If disbelieving Fox News' lies makes me a hack, that's fine with me: Bob Garfield

I am Manu.

Manu Raju, that is — the CNN reporter who the other day had a run-in with Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.). He’d approached her in a Senate corridor to inquire about new impeachment evidence, and she shot back “You’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you.” Because, duh: enemy of the people.

That’s a Trumpism, but the underlying slander is familiar. The political right accepts as an article of faith that the “lamestream media” are not a proud Fourth Estate but a partisan fifth column of subversives trying to brainwash patriots with leftist doctrine — a conspiracy theory that has yielded a lot of Republican votes and long counterinsurgency of conservative media.

Oh, and a fantastic business model for Fox News, which converts right-wing anger into viewership into ratings into around $10 billion advertiser dollars a year. Its product: rage.

Fox News doesn't really produce news at all

Fox — where Sen. McSally raced to gloat over catching a reporter blue-handed asking a simple question of a public official — is not a news organization (at least not in the morning and prime time); it is a disinformation factory. Such demagogues as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Laura Ingraham and the clown car that is Fox & Friends pump the co-ax full of lies and misrepresentations, vilification, dog whistles and sometimes explicit hate speech. Its own biggest star, Hannity, has also been onstage at Trump rallies, dismissing the real press as “fake news.”

Sure. If you want the source of actually fake news, look no farther than his own channel.

The boundaries of time and space prohibit a comprehensive rundown here but the liberal Media Matters — which exists explicitly to debunk false right-wing tropes — catalogues Fox outrages to a nauseating fare-thee-well. In non-partisan Politifact’s accounting of 160 assertions made on Fox News Channel and subjected to fact checking, 21% were deemed to be true or mostly true; 40% were half true or mostly false; 28% were false and 10% were blatant, “pants-on-fire” lies. In the past four years, most of the lying has been in direct service of — and often word-for-word lockstep with — the Trump administration.

But it’s worse. Because Fox isn’t just Trump TV. It’s also a Trump whisperer, feeding the world’s most powerful couch potato a steady stream of infuriating tidbits — usually false or wildly out of context — which frequently reappear as Trump tweets of official government policy by 10 am. This catastrophic feedback loop has resulted in the pardoning of war criminals, the firing of cabinet secretaries, the assassination of an enemy military leader, the caging of children at the border, the conspiracy to shift blame for 2016 election interference from Russia to Ukraine, and the smearing of a US Ambassador in the process.

A scary amount of power: President Donald Trump or President Sean Hannity? Fox News host has dangerous influence.

So toxic is this organization that in my new book (where the Fox lies are annotated chapter and verse) I seriously examine the idea of using the vaunted free market to shut that factory down. The notion is a boycott of Fox advertisers, on the theory that brands historically hypersensitive about risking their reputations in unsavory editorial environments might abandon a channel rightfully tarred as extremist, dishonest, hateful and — worst of all — destabilizing to civil order and democracy itself.

Now, such thoughtful critics as Politico’s Jack Shafer warn that advertisers shouldn’t be the arbiters of acceptable speech. No, but in the free market of ideas, citizens are very much such arbiters, and they have at times voted (think South Africa) at the cash register. What do citizens think about $10 billion underwriting sedition?

Real journalism is vital, but this isn't it.

Granted, there’s another obvious objection to an attack on conservative media: namely, that the very idea is smoking gun proof of liberal bias. I concede it is a fetching argument.

After all, were you to make a Venn diagram of progressive values and journalistic values, you would indeed see a lot of overlap: Questioning authority. Skepticism about the claims of sitting governments (of both parties). Speaking truth to power. Reform. Afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. Reliance on data, documentation, corroborated testimony, law, history, science and empirical evidence — versus even the most titillating preconceptions.

But here’s the thing. None of that constitutes a political ideology; it is a mentality — one that does not permit prejudging political or events matters based on fixed doctrine, party loyalty, self interest or any of the other hallmarks of bias. And news organizations have rigorous protocols vetting facts and fairness. Which is why there is no smoking gun to be found in the incessant journalistic focus on 1) the present administration, 2) Trumpism, 3) the Republican caucus in Congress and 4) the lies they trade in Big and small.

That is why we exist. Read all about it in the 1st Amendment.

Holding the powerful accountable: Fox News doesn't have to say anything about Tucker Carlson's comments — but it should

The founders wanted pesky reporters asking U.S. Senators about the business of the Senate. Such as the effect of explosive new evidence on what seems to be a bizarro trial without witnesses, which is what Manu was seeking to learn more about from Martha McSally to begin with. And me, as someone who is not a Democrat and who has spent the last 19 years obsessively documenting and criticizing the actual sins, failures and errors of the mainstream media, I’m right there with him.

Does this make me a hack? Fine.

I’m a hack. I am Manu.

Bob Garfield is the co-host of WNYC’s On the Media and author of "American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves." Follow him on Twitter: @Bobosphere

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Fox News, the media doesn't have a leftist bias.