The Jan. 6 texts and the rot at the heart of Fox News

Sean Hannity.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

So now we know: Although Fox News' primetime message for much of the past year has been that Democrats are wildly exaggerating the seriousness of the insurrection that took place on Capitol Hill last Jan. 6, major figures at the network — including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade — spent that fateful afternoon fretfully texting then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, insisting he get then-President Donald Trump to intervene to stop the violence.

That Fox's on-air talent lies to its audience is hardly surprising. But this fresh revelation of bad faith teaches us something more important. It shows quite clearly that the practical effect of the network in the media ecosystem is continually to shift the Overton Window — the range of politically acceptable speech and deed — further and further to the right. It does this by laundering words and deeds that once would have been almost universally condemned for their radicalism.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.