Is every conservative pundit on the take?
Today Paul D. Thacker reports in The New Republic that Fox News columnist and junkscience.com proprietor Steven Milloy — stalwart defender of tobacco and fossil fuels — has been receiving hefty payments for years from, uh, tobacco and fossil-fuel companies.
However, unlike other news outlets that have dumped pundits after finding out they’re receiving money from the subjects of their columns, Fox has been looking the other way (to put it charitably). Thacker concludes:
Perhaps the real reason the news organization tolerates Milloy is that his pro-industry, anti-environmentalist views dovetail nicely with those of its political commentators. Still, this misses an important distinction. Objective viewers long ago realized that Fox News has a political agenda. But, when a pundit promotes this agenda while on the take from corporations that benefit from it, then Fox News has gone one disturbing step further.
