promoted and true for the primetime people. you re so right. and a lot of the bias does come from story selection there. margaret, as anything surprised you in the revelations from this dominion lawsuit? you know, i left fox news in 2012. and continued of course to observe how they were covering the stories. and i actually think it got worse overtime. it was not great when i was there. of course, i was not on the new side, but the opinion side. i was there to get my opinion and be a commentator. i did always have a very clear sense that there was a certain opinion, a certain point of view that was rewarded. you ve got to show up more and be on more shows and get a bigger contract if you had a certain point of view. and i was a little bit insulated from that. sort of chose to be, because that s what felt authentic to who i am. but it got worse. and what became clear to me in 2016 and then the 2020 election is there was a point of view that almost was indiscernible from the republica
credibility of the fox news division. i know too many people who work in the fox news division to this point who are serious, honest, and sincere journalists trying to do the job right. there are too many people, including working at cnn, who got their starts or worked at fox for a while and have warm things to say about it and say it was always a political operation. the problem at fox is the opinion side was allowed to run free. everyone likes to think that this was some grand policy that they set from above. it is really the lack of leadership under susan scott, the ceo, to reign in, curtail, discipline the prime time people in any way to the point where the opinion side basically became the dog wagging the tail instead of the other way around. and the news side just became sort of this cleanup crew even if the dominion filings. they come out okay in this. bret baier and special report fact checked this stuff. the problem is that the brand level, the brand was more
important than everything else. and for rue pepert murdoch and e guys, the definition of the brand is a safe harbor for trump supporters to hear only what they wanted to hear. but, jonah, that is hard to breakthrough when you have when the noise is so loud coming from the morning show which they consider to be entertainment and then opinion. very small portion of their programming actually, the day side programming is considered news. and it s very hard when you see how many people actually watch the opinion side which is way more people than watch the news side. it s hard to distinguish between what is it and what is news and they really don t make a difrpdif distinction about it. there is a problem across the media landscape. it s just wildly out of scale at fox. and the problem is that the opinion side started to set the news agenda. the issues that got ratings for
they were fact checking the nonsense coming from the opinion side. that is what was pissing off the executives. so it s a nor nuanced problem than people want it to be. i think paul is very sincere and honest when he says that he s counseled this from the get-go, that this stuff is poisonous to the fox brand and to conservatism. i just think that the current leadership at fox, particularly susan scott, the ceo, who basically just gave the booze and car keys to the fastest drivers, is not currently situated to make that transition. but, yeah, if the republican party can t turn fox around and make it a constructive part of american democracy, it s bad for the country but also bad for conservatism. i think paul ryan, at the end of the day, cares a lot. he s a party guy, a movement conservative. he cares about those causing and those institutions.
also fascinating because they show that multiple hosts believed one thing, but we re texting one thing. in fact, in many cases, we re ripping on donald trump and then saying something completely different on television given that, how do you think this case is going to turn out out? i think what s so fascinating about that is that sometimes we call fox an opinion network or we say that the opinion side which is the prime time side is different than the new side. but in this case, we see that fox is not really even opinion journalism either. because true opinion that fox hosts and leaders had about sydney powell, for example, about the case for the election being stolen they don t believe any of that. okay. then will they be able to say at the end of this, okay, fine. you ve got us, we are just entertainment. and that will just be embarrassing? or will there be multibillion dollar consequences? because only they will change things. well, according to a lot of first amendme