Shelby Talcott on October 16, 2019
Journalist Megyn Kelly went after the media Wednesday for what she described as blatant bias, noting that “it doesn’t belong” and suggesting outlets now worry about being judged for not condemning President Donald Trump.
Kelly spoke to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in her first television appearance in nearly a year and hit back at the alleged change in journalism over the years.
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Carlson showed a clip of CNN’s Anderson Cooper giving a biased question to former Vice President Joe Biden, noting that scenes like this add “up to basically partisan interference in an election.”
“You have journalists who feel that their first obligation is to help a candidate or hurt another candidate. That’s not journalism,” Carlson said, and Kellyagreed, adding she doesn’t think subjective judgment should have a place in journalism.
“There was a premise that the other media, the mainstream media, maybe they weren’t far left, but that there was a baked-in bias against people who believe in homeschooling, who believe in a pro-life position, who might have a gun,” Kelly said, speaking about how the media has changed and describing how Fox News began.
“And so they made a whole empire based on programming to those people. I think what’s happened now on the other half of the country, on sort of the mainstream, is they have embraced it.”
“It was sort of passive and now it’s active. Now it’s, ‘Let’s work. He’s too bad. We have to work together. We’ll be judged. History will judge as whether we were for or against this man [Trump].’”
Kelly noted this change came before voters elected Trump in 2016 and mentioned an interview she did with Jorge Ramos of Univision, who argued that journalists must become partisan and “abandon neutrality.”
“He said, ‘That’s over. You’ve got to come out and you’ve got to say Trump’s a racist. Trump’s a misogynist. Trump’s a bigot. Whatever your view is, you’ve got to say it and you’ve got to sell it, and that the time for neutrality has passed,’” she recalled.
“And I do believe he’s [Ramos] persuaded — and others have come to their own conclusion — that that’s the way forward.”
