Sometimes you write something and then later, when the perfect example comes along, you wish you could have held off. My last TRB column was partly about the way conservatives have allowed populism to completely swallow up their capacity to evaluate truth. "One favored technique," I wrote, "is to imply that anything believed by a majority of the public--or even a significant minority--must be true."
Now I see this, from Michael Clemente, Fox's senior vice president for news:
"The fact that our numbers are up 30 plus in the news arena on basic cable I'd like to think is a sign that we are just putting what we believe to be the facts out on the table."
Right -- there's no way a any sizeable number of people would believe a news program that puts propaganda on the air. I mean, that's just never happened in history.
(Bonus: Note that Clemente doesn't claim that what Fox reports is "facts," only that it's "what we believe to be the facts." So they're not deliberately lying.)