Ex-Fox Newser Jonah Goldberg Speaks Out: Fox ‘Created a Monster with Their Own Audience That They Were Then Terrified Of’

Former Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg did not mince words about his former network’s current legal problems during a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN This Morning.

At issue? Recently released court documents from Dominion Voting System’s defamation case against Fox News for alleged injury caused by the network’s coverage of the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the election was rigged or stolen.

Sworn testimony of Rupert Murdoch was released and, among other things, revealed that Fox Corp’s Chair and CEO admitted that the Fox News host promoted the false idea that the election was stolen, as well as his directing CEO Suzanne Scott to make sure that Republican elections efforts were supported by Fox News programming, which, of course, is not the traditional action of a “news” network.

Goldberg was for 12 years a well-respected conservative voice on Fox News, but grew apart from the network’s apparent “mission creep” into a propaganda outfit and left the network, along with his colleague Stephen Hayes, in apparent protest of Tucker Carlson’s goofy “Patriot Purge” faux-documentary that suggested January 6th was a “false flag operation.”

Goldberg was also quite notably one of the very few voices on Fox in late 2020 that openly called out Trump’s unhinged behavior and said on Special Report that the stolen election was a “bat guano” stolen election conspiracy designed only to steal the election.

So Goldberg has insight and a history with the network, but instead of grinding an axe, he offered a more nuanced and moderate analysis of Fox News’s legal woes, which made it all more damning.

One of Murdoch’s more damning comments revealed in Monday’s court documents released was his claim that the manner in which they covered 2020 was not a “red or blue” issue; it was a “green” issue. Meaning it was all about corporate profits and not principled journalistic standards.

“What comes across blisteringly clear is that Fox management thought that the competing issues here have nothing really to do with serious journalism and telling the truth,” Goldberg said. “They had to do with holding on to an audience even — even if that cost them integrity and reputation as telling the truth to their own audience because they created a monster with their own audience that they were then terrified of.”

Don Lemon later mentioned how Murdoch was revealed to have asked Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to say something supportive about Lindsey gram, reportedly saying, “We cannot lose the senate if at all possible.”

“The word ‘we,’” Lemon held on to. “I wonder if you agree with the characterization that this is how Fox has always been. You were there for 12 years. Do you think it changed?”

Goldberg opened by defending the news division at Fox News, which includes several individuals he clearly still respects, before attacking Fox News leadership.

He then noted that Roger Ailes fundamentally understood that “the credibility of Fox News as a network depended on the credibility of the Fox News division,” adding, “I know too many people who work in the Fox News division to this point who are serious, honest, and sincere journalists trying to do the job right.”

And then he dropped what seems like the money shot that pithily assessed the current dynamic at Fox News:

“The problem at Fox is the opinion side was allowed to run free. Everyone likes to think that this was some grand policy that they set from above. It is really the lack of leadership under Suzanne Scott, the CEO, to reign in, curtail, and discipline the prime time people in any way to the point where the opinion side basically became the dog wagging the tail instead of the other way around. And the news side just became sort of this cleanup crew even in the dominion filings. The news division comes out okay in this. Bret Baier and Special Report fact-checked this stuff. The problem is that the brand level, the brand was more important than everything else. And for Rupert Murdoch and those guys, the definition of the brand was a safe harbor for trump supporters to hear only what they wanted to hear.”

Lemon pushed back, saying that the news coverage often gets drowned out by the opinion programming at Fox News, which is a sharp point given how news programs often cover comments made by prime-time opinion hosts as if that were news. But that confusion is not necessarily unique to Fox, Goldberg pointed out.

“There is a problem across the media landscape. It’s just wildly out of scale at fox. And the problem is that the opinion side started to set the news agenda. The issues that got ratings for the opinion people became the issues that the news side largely reported on. And just became this sort of self-defeating process. And then they just got addicted to the ratings and the returns.”

He then cited a Chinese expression about riding the tiger: “You can’t get off because you’re afraid it will eat you.”

Watch above via CNN.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.