Media

Silver: Fox News Attracted To Racist Angles

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Phillip Stucky Contributor
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Nate Silver, editor in chief of statistics site FiveThirtyEight, asserted in a politics chat published Wednesday that journalists with Fox News are sometimes attracted to a racist angle.

“If you’re a Weekly Standard (RIP) conservative, maybe you think that Trump does too much long-term damage to the cause of movement conservatism,” Silver opined in the conversation.

“But I don’t think the people running Fox News have never been those types of conservatives,” he continued. “They’ve always been attracted to the sensational, the conspiratorial and sometimes the slightly or not-so-slightly racist or xenophobic angle. They probably also want lower taxes and conservative Supreme Court justices. But if Trumpism is a bridge to get there — that’s more a feature than a bug for Fox News, especially since Trump is so good for ratings.” (RELATED: 7 Times Nate Silver Was Hilariously Wrong About Donald Trump)

The conversation focused on whether or not Fox functions as a propaganda arm of the Trump administration, a topic that has become more of a hot-button national conversation following an article published in the March issue of The New Yorker.

That article focused on an event in Texas in which Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared apart from other members of the press, and even appeared on stage to speak about President Donald Trump.

FiveThirtyEight’s discussion continued, and Silver also argued that major news outlets should shut down their opinion sections.

“I guess I’m arguing that news organizations should abolish their opinion sections.” Silver concluded. “If it’s good enough to run in the New York Times, you don’t need to segregate it into an opinion page, even if has a point of view or makes a devil’s advocate case. If it’s not good enough to meet those standards, it shouldn’t run.”

The Caller reached out to FiveThirtyEight, but received no further clarification on the comments as of press time.