Fox’s Bartiromo gave air time to key GOP conspiracy theorist

Maria Bartiromo

David Folkenflik of NPR has described how Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo aired fraudulent claims about election fraud from pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell.

Folkenflik writes, “By Nov. 8, Fox Business Network senior vice president Gary Schreier was warning the channel’s president, Lauren Petterson, that Bartiromo ‘has GOP conspiracy theorists in her ear and they use her for their message sometimes.’

“As Dominion’s lawyers noted, however, such skepticism about Bartiromo from senior executives did not inspire them to block her program that day or from rebroadcasting it hours later.

“Bartiromo was not alone in possessing the memo; Dobbs received it too, and Bartiromo had shared that memo with a senior producer and top booker, Abby Grossberg.

“Asked about it under oath by Dominion’s attorneys late last summer, Grossberg said the memo ‘isn’t something that I would use right now as reportable for air, no,’ according to the legal filings.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.