A former Fox News host said the network was founded for the sole purpose of “demonizing ‘the other’”.
The Guardian reports Eboni Williams tore into her former network in a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, a nationally syndicated radio show originating at iHeartMedia's WWPR 105.1 FM.
“Fox has a reputation for being bigoted and racist – all for a very good reason,” she said.
Williams said the key to understanding Fox’s approach was to understand its founder, Roger Ailes, who laid out his strategy clearly in his book.
“This man very plainly, in plain sight, says that he is forming a network to speak to one thing and one thing only: the demonizing of the other,” Williams said.
“I don’t know what his beliefs were, but what he knew was it would be very profitable,” she went on. “Nobody had ever done this before … There was no conservative news network speaking to the fear of intrinsic devaluation of whiteness in this country. And Roger saw a void, and like any smart business person – what? Find a need and fill it.”
Ailes died in 2017, after being forced out at Fox the previous year over allegations he sexually harassed staffers.
Williams worked at Fox for four and a half years before leaving at the end of 2018, and co-hosted the short-lived show Fox News Specialists.
The commenter and attorney said she joined Fox despite her disagreement with its conservative political agenda because she believed its viewers needed to hear a different perspective.
“I went there because I felt I was going to be a savior of sorts and talk to the people in the middle that still watch that network, because whether we like it or not, Fox is number one for a reason,” she said.
But she said that after criticizing Donald Trump’s response to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which brought her death threats, she was no longer getting through to Fox viewers.
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