The role of Fox News in shaping, inciting, provoking, and manipulating our current political environment will be the topic of many a future historian’s studies. As President Trump basks in an alternate reality, he has been both abetted and encouraged by Fox News. He makes rash policy pronouncements based on what he hears on the network and Fox’s primetime stars do his bidding in gaslighting America.
The result is real damage to our democracy. That is not only my judgment or that of the so-called media elite who continue to insist we live in a world of facts and reason and truth. It’s the conclusion of one of Fox News’ own stars – longtime guest on the network Ralph Peters. A retired Army lieutenant colonel and author Peters was one of those reliable voices who railed against President Obama during the time of his tenure in office – even using such derogatory language that he was suspended from Fox News for two weeks.
But apparently, Mr. Peters has had enough. And in a blistering email to colleagues he quit the network, writing in one section:
“Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.
In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.”
The entire email and its greater context are worth reading in full.
