BS BULLETIN:
- Fox News liberal Jessica Tarlov says watching some journalists leave traditional news organizations for independent platforms has revealed political views that weren’t nearly as obvious before.
- Tarlov said it has been “really jarring” to see some former mainstream reporters emerge as openly anti-Trump voices once outside their old institutions.
- Her larger point: For all the criticism Fox receives for partisanship, at least viewers generally know who’s offering news and who’s offering political opinion.
Jessica Tarlov isn’t exactly known for carrying water for Donald Trump. Which makes what she just said about the media considerably more interesting.
The liberal co-host of Fox News’ “The Five” appeared Friday on Semafor’s “Mixed Signals” podcast, where the conversation turned to political bias, Fox News and the changing media landscape.
Tarlov said watching journalists leave major news organizations and strike out independently has provided an unexpected education. Some of them, she said, suddenly sound a whole lot more partisan than they did when they were working inside traditional newsrooms. “It has been really jarring,” Tarlov said.
She pointed to journalists who have moved onto platforms such as Substack and said that once freed from institutional restraints, some have effectively revealed themselves as deeply opposed to Trump.
She remains Fox’s most visible liberal voice and regularly battles her conservative colleagues over the president and his policies. She recently told The New Yorker that she wished Trump had simply won reelection in 2020 because, in her view, the four years outside the White House allowed him and his movement to become stronger.
But Tarlov’s point about journalism was different.
She argued that Fox’s ideological voices are largely identifiable to the audience.
Viewers know what Jesse Watters does. They know what Greg Gutfeld does. And they certainly know what Tarlov herself does.
In fact, Tarlov has been unusually candid about that distinction for years. She told Mediaite back in 2019 that she wasn’t presenting herself as an objective journalist.
“I’m a hired liberal,” she said at the time. Her job was to advocate a political viewpoint and debate conservatives — not pretend she didn’t have one.
The problem isn’t that journalists have political opinions. Everybody does. It’s whether audiences were previously consuming reporting under the impression that those opinions weren’t influencing what they were seeing.
Once some reporters left their institutional homes, according to Tarlov, the restraints disappeared — and so did much of the mystery.
Mediaite highlighted former Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer as one example discussed in the interview.
Sommer is now a senior reporter at The Bulwark and writes its “False Flag” newsletter, which focuses heavily on MAGA and right-wing media and political culture. His recent newsletter subjects include “A MAGA Propaganda Circular Firing Squad,” “Pete Hegseth Is Building a Pentagon Troll Army” and “Why MAGA Is Celebrating Milo’s Deportation.”
Tarlov wasn’t arguing that journalists shouldn’t criticize Trump. She was pointing to what happened when some journalists no longer had to maintain the conventions associated with traditional news organizations. The mask, in some cases, became considerably less necessary.
MY QUICK TAKE
Rush talked about media bias for decades, and one of his central complaints wasn’t simply that journalists had opinions. It was that too many insisted they didn’t. Now some of them leave their old jobs and apparently say the quiet part at full newsletter volume.
Jessica noticed. Welcome to the club.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Mediaite — Jessica Tarlov calls out independent journalists for exposing themselves as anti-Trump partisans
- Semafor — Mixed Signals: Jessica Tarlov on Fox, Trump and her conservative colleagues
- The Bulwark — Will Sommer’s False Flag newsletter
- Mediaite — Jessica Tarlov discusses being Fox’s progressive voice
