Stirewalt said the “rebellion against the populist right against the outcome of the 2020 election” was a result of some of Trump’s “hype men in the media” helping him steal an election or at least to get rich. ‘
Fox News, which did not respond to a request for comment on Stirewalt’s play, used several propagandists in the roles of host or contributors on air who made false allegations of election fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Star hosts with large platforms and massive viewers, such as Sean Hannity, have for weeks driven the belief that the Trump election was stolen.
Stirewalt wrote that the refusal to believe the election results among many Trump supporters was a “tragic consequence of the informative malnutrition that hit the country so badly.”
“When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous anger from consumers who were furious because their opinion was not confirmed,” Stirewalt said. “After the Americans consolidated for so long, many Americans now view any news that indicates they are wrong or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally.”
In his piece, Stirewalt describes the USA “as a nation of news consumers who are overfed and malnourished.”
“Americans daily indulge in empty information calories and enjoy their sugar solutions of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies,” he wrote.
The Fox News decision – making decision on Arizona took place early on election night and caused controversy and angered Trump and his team who tried to turn it around.
But the network stood by it, and Stirewalt defended it aggressively on the network during election week. The call, which has been questioned by some data because it was done so early, eventually turns out to be correct. Earlier this month, however, Stirewalt was released from the network he had been calling home for more than a decade.