A $787.5 million defamation payout and the ouster of its most popular host doesn't mean Fox News is changing direction – instead it's about to get a whole lot nastier, a New Republic columnist wrote Tuesday.
The settlement to Dominion Voting Systems came without an apology. The exit of Tucker Carlson was, as far as is known, due to insubordination rather than the extremism he voiced on-air. And that shows Fox News does not feel remorse for what it's done, wrote Michael Tomasky.
"Rest assured, Fox will get worse because that is all Fox has done over the past two decades," he said.
"They feel zero shame. No, more than that — they actively reject shame. Shame is for sissies. Shame is for liberals."
He added: "Every important political movement in U.S. history, every movement that really sought political power, has been, to some extent, self-policing and self-regulating. The labor movement tossed out the communists (for the most part). The civil rights movement rejected violence. Even the New Right of the early 1960s banished the blatant anti-Semites.
"They had some shame, and they cared about mainstream credibility. But now, Fox doesn’t have to care about mainstream credibility. It despises mainstream credibility. All it has to care about is its viewers, and to its viewers, mainstream credibility is right up there on the desirability meter with syphilis."
For Fox, its future relies on pushing boundaries and shocking viewers. "They have to keep working their viewers into a state of outrage, and doing that requires getting more and more extreme and fanatical with each passing year," Tomasky said.
"So the person who replaces Carlson will be more shocking than Carlson. He will go places even Carlson wouldn’t go."
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