I do daydream of someone like Bill Gates buying Fox News, if it can be bought. . . I dream of what I’d do if I was rich enough to buy it myself. I would NOT turn it into a smug, snappish liberal network–I’d make it centrist, or center-left, even though I’m more progressive than that myself. Yet I’d fire Fox News’s famous racist immediately, and 95 percent of their on-air staff and most writing staff. I’d sure bring in diversity in staff and anchors. I would only change the network’s garish on-air look a bit, at first, but gradually make it more grown up. I’d set new rules for reportage: FACT BASED ONLY would be the first one. I’d have a smart staff of fact checkers. I’d make Fox News truly fair and balanced. I’d make the station more news oriented–actual news…I’d get a sane conservative on, with a weekly show, like SE Cupp–I don’t agree with a lot of her ideas, but she despises Trump and Trumpism and dishonesty in media and she’s a strong believer in climate change and vaccines. I would bring in Mitt Romney, a sane and decent conservative, and George Will, as pundits, along with, say, appearances by the likes of Lawrence O’Donnell…I’d have some not-too-liberal liberal with their own network show balancing Cupp….
Yes, I’d make it clear that FN believes Biden was truly elected, that climate change is real, that we should respect science; that vaccines are safe and necessary…I would have some special shows about what honest fact-checking reveals… I’d work toward a cure for the great disease of modern media: conspiracy theories…
Oh yes I’d transform Fox News, but I wouldn’t get all AOC in my changes...
Why, you ask, wouldn’t I make it flat out MSNBC liberal? Because I’d want to keep what I could of the previous audience and simply offer them the facts they’d been denied. I wouldn’t want to alienate every non-Democrat elderly person in the USA. I would want to gradually expose them to enough honest reportage that they’d decide, on the facts, that there was no need to go extremist-right in their thinking. No need to support those who undermine democracy. Yet I would respect their right to a more conservative point of view. And if I didn’t respect the need for a television venue featuring conservative thought (as well as pragmatically progressive, a balance of the two), hysteria on the right would result. Sure, you’d get some hysteria anyway but not suicide-bomber level reactivity…
Ah. A wistful dream.