Maria Bartiromo is arguably the most popular personality on Fox Business. Mornings With Maria was consistently the number one show on cable, As was Sunday Morning Futures and Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street. She regularly landed interviews with the most powerful people in the world and covered some of the most important news stories for the network. She had a special relationship with Donald Trump and members of his administration. She was fired officially this week.
While the official announcement of her termination did not cite a specific reason, it is pretty clear what happened. Fox News, the parent company for Fox Business, issued a memo telling everyone that they should not report any stories regarding the 2020 election and possible Chinese involvement in that election. There is significant information showing that they may have interfered in that election as well as others, much of it related to their relationship with Nicolas Maduro and Venezuela.
Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Machines had manufacturing facilities in Venezuela and provided the voting machines including tabulators to Maduro's government. There is strong belief that the Chinese government was heavily involved in manipulating the voting machines to ensure Maduro's victories in his elections. There is also strong suspicion that those machines were used in the United States to rig elections.
Both companies had sued Fox News for defamation. Fox settled the lawsuit with Dominion by paying $787,000,000. The $2.7 billion suit brought by Smartmatic is ongoing. Allegedly in the memo and then in text messages specifically to Maria from Fox News management, the company said they did not want to report on the story for fear of damagingher position in the ongoing case or inviting new defamation lawsuits. Maria had been working on a story with updated information from ongoing lawsuits and investigations into the voting machines that would have shed negative light on both companies and the Chinese government. It's understandable that she was upset about the decision.
She then made the decision to share her text messages with members of Donald Trump's administration. Someone from the administration contacted Fox News to find out if that information was accurate without revealing their confidential source. However, it became clear that the source was Maria. She was pulled off her shows and ultimately terminated after the investigation.
It's an interesting juxtaposition. Reporters often use confidential sources to get information about stories. Maria became the confidential source for the Trump administration. But like many confidential sources that give information to news outlets, the consequences of being revealed are often termination from employment. Maria has a duty to her employer, whether she agrees with their actions or not. She could have easily resigned her position in protest and gone public. You cannot find fault with Fox News for terminating her.
You can find fault with them for killing a story that is vitally important to this nation. They have effectively abrogated what many believe to be the responsibility of the fourth estate; be the watchdog over the government. To report stories and provide information that we need to know as citizens. This is one of the most important stories in our history and Fox News decided to kill it. That should make the liberals happy. Maybe they will start watching Fox News and replace the viewers that the network will lose because of their actions.
It will be interesting to watch how this plays out. Maria is popular and well respected, although she had what some might believe to be too close of a relationship with the current administration, she will undoubtedly land somewhere and continue her success. What will happen to Fox News remains to be seen. Certainly, their credibility has been damaged in the minds of many of their supporters.
