This brings back memories that I have to share with you, friends, about the dialogues our humble website, PolitiZoom, has had with Fox News. We have been contacted here twice and asked to amend an inaccurate story.
The first time I thought it was a gag. Fox News wants to talk to me? Seriously? The occasion in question was Shepard Smith leaving the network, in October, 2019. PZ was about a year and a half old. I wrote a piece about Smith’s abrupt departure from the network, as did many outlets. I quoted a reporter from MSNBC who said that Smith had “been escorted from the building,” which generally indicates that a job separation was the result of a hostile move by management, more than a resignation.
In all events, I had an email in the contact at politizoom dot com box, informing me that I had my facts wrong. So I checked the name of the person sending the email and sure enough, she was with Fox News. I decided that my leg was not being pulled and I wrote back.
I was given a correction by the Public Relations Department at Fox News, saying that the MSNBC reporter I quoted had retracted her earlier statement. Ergo, my source was wrong, I was wrong.
So I immediately changed the story and wrote an email back to Fox News, thanking them for bringing the inaccuracy and the true facts to my attention and cordially inviting them to do so in the future. I considered this a banner day, when I was in actual sync with Fox News about what the facts were — although in all fairness, my gripe, the collective gripe, has always been with the opinion talk show hosts at Fox News, who openly concede that what they’re doing is entertainment and not journalism.
Fast forward to late March, 2020. A few days before St. Patrick’s Day, Fox News gave up the cover up, fired one of their anchors who was insisting that COVID was the new left-wing hoax cobbled together to destroy Donald Trump, and their anchors began quarantining and working from home. Remember this?
Judge Jeanine missed the first segment of her show tonight because of “technical difficulties” and then hosted the rest of it in this condition pic.twitter.com/KxGGBXUkly
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 29, 2020
It goes without saying I wrote a piece about this. I got contacted by Fox News, telling me that “Ms. Pirro does not drink” and they wanted me to change my story to reflect that. I said that I would be happy to if they could give me an alternative explanation. “Does she take medication?” I inquired. “Is she having an unfortunate interaction with an every day substance and an allergy of some kind, perhaps?” I bent over backwards to work with these people. I was happy to change the story, I let them know, if they would simply give me some explanation for her behavior, because as I put it, “The woman is clearly impaired.”
I never heard another word from them.
Then today, this dropped along with other prizes in the January 6 Committee transcripts.
The two least surprising things from the J6 transcripts are: 1. Jason Miller ratting everyone out; 2. Judge Box O’Wine was hammered. pic.twitter.com/8p3sZlNA2x
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) December 31, 2022
Jeanine Pirro’s drinking is like Steve Bannon’s. Both of them have gone on record saying that they don’t drink. And probably they both have stopped from time to time. I’m sure they have. But they don’t stay stopped, it seems.
And frankly? I’ve known a lot of alcoholics in my life, both practicing and sober ones, and in my conversations with the sober ones, general consensus is that in order to be part of the right-wing bullshit machine, you pretty much have to be frosted most of the time. Yes, Rudy, we’re including you in on this, too.
Back to Fox News contacting me about Pirro, I think that they were going through the motions. If people would change the story, great. If people wouldn’t, they certainly weren’t going to push it. And again I say, I would have been completely happy to amend my story if somebody in the PR department had given me any plausible explanation. But I was not going to say, “Jeanine Pirro does not drink, and what you see in front of your face is not her drunk, but something else,” without somebody giving me the something else.
Fox News must be a difficult place to work. I know I couldn’t do it. Or, at least not a PR job. And they’re not alone, certainly. I’ve known many people in business who have lied to cover a boss’s drinking, philandering, you name. It’s just part of getting a paycheck for many people. Such is life.
Of course they stopped drinking – they had to to go visit the restroom (or to draw breath)
I wish I could find the email exchange between myself and Fox News. We changed email accounts twice in 2020, I won’t bore you with the reasons. It never occurred to me to save the old emails because so much of it is pure trivia, but this exchange would have been worth saving.
I say, one has to be a lowlife POS to even consider applying to work for FoxNotNews, OAN, Newsmax. So surprising no one’s made them pay for their lies…yet!
I have known Pirro for 50 years I got her the victim witnes/domestic violence job in the Westchester DAs office And when she started shilling for Trump as a Fox news opinion host I emailed her to warn her she was “doing a great disservice to the nation” Her response was ” my show is number one in its timeslot”
“Judge” Box-o-Wine probably suffers from bouts of depression because no amount of plastic surgery and a blonde wig could make her look enough like Ivanka for Trump to want to fuck her. Oh well. If there was any justice instead of being Judge Box-o-Wine will become Judge Bag-o-Wine. Why bag? From the plastic bag used to ferment her wine in the tank of the toilet in her prison cell!
If you would care to elaborate on that story, or any story about Ms. Pirro, I would be happy to publish it.
I have very mixed feelings about this. OTOH, I agree with you. But on the other, jobs in journalism, broadcasting, all that are harder than hell to come by. There are people working for Fox News who are doing legitimate functions, either technically or journalistically. They’re doing a craft they were trained to do.
But I see the moral aspect of it as well. Is it immoral to practice your craft/profession in the employ of an evil purpose? I don’t know. I can say with reasonable certainty, though, that if they had existed when I got out of journalism school and offered me a job, I would have probably taken it. At this stage in my life, things are different. So how much is morality and how much is just professional survival?
The technical difficulty was she fell out of her chair and couldn’t get up by herself.
Anyone who has dealt with an alcoholic in their life can spot this from a mile away. A drunk trying to act sober sticks out like a sore thumb. You can’t miss it.
I was raised by alcoholics. Drunks are idiots on parade. They need help, and not to be on television. A doctor once told my old man, as the doctor laid a .38 caliber pistol on his desk, “This would be a lot easier route than the one you have chosen if you don’t stop drinking.”
“although in all fairness, my gripe, the collective gripe, has always been with the opinion talk show hosts at Fox News, who openly concede that what they’re doing is entertainment and not journalism.”
Sorry but didn’t Fox News as “The Network” as a whole have an attorney make a LEGAL argument in front of an actual JUDGE (albeit in Florida, IMS) and state–on the record–that the network was NOT an actual “news network” but rather an “entertainment channel?” As best as I can recall that was sometime back around 2000 or so.
That’s correct. And to add to it, Sidney Powell was wanting to adopt that legal precept, to say that anybody listening to her should know she was kidding. I don’t know if she actually argued that in a pleading, but she was quoted in an article saying that.
The right-wingers sell the bullshit on a stick until they can’t sell it anymore.
How do we even allow television judges? They make a mockery of what it means to judge. It’s just more right-wing crap which we have more than enough of already.
They used to say about my old man, “I never even knew he drank until I saw him sober once.” They weren’t lying. First thing he did in the morning when he got up was have a drink, just like when he went to bed at night. Another prominent drunk is Ron Johnson. Many Senators are drunks and Representatives. It is appalling.