OPINION:
The muzzling of Maria Bartiromo by Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott should be a wake-up call to every Fox viewer who believes the network is pro-Trump and pro-MAGA. I am implicated in this story, so I will give it to you straight, no chaser.
On July 16, President Trump gave a rare prime-time address to the nation on communist China’s vast capabilities to interfere in America’s elections. That’s a big story by any measure, the kind every major news outlet carries and then chews on across its programming.
Ms. Bartiromo booked me to discuss the speech the next morning. Hours later, she told me Fox had clamped down on any coverage and forwarded the text that had gone to her producers from Scott enforcer Ralph Giordano, Fox Business’ programming chief: “Hi – We don’t want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don’t want to do 2020 election segments at all Thurs or Friday.”
Sean Hannity carried the president live and gave him five minutes afterward. The next morning, “Fox & Friends” did not mention that a president had addressed the nation.
That was a slap at the president and at every Fox viewer who tuned in for analysis and got censorship. It was my duty to share that text with the White House. Ms. Scott got an angry call from the West Wing.
Unrepentant, Ms. Scott gave Ms. Bartiromo the Fox “Golden Muzzle”: Just the News reported that Ms. Bartiromo will get paid for the three years left on her contract but cannot appear on a rival network. On Sept. 3, Fox announced she was gone. I got banned from the network.
I don’t know whether Suzanne Scott is a Trump-hating RINO. I do know her business model is.
To maximize profits, Ms. Scott juggles viewers against a cadre of Fox’s biggest advertisers who despise key MAGA issues. So Ms. Scott feeds the audience conservative red meat — Democrat socialists, biological men in women’s sports, illegal alien rapists and murderers — but keeps it inside guardrails that wall off MAGA themes such as election integrity, Big Pharma and benefits of the Trump tariffs.
Ms. Scott’s business model shows up in the bodies she’s buried. Tucker Carlson had the highest-rated Fox News show. Lou Dobbs had the highest-rated show on Fox Business. Both spoke freely to the MAGA base. Both drew advertiser fire. Both were fired.
There is a Chinese proverb: Kill the chicken, scare the monkey. Ms. Scott turned it on its head. She killed the monkeys. What is left at Fox is a lineup of chickens, nobody willing to stick a neck out the way Ms. Bartiromo did. You will not see a solidarity walkout at Fox for her. It damn well should happen. It won’t.
Messrs. Carlson and Dobbs brought in less revenue than their ratings suggested. That was never Ms. Bartiromo’s problem. At a reported $8 million a year, she was a bargain who returned many multiples of it. Her morning show held its own against CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Sunday Morning Futures” has been the most-watched Sunday public affairs show on all of television, consistently beating “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation.”
No matter to Ms. Scott. It was still off with Ms. Bartiromo’s head.
Yet Ms. Scott’s real censorship happens more quietly, at the producer level, through hit men such as Mr. Giordano. It is Fox’s producers who decide which stories air and which get kicked to the curb. MAGA stories spend a lot of time in the Fox gutter.
Then there is Ms. Scott’s infamous shadow ban. If you are on her blacklist, producers never call.
I am the shadow ban poster child because I hit the Scott trifecta. I wrote the definitive, never-rebutted report on the stolen 2020 election. I am a regular critic of Big Pharma, Fox’s largest advertiser.
And I am the Trump administration’s most visible tariff and China hawk.
But don’t cry for me, Argentina. The shadow ban runs the gamut of MAGA surrogates, from Don Jr. and Rudy Giuliani to Laura Loomer and John Solomon, even Kash Patel before he became FBI director. Ms. Scott is not just suppressing the MAGA message. She disappears the messengers.
If this story were to end in a triumph of journalistic ethics, Ms. Scott would prostrate before Mr. Trump for disrespecting the office and to Trump Nation for suppressing MAGA news. She would apologize to Ms. Bartiromo for punishing, at worst, a minor infraction and, at best, an act of journalistic integrity, and put her back in the anchor chair. She would also lift the shadow ban on Trump surrogates, and fast, so the administration goes into this critical November election at full strength. Then she would resign.
Whether that happens depends on her own bosses. In the meantime, Fox viewers have a choice every time they turn on the television. Newsmax and Real America’s Voice both come to mind.
• Peter Navarro is the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing policy and the author of “Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison.”
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