The former CBS news anchor told The Daily Beast he believes the widely watched conservative cable network is "not that far off" from becoming "a state-run, state-sponsored, straight-up propaganda outlet" for the Trump White House.
And that, he said, is "something we have to worry about."
"There are some good journalists working at Fox ‐ Chris Wallace comes to mind ― but if you look at it on the whole, particularly their primetime programming, you have the beginnings of a state-run media," Rather said.
"By any objective analysis, this is by far the closest we’ve come to Radio Moscow," he added, referring to the official state-run international broadcasting station of the former Soviet Union. Radio Moscow spread pro-Soviet propaganda and fake news in multiple languages throughout the Cold War, muddying the waters in several countries around issues as serious and life-threatening as the AIDS epidemic.
Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham regularly stump for Trump on their respective shows. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer detailed the symbiotic relationship between Fox News and the Trump White House in a deeply researched essay published earlier this month.