The Patriot Post® · Fox News Goes Gender Woke
It’s the worst of cliches to say So-and-so is rolling over in his grave. Having said that, Roger Ailes is rolling over in his grave.
From the moment he was hired by Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to launch a conservative cable news network, Roger Ailes changed American media forever. Politics, too. From the first days of Fox News, the fat guy from Warren, Ohio, became an indispensable part of the American agenda. He was the brilliant, bombastic, bare-knuckled guy behind the curtain who gave everyday conservatives a voice, gave the mainstream media fits, and gave Democrat politicians an ulcer. The guy who stood athwart the steamrolling Left while giving rise to a new era of powerful voices on the Right — from Bill O'Reilly to Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck to Laura Ingraham to Tucker Carlson.
Roger Ailes died on May 18, 2017, and Fox News has been lurching wokeward ever since.
How bad has it gotten? On Monday, The Daily Signal published excerpts from a Fox News company handbook that had been leaked to them. Among other things, the handbook, dated January 2021, “offers to help employees come up with a ‘Workplace Transition Plan’ to ease their gender transition at work.”
As the Signal reports, “The revelations comes [sic] amid conservative consternation at Fox Digital’s use of activist language like ‘gender affirming care’ in stories on its website, as well as the site’s consistent use of female pronouns for biological males like TikTok celebrity Dylan Mulvaney and swimmer Lia Thomas (formerly known as Will Thomas).”
This, sadly, is the groupthink that permeates the major leftist enclaves of New York City, DC, and Los Angeles, and thereby determines the language within the newsrooms of the media organizations that reside there. Fox News has become as infected as the rest.
“They want you to think it’s this place that supports traditionally conservative values,” said a former producer for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “but in reality, they’re pushing this nonsense behind the scenes.”
That’s Fox News, circa 2023. The once-proud network now reminds us of the joke about the environmentalist who, like a watermelon, is green on the outside and red on the inside. Fox News now pretends to be red on the outside while being blue on the inside.
Here’s more:
Under the category “Gender Transition,” Fox’s employee handbook promises that the company is dedicated to “expanding and strengthening” efforts to “sustain a more inclusive work environment.” The Fox employee handbook is posted on Workday, where employees can see company guidelines or policies, a former employee told The Daily Signal.
“Employees who are transitioning their gender have the right to be open about their transition if they so choose, and to work in an environment free of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation, and without fear of consequences or transphobia for living openly,” the policy says.
Citing the Human Rights Campaign, one of the most prominent LGBTQ organization in the country, the Fox handbook defines a slew of LGBTQ terms, including cisgender, gender expression, gender-fluid, gender identity, gender non-conforming, gender transition, LGBTQ, non-binary, and transgender.
In an effort to push back against the transgender tide, one confidential Fox News producer told the Signal that former host Tucker Carlson’s team sought to interview The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh on trans issues. This was apparently too much. Walsh, of course, is famous for his ardent opposition to the transgender cult and his “What Is a Woman?” documentary.
None of this will be without consequence, however. If the Murdoch boys and the rest of Fox News’s leftist leadership want to lurch leftward, they’re likely to feel it in the ratings, just as they did recently when they unceremoniously ousted the most powerful conservative voice in their stable: Tucker Carlson.
“In the first week after Carlson’s ouster on April 24,” reports National Review, “the channel’s primetime viewership fell 29.6 percent to 1.449 million viewers, coming in third among cable networks, according to figures from Nielsen.”
NR continues: “Viewership for the network’s 8 p.m. time slot was down 47 percent overall for that week, according to an analysis from former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. The analysis averaged the viewership from the first week of his absence and compared it with the last week he was on air. Among the key demographic of 25-54 year olds, ratings were down a whopping 59 percent.”
Clearly, the folks are voting with their clickers. Do the Murdochs care? And has cable news already begun to be creatively destroyed as its demographic ages and other media sources arise? Time will tell. In the meantime, though, Matt Walsh suggests a free-market solution:
“Fox’s viewers think that Fox shares their values. And it’s very clear that that’s just not the case. They have embraced radical leftism in its most extreme form. … There’s no daylight at all between Fox News and MSNBC when it comes to gender. And I think that’s something that Fox’s viewers need to know.”
“If it were up to me,” said Walsh, “Fox would get the Bud Light treatment.”