Fox News has provided a friendly platform to dozens of people who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine in recent months. The network’s propagandists often portray those guests as heroes fighting for freedom against “authoritarian” mandates — even though Fox itself has a vaccine requirement for employees.
Fox has ignored its moral responsibility to keep its viewers informed (and thus healthy) since the COVID-19 pandemic began, instead treating it primarily as a new culture war issue to exploit for political and financial gain. The emergence of vaccines made no difference.
Rather than consistently encouraging viewers to take them, Fox hosts regularly undermined the vaccination campaign, doing so on 181 of 183 days from April 1 through September 30.
The network paced the right’s broader anti-vax sabotage effort, which has been devastatingly effective in limiting vaccine uptake among Republicans and thus ensuring higher death tolls among those populations.
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They are hypocrites and cowards who are happy to profit while loyal viewers who take their commentary seriously sicken and die. And they are in that position because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are willing to trade moral abomination for ratings victories every chance they get.
