network to discuss the pandemic, which is rapidly approaching a U.S. body count of 200,000," said Asawin Suebsaeng and Maxwell Tani. "Some Fox staffers involved in the network’s more straightlaced daytime news programs have been increasingly reluctant to book him altogether."

"A Daily Beast analysis of all of his Fox News hits shows that as the summer progressed and as his stock quickly rose in Trump’s inner sanctum, Atlas’ appearances on Fox’s news programming took a dramatic plunge," said the report. And although Atlas has still gone on Fox's hard-right opinion programming like Tucker Carlson's and Laura Ingraham's shows, "Among the 'hard-news' division shows at Fox, Atlas is viewed with skepticism by senior staff at many of the programs, as they view him as lacking credibility during the coronavirus crisis, and as someone who isn’t even a medical expert in the relevant field."

One Fox News official said, “Atlas has a background in radiology, not infectious diseases. It makes no sense to have him on to discuss a contagious respiratory virus that continues to spread through parts of this country like wildfire.”

Atlas' increased prominence in the Trump administration's health policy has alarmed experts. A member of the right-wing Hoover Institution, Atlas reportedly considers himself the "anti-Dr. Fauci," and believes businesses should open sooner than others, with "herd immunity" — or knowingly letting people get sick — being used to manage spread of the virus.