On American Voices, Angelo Carusone explains why Fox must be held accountable
Carusone: If Fox isn't held accountable, “then Trump and others that follow along will also never be able to have any accountability applied to them either”
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From the March 11, 2023, edition of MSNBC's American Voices with Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): Help me tie this all together, because there is a reason we start with Alvin Bragg talking about the case that is developing in New York. There's the fact that we're talking about Dominion. There's the fact that we're talking about Fox News, which is all of this amounts to a conversation about accountability and what accountability will ultimately look like in the service of preserving and defending our democracy, right? That is what is actually a stake here. So, connect the dots for me, how do all of these things tie in together, and if this week, if we see developments in this case, the type of developments we think we're going to see, does that put us in a different place than we were last week?
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT, MEDIA MATTERS): I think it puts us in a slightly more — in the case of Trump, it puts us in a slightly more precarious case, because we haven't seen the accountability. In fact, you've just had impunity, and that means that the forces of authoritarianism are more empowered. It's fuel for the right-wing echo chamber to spin up and actually attack the remaining vestiges of these institutions, so it's a real concern. I would say, you know, to tie it all together, I think we might be already sort of there. And, your last question sort of got to it, which is that in the way Trump has sort have seized — part of what these text messages reveal, and it's not a defense of all of them, it's that they themselves are hostages to this larger tsunami of authoritarianism, of which, whether it's Trump or somebody else, is already moving. And even these forces can easily get rolled over, like Fox News, if they don't bow to it. Now, they should have, they had a responsibility, and they should be held accountable.
But this, ultimately, to put this all together is this — this is the test, and we will never have durable sustainable, healthy, civic democracy if we cannot make sure that at least Fox News has some accountability. Because without that, without change with Fox, then Trump and others that follow along will also never be able to have any accountability applied to them either. The stakes are simply too high.