TUESDAY: Colby Hall gets it right about Fox!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025

But where are the larger news orgs? As we noted in real time, we thought Mediaite's Colby Hall took a giant swing and a miss over the summer concerning the Fox News Channel's "smart [and] funny" "prankster," the baldly disordered Greg Gutfeld.

In our view, Hall's assessment of that disordered "cable news" star could hardly have been more cockeyed.  This very day, though, extremely good news:

Hall is back on track regarding Fox in an extremely large way.

At present, Hall is listed as the founding editor of Mediaite. At present, the site principally serves as the place to learn about the weird behaviors by President Trump which Blue America's biggest new orgs routinely prefer to pass over.

Mediaite is also the site which produced this report. It's the kind of thing you'll apparently never read at the New York Times:

OPINION
Fox News Is Trying—and Failing—to Bury the Epstein Scandal

The Jeffrey Epstein story is everywhere: Capitol Hill hearings, newly unsealed documents, lurid details splashed across front pages, and endless dissection on cable news. It’s one of those rare scandals with genuine bipartisan reach—Democrats and Republicans alike want answers, and the public is riveted.

Unless, that is, you’re watching Fox News. According to a transcript search database search over the past three weeks, Fox has mentioned “Epstein” just 429 times. CNN clocked 3,668. MSNBC? 5,624. For a scandal this dominant, the disparity isn’t just surprising—it’s damning. The most-watched cable news network in America is barely acknowledging one of the most talked-about stories in the country.

And this relative silence seems far more deliberate than accidental. For a scandal that fascinates both Beltway insiders and the QAnon corners of the MAGA base, Fox has gone quiet. The mentions that do slip through are quarantined to non-prime time programs—the very hours where Fox has the least at stake. In the slots that drive ratings and revenue, Epstein barely exists.

In all honesty, a lot of things "barely exist" at the Fox News Channel! Meanwhile, major newspapers refuse to report or discuss the way this channel works.

It isn't just the news division at the Times, where the groaning misconduct of the Fox News Channel can barely be said to exist.  Until an initial stab last week, no columnist at the New York Times has been willing to report or discuss this topic. 

The same is true of the anchors at CNN and MSNBC, even as they themselves are routinely trashed on Fox News Channel shows, often in the most misleading and dim-witted ways.

To appearances, no one wants to tangle with Fox. That's another way of saying this:

As the American nation slides toward the sea, no one wants to behave like an actual functioning journalist.

Hall starts today with the Fox News Channel's virtual refusal to discuss the Epstein matter. He moves on to other topics on which Fox is plainly operating in service to President Trump:

Epstein isn’t the only story caught in the bargain. Take last week’s disastrous jobs report: a meager 22,000 new positions, with June revised down 12%. A brutal number by any measure. Fox & Friends gave it all of 16 seconds before moving on. Had Biden been in office, the coverage would have been apocalyptic...

Inflation tells the same story. Headline inflation hasn’t budged: the Consumer Price Index stands at 2.7% year-over-year, the same as July a year ago. Core inflation—what really matters for budgets—also sits stubbornly above target. Egg prices? Still staggering: retail cartons remain roughly 16.4% higher than in 2024.

But Fox, once obsessed with grocery store “crisis” segments and on-air displays of soaring receipts, has quietly dropped the subject. The problem hasn’t disappeared. Only the president has.

[...] 

In early July the network’s hosts invoked “Obama” more than 100 times in a single day but “Epstein” just twice. That’s not news judgment. That’s narrative management.

With respect to the mentions of Obama, "narrative management" is a major euphemism. What Hall is describing is pure propaganda. It's tribal and corporate propaganda all the way down.

Today, Hall offers quantifications. In fairness, there's no way to say how many times the Fox News Channel should have mentioned the Epstein matter, or that jobs report.

That said, something else can be obscured by the (highly valuable) quantifications Hall is providing. Mere quantification can't begin to inform the reader about how many of those mentions of "Obama" were mentions on the Gutfeld! program, where the little mutt we've already mentioned specializes in claims that Michelle Obama is really a man and her husband is secretly gay.

In short, the moral squalor of this squalid program can't be captured by numbers alone. Hall is providing a major service, but even Mediaite gives amazingly wide berth to the moral and intellectual squalor found all over that channel's most watched "cable news" pseudo-programs.

Last night, Gutfeld was his usual squalid self. We advise you to pity the child—to regret the accidents of upbringing and development which somehow managed to produce such a furious, squalid small man.

All that said, the problem remains:

The New York Times won't report or discuss any of this. Neither will the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal.

David Brooks won't talk about this. Neither will Nicholas Kristof. 

As we noted yesterday afternoon, David French took a first step just last week. We're waiting to be told that Bret Stephens has astonished himself by watching a few of the Fox News Channel's ugly, dim-witted programs.

Lawrence and Rachel won't talk about this. Neither will Nicolle Wallace, or any other CNN / MSNBC figures. 

This may result from direction by their corporate bosses. The silence is real all the same.

For those among us with eyes to see, the American nation is rapidly sliding toward the sea. The astounding misconduct at the Fox News Channel is a major part of the "night assault" which is creating this state of affairs.

The New York Times has devoted itself to reporting no evil in this major area. As for the Washington Post, understand this:

As we noted last Thursday, the Post disappeared the press event by the Epstein victims to an even greater extent than the Fox News Channel did. In short, various people are knuckling under in various ways. 

As for us in Blue America, we weren't able to see what was happening back in the 1990s and early 2000s during the wars against Clinton and Gore. Despite the brilliance we tend to ascribe to ourselves, we're still unable to see the ways we're being misled today.

Colby Hall has it right in today's report! More on the unreported squalor of Gutfeld and Gutfeld! will follow here at some point this week. Hopefully, that dimwitted squalor will start to be covered by the Mediaite site.

None of this is likely to matter, of course. Due to our failure to see what's before us, the undeclared war in which we're all caught may already have been won.