• Funderpants
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    1 month ago

    I don’t watch Fox, is Baier a fair anchor or a lunatic?

    • Atom@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Not a direct reply, but I wanted to add a more detailed answer to your question than “It’s Fox”. I think that’s slight oversimplification. He’s center right and has become isolated as Fox programing is speeding further* right to capture MAGA viewers before they fall off the political spectrum and into Podcast or OANN.

      So yes, Fox is sprinting to the right and he’s still employed by Fox, but he’s also not one of their political talk shows. He does news and has tried to keep the news accurate, albeit through a conservative lense. NPR had this to say about him last year:

      According to Baier’s current and former colleagues, he stands very much alone at Fox News which has been pushed even farther to the right since the outset of the Trump years. Anchor Shepard Smith left Fox News in 2019 after primetime star Tucker Carlson targeted him on the air and the network did not publicly defend him. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace departed and two commentators who frequently appeared on Baier’s show resigned in late 2021 after Carlson’s avid defense of people who participated in the violent attack on the U.S. Congress in January 2021.

      Some other details from that article are that he has done coverage contradicting the extreme programming from Carlson and tried to do hour-long coverage post 2020 election specifically to dispute Trump’s election claims, but Fox didn’t allow it.

      So he’s still at Fox while his other real-journalist colleagues have left, making him center right at best. I argue, while it may be a less than fair interview, any Fox viewer that is not ride or die MAGA, is probably watching his show. Those are the voters that may be salvageable and Fox is the #1 viewed news media outlet in the country by a huge margin, over one-million more than MSNBC (#2)

      After the 2020 election, Bret Baier was isolated at Fox News https://www.npr.org/2023/04/10/1168753288/the-loneliness-of-fox-news-bret-baier

      • Funderpants
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        1 month ago

        Thank you for this level headed analysis. Seems like a reasonable take to me.