Fox to wary advertisers: Bartiromo is “hard-hitting journalism”

Maria Bartiromo

Fox News has tried to assured worried advertisers about blowback that its talent such as business-oriented anchor Maria Bartiromo, reports Justin Baragona, Maxwell Tani and Andrew Kirell of The Wrap.

Baragona, Tani and Kirell write, “The network selling Bartiromo as a face of its journalism is especially eyebrow-raising considering the famed financial reporter’s years-long descent into full-on Trump boosterism.

“The Fox host has been a vocal election denialist, leading the charge of the network’s right-wing, pro-Trump voices peddling lies that the election was ‘stolen’ from the president via widespread voter fraud. Besides providing a regular platform to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and on-again-off-again Trump legal adviser Sidney Powell to uncritically amplify their unfounded claims, Bartiromo also repeatedly dipped her toes in those same conspiratorial waters.

“While she has continued to book high-profile guests from her vast rolodex of financial industry names, her credulous parroting of some of the more unhinged ‘rigged’ election theories from Trumpworld, namely that corrupt voting software flipped millions of Trump votes to President-elect Joe Biden, eventually resulted in legal threats to the network.”

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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.