Fox News has been touting Martha MacCallum as a “straight news” host and is advertising her as an alternative to the network’s embattled opinion hosts. The problem is, she continues to peddle right-wing misinformation.
Nowhere is that clearer than her interview with Rush Limbaugh, frequent spewer of right-wing misinformation. Tuesday, on her program The Story With Martha MacCallum, she allowed Limbaugh to make widely debunked claims, racist comments, and false accusations. MacCallum made no effort to call him out. At all, Media Matters for America reports.
She offered no argument when Limbaugh claimed Hillary Clinton should be investigated, prosecuted, and thrown in jail even though he offered no evidence to back up his assertions. He also attacked Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) by using a racial slur and MacCallum also let that pass. And Limbaugh asserted that Democratic candidates haven’t set plans in place to pay for their policy proposals, and even though that’s not true either, MacCallum didn’t push back.
President Donald Trump, no stranger to fiction, thanked Limbaugh in a tweet.
Thanks Rush! @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/x8XogwA8VX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2019
On the heels of the president’s tweet, it was Sean Hannity’s turn. During his opinion show, Hannity positively gushed over Limbaugh’s comments.
Fox’s “straight news” host is anything but. Matt Gertz, in an earlier story for MMFA, noted:
“MacCallum is every bit as pure an ideologue as anyone else on the network, using her show to claim that a border wall is ‘needed’ to stop the immigrant ‘invasion’ and declare that ‘both sides’ were at fault during the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA, among other misdeeds.”
But as if MacCallum wasn’t enough, the network likes to promote chief political anchor Bret Baier as providing straight news, even though he pulled a similar stunt, helping Limbaugh promote a conspiracy theory that the shocking massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was a “false-flag.”
Fox News is hemorrhaging advertisers, so the network has been pushing “straight news” anchors like MacCallum and Baier, but as Rush Limbaugh has accidentally demonstrated, these two are anything but.
Featured image by Fox News via YouTube video
