LEE KRAMER'S ROOM: With Views

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Fox News appears to back off its 'Hillary spied' narrative after she mentions 'actual malice'

I don’t watch Fox News anymore. If I really want to know what they’re up to, I’ll read watchdog sites like Media Matters or Mediaite. Or I’ll check my mom’s bedroom closet to see if she’s been stress-buying Trumpy Bears again.

That said, Fox has an outsized influence on our national dialogue—i.e., they feed their troglodytic horde chicken-fried red meat heavily breaded in lies—and so when they want to advance a narrative, it’s typically as easy as convincing dirt-poor red-staters that they’d be better off with marginally more Donald Trump caterwauling and far less money.

So when one of their narratives falls by the wayside, one is naturally forced to wonder why. And in the case of Fox’s latest guileful pile o’ piffle—their accusation that Hillary Clinton “spied” on Trump—they appear to have tucked their tails and run.

Mediaite:

Anyone watching Fox News this week was told that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had been caught spying on former President Donald Trump. This was reported across many Fox News programs as fact, with some hosts adding exotic frills to the story. More reputable news outlets were quick to pour cold water on the assertion. Some even called out Fox News for being either stupid or willfully misinforming their viewers.

Oh, yeah. I saw clips of that coverage. And Hillary Clinton apparently did, too. As noted in a previous diary, she fired a shot across the network’s bow when she accused it, during a keynote address at the New York State Democratic Convention on Thursday, of “getting awfully close to actual malice.”

Acyn @Acyn
Clinton: So now his accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me counting on their audience to fall for it again. They’re getting awfully close to actual malice

Clinton:So now his accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me counting on their audience to fall for it again. They’re getting awfully close to actual malice pic.twitter.com/OgSYzI6CKz

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 17, 2022

CLINTON: “We can’t get distracted, whether it’s by the latest culture war nonsense or some new right-wing lie on Fox or Facebook. By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately, in case you might have noticed. It’s funny. The more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get. So now his accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him, and right on cue the noise machine gets turned up, doesn’t it? Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they’re getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks.”

It was a pointed comment aimed straight at their pointy heads. Proving “actual malice” is the standard the Supreme Court has set for public figures who believe they’ve been slandered or libeled by the media. In other words, if Hillary were able to prove actual malice, she could sue the pantaloons off Fox. And that would be the most satisfying turn of events since career creepazoid Bill O’Reilly got the heave-ho.

In the past six days, John Durham was mentioned 219 times on Fox News, according to TVEyes. But as of 11 a.m. [Friday]. his name was mentioned only once by Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends, and it was in the context of Hillary Clinton being asked a question by a reporter.

So what happened? Mediaite reached out to Fox News to ask if the network no longer felt the bombshell that Hillary Clinton spied on Trump was newsworthy, or if they no longer believe that it’s true. Fox News has not replied.

Fox News has not replied? Wait, they’re suddenly at a loss for words?

Well, here’s one theory to explain the network’s sudden reticence: Special Counsel John Durham, whose filing Fox was twisting into pretzels to make the spying allegation feel legit, issued a statement distancing himself from the network’s “reporting,” and Fox may have felt they could no longer support their unsupportable accusations.

The New York Times:

John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel scrutinizing the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers.

Citing a barrage of such reports on Fox News and elsewhere based on the prosecutor’s Feb. 11 filing, defense lawyers for a Democratic-linked cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann, have accused the special counsel of including unnecessary and misleading information in filings “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage and taint the jury pool.”

In a filing on Thursday, Mr. Durham defended himself, saying those accusations about his intentions were “simply not true.” He said he had “valid and straightforward reasons” for including the information in the Feb. 11 filing that set off the firestorm, while disavowing responsibility for how certain news outlets had interpreted and portrayed it.

Of course, that explanation—that Fox saw Durham’s statement and walked back their own wild claims—assumes that Fox cares about the truth, which it obviously doesn’t. No, I can only assume that the network, which is already embroiled in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over a deluge of bullshit post-election reporting, heard from their lawyers, who told them to back the fuck off.

Which makes one wonder why more people don’t do what Hillary did. Then again, she’s already given away every last one of her fucks to Goodwill, so why not go for the jugular? After all, a lawsuit would be the delicious cherry on top of bullshit mountain.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/19/2081190/-Fox-News-appears-to-back-off-its-Hillary-spied-narrative-after-she-mentions-actual-malice