Fox News on Tuesday fired the political editor in charge of defending the network’s election night decisions that especially angered President Donald Trump and his allies.
Policy editor Chris Stirewalt’s departure from the network coincided with the dismissal of at least 16 digital editorial staff, including senior editors. People familiar with the situation said the layoffs – a “bloodbath” as several Fox News members have described – were perpetrated by Porter Berry, Sean Hannity’s buddy now in charge of redoing Fox’s digital properties in the image of his opinion right-wing programming.
In addition to Stirewalt – the Fox News “nerd” who became the face of the network’s projection on election night for Joe Biden to beat Arizona, which angered much of the network’s MAGA audience and led to the emergence of a program even more accommodating, pro Alternative Trump on Newsmax – sources confirmed that longtime digital editors and reporters, some of whom had been with Fox for a decade or more, were among those fired. (In addition, on Monday morning, Fox News senior vice president and DC managing editor Bill Sammon, who is in his mid-60s, announced that he will “retire at the end of the month.”)
“Fuck it,” commented a particularly dismayed Fox News official to The Daily Beast.
“It is essentially the last nail in Fox’s digital journalism coffin.“
Officially, the chain claimed that the layoffs are only part of a “restructuring” initiative. “At the end of the 2020 election cycle, Fox News Digital has realigned its business and reporting structure to meet the demands of this new era,” said a spokesman in a statement. “We are confident that these changes will ensure that the platform continues to provide innovative reporting and insightful analysis around key issues, both in the United States and abroad.”
But a dozen Fox News employees who recently passed away and spoke to The Daily Beast said the “purge” – as some have characterized it – was part of the network’s larger effort to turn its direct reporting site into right-wing opinions on the models of Fox’s prime time programming.
“There is a concerted effort to get rid of real journalists,” said a Fox employee who recently left. “They fired capable people who were real journalists, not blind followers.”
Others said it was an attempt to prevent leakers from talking to outside media about the changes being instituted by Porter Berry, a former Hannity producer and Bill O’Reilly, who recently transitioned from the TV side to managing digital properties from Fox.
“Porter is uncomfortable around and distrusts experienced editors,” a Fox News source told The Daily Beast. “They make you feel inept because your training is entirely on TV.”
“Porter is in charge,” said a current employee on layoffs, while an employee who recently left said, “This is all Porter. Both an ideological purge and a purge of people for whom he was threatened. “
“It is essentially the last nail in the coffin for digital journalism at Fox,” said another recently deceased employee.
However, noted this former official, the move to focus on the right’s view paid off for Berry. “What has worked a little for him are recapitulations of the network’s prime time opinion programs,” said the source, and so the desire is for more “cheap labor to write a dozen 250-word recap of the programs of the prime time of the chain ”.
Even before this round of layoffs, Berry’s management and editorial style resulted in the departure of several key employees, such as Jason Ehrich, former executive vice president of audience development and strategic partnerships, and Greg Wilson, former managing editor Fox News website, among others.
As reported by The Daily Beast, Berry’s influence on the network’s online properties raised eyebrows among employees, mainly because he continues to act as a “parallel executive producer” for Hannity – yet another sign of Fox’s increasingly fuzzy lines between the right of the network. opinion comment from the ward and its news division called.
Stirewalt’s expulsion came months after he publicly defended the projection of Fox’s decision table on Joe Biden’s (and accurate) early election night to win Arizona’s votes. The airborne call immediately infuriated President Donald Trump, as such projection from his favorite broadcaster at the time inhibited his plans to declare victory prematurely that night. “Jared, you call the Murdochs! Jason, call Sammon and Hemmer! ”Axios reported Trump screaming that night with his son-in-law Jared Kushner and adviser Jason Miller.
Immediately after the call from Arizona, which was linked to furious Trump fans who left the network via even more fact-free right-wing channels like Newsmax, Stirewalt was repeatedly interrogated on air during the screening and asked if his team would reverse their call. “Not that I understand,” said Stirewalt, supporting the analysis by the decision-making director, Arnon Mishkin.
While the network’s pro-Trump opinion presenters openly undermined the decision table and the call of the Arizona political team, echoing the Trump campaign’s complaints, Stirewalt refused to reverse the course while pouring cold water on the fake ones President’s allegations of widespread electoral fraud.
“Lawsuits, idiots,” he said the day after the election. “We still haven’t seen any evidence that there is anything wrong.”
Although the network never gave up its call for Arizona and followed other major news outlets by calling the entire election for Biden days later, Stirewalt apparently soon found himself outside Fox News.
Despite having been a regular presence on the air for years – including a central role in Fox’s 2012 election night drama, in which he was forced to air to effectively defend the Barack Obama election call – Stirewalt did not make a only appearance on the network after November 16.
Stirewalt’s final contribution to Fox News was a digital post on Monday afternoon, entitled “Put this in your hot pocket”.
–Maxwell Tani, Justin Baragona and Andrew Kirell contributed additional reporting. Diana Falzone was FoxNews.com’s digital and in-person reporter from 2012 to 2018. In May 2017, she filed a lawsuit for gender discrimination and disability against the network and made a deal, leaving the company in March 2018.