Fox News is under fire from every direction.
The top-rated cable news channel is facing its biggest challenge to its dominance.
And Fox News just got hit with a reality check that it never saw coming.
Left-wing comedian Russel Brand caused a stir by appearing on Bill Maher’s Real Time show and calling out MSNBC contributor John Heilman to his face about MSNBC’s bias.
Heilman tried to claim Fox News was not a real news outlet, to which Brand responded by listing all the times he believed MSNBC hosts knowingly lied to their viewers to push a political agenda.
Brand then posted a follow up video on social media expanding on his critique of MSNBC and the corporate media in general.
Brand expressed his belief that mainstream media – of which he counts Fox News – is beholden to advertiser dollars and will only present a version of the news that allows them to remain profitable and not offend their sponsors.
“My perspective is all mainstream media outlets are so beholden to corporate and commercial interests that they will not give you the type of information you need to make valuable decisions about the way that systemic power operates. That’s my position, so I don’t think that Fox News is the answer. I don’t think MSNBC news is the answer,” Brand began.
Brand explained that no matter how much the press attacked Donald Trump, news outlets depend on Trump to drive ratings.
“The fact is that they both benefit from figures like Donald Trump who are divisive and incendiary and who draw eyeballs to the screen to their channels for whom? Their advertisers . . . that’s the way the business model works,” Brand added.
During Trump’s Presidency, CNN set ratings records and even briefly displaced Fox News as the top-rated cable news channel following January 6.
But now that Trump is out of office CNN’s ratings sunk to the lowest levels in a decade.
Brand told his followers that the press plays an important role in a democracy by holding the powerful to account.
But Brand warned that is not happening today as reporters are more interested in scolding and lecturing those whose views do not align with the Democrat Party.
“This is what I believe is possible for the media,” Brand concluded. “You can have transparency, accountability, authenticity, integrity, an open conversation with viewers that’s not based on piety, pomposity, judgment, and condescension — we are together looking for better ways to organize society, create better systems, hold the powerful to account, and create systems where they aren’t so powerful, and address many of the issues in American contemporary life that are causing the vision and conflict.”
