Corporate news outlets that cater to a partisan audience will obviously have some bias in terms of what they choose to cover and what they choose to ignore. This is perhaps an issue if they’re using public wavelengths to broadcast, but it’s not inherently problematic. In fact, even a news operation that aims to shoot straight down the middle will unavoidably make editorial choices that demonstrate some bias, if only because they still aim to please and make assumptions about what their patrons will find interesting. But it’s a different matter when there is blatant hypocrisy involved, as is the case with Fox News’s coverage of DirecTV’s de-platforming of One American News (OAN).

As Erik Wemple details for the Washington Post, Fox News was apoplectic when Amazon Web Services, Apple and Google refused to host the right-wing social media site Parler last year. But when their direct competitor OAN was dropped last week by DirecTV, costing them an estimated 90 percent of their revenue, there was only a single mention of the story on Fox. 

“Speaking of Trump and the media, his favorite network, One America News, is being dropped by AT&T’s DirecTV. That’s a big blow to OAN in terms of its reach and its revenue,” said host Howard Kurtz on Sunday’s edition of “Media Buzz.”

Kurtz didn’t complain about this development, but merely observed that it was bad for OAN’s viewership and bottom line. He might have noted that it was great news for his employer or at least shown some solidarity with a beleaguered fellow right-wing cable news channel. He did neither of those things, and the rest of the network observed complete silence.

For the record, DirecTV isn’t explaining precisely why they’re dropping OAN, saying that there were a variety of factors. One factor, plainly, is that OAN broadcasts completely unhinged nonsense. But so does Fox News and that doesn’t seem to be a problem. The fact that it conceivably could be a problem in the future is precisely why we might expect Fox News to defend OAN. But they’re not that farsighted, and they’re so-called principles are too situational from them to take a principled stand in defense of the right to air right-wing misinformation.

Fewer viewers and less revenue for OAN means more viewers and revenue for Fox News, and that’s all they care about.