Politico Magazine highlighted Fox News' Megyn Kelly peddling anti-Clinton conspiracy theories and disinformation on Fox News’ The Kelly File, and the “bad practice” that has infected the 2016 presidential campaign.

On the October 3 edition of Fox News’ The Kelly File, host Megyn Kelly and correspondent Trace Gallagher covered debunked Clinton conspiracy theories including Hillary Clinton’s supposed plans to carry out a drone strike on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Politico Magazine described these stories as a “chunky stream of likely hokum flowing like an open sewer on her show,” and described the air time she gave the stories as “bad practice.” From Politico Magazine:

Earlier this week, Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly provided a prime-time example of how to inject unsubstantiated rumors into the news flow. In a brief segment on her show, she allowed Fox News correspondent Trace Gallagher to promote three spurious Clinton rumors. One was about Hillary Clinton’s health, picked up from a story in the always dubious Daily Mail online, which was an excerpt from Ed Klein’s new book Guilty as Sin. The second was a two decades-old-plus supermarket tabloid allegation, resurfacing in a Drudge Report headline, that Bill Clinton had a son by an Arkansas prostitute. And the third cited a report from the super-dubious True Pundit website citing “sources at the State Department” alleging that while serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton asked of Julian Assange, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

“OMG,” Kelly said twice after Gallagher’s segment, making little effort to arrest the chunky stream of likely hokum flowing like an open sewer through her show. Now, all three of these tales may be eventually confirmed. The smart journalist never says never. But until there’s more to go on than hearsay, it’s bad practice to repeat somebody else’s tips as if they’re news.