First on CNN: White House pens letter to Fox News executives calling on network to retract bogus FBI informant claims

By Oliver Darcy, CNN

New York (CNN) — The White House is formally calling on Fox News to walk back its coverage of bribery and corruption allegations against President Joe Biden.

In a letter sent to the right-wing network’s top brass this week, which has not been previously reported, Ian Sams, a top White House spokesperson, noted that the ex-FBI informant who was the source of the bribery claims has now been charged by federal authorities for allegedly fabricating the story.

“Despite this, Fox has taken no steps to retract, correct, or update its reporting on this false allegation from 2023,” Sams said in his letter to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott, president Jay Wallace, and Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton.

The letter is the latest from the Biden White House, which has taken a more aggressive approach to news coverage of the president that it sees as unfair in the run-up to the November election. Earlier this month, Sams sent a letter to the White House Correspondents’ Association, protesting coverage of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified material.

Over the course of the last year, Fox News hosts have relentlessly promoted serious corruption claims against the purported “Biden crime family,” which have saturated the conservative information space, spawning GOP-led probes on Capitol Hill and fueling an eventual impeachment inquiry against the sitting president.

“I would cite the number of times Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity promoted this allegation and made false statements about President Biden on primetime television throughout this time period, but the footnote citations would fill multiple pages,” Sams underscored in his letter to the three top Fox News executives.

But when the FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, was charged earlier this month with fabricating the bribery allegations against Biden and even apparently confessed that Russian intelligence was involved in seeding the smear, Fox News refused to walk back the story in a meaningful way.

Hannity, the network’s top promoter of the corruption claims, stuck by the narrative that he had promoted in dozens of segments (though he did disclose to viewers that the informant had been charged, spinning the development to attack the media). Elsewhere on the network, Watters used the arrest revelation as supposed evidence of an even deeper conspiracy theory, suggesting Biden was locking up Smirnov in retaliation for revealing the supposed scheme.

And while Fox News’ roster of unscrupulous right-wing hosts have declined to properly correct the record, the outlet’s supposedly non-partisan news website has also failed to update its “EXCLUSIVE” reporting from last summer publicly surfacing the informant’s false claims. Articles by reporter Brooke Singman advancing Smirnov’s bribery allegations remain unaltered on the Fox News website without a correction or mention that Smirnov has been charged with lying to the federal law enforcement about the very claims she reported.

To be clear, credible news organizations would not behave in such a manner. In fact, even before Smirnov was charged, responsible newsrooms viewed the bribery allegations as dubious at best. But Fox News has a poor relationship with the truth, often flooding the discourse with disinformation and conspiracy theories that contort to their audience’s conservative worldview. Last year, the network paid a historic $787.5 million defamation settlement to Dominion Voting Systems for the lies it told about the 2020 election.

Since Fox News has declined to take the responsible course of action and meaningfully correct the record, the White House is now moving to formally request the network do so.

“We feel strongly that all Fox News Digital articles on this topic should at a minimum be updated with editor’s notes informing readers that the source of this allegation has been federally indicted for making it up,” Sams wrote the three top executives. “We also feel strongly that Fox News Channel television personalities like Hannity and Watters, among others, should inform their viewers on air that they have been sharing a discredited allegation from a source who has been federally indicted for making it up.”

But a person familiar with the matter said that Fox News has informed the White House that it does not intend to correct or retract its reporting. And, in a statement the network provided to CNN, Fox News didn’t directly address the White House’s request.

“Fox News Media has reported on all key developments since the announcement that Alexander Smirnov was charged with lying to the FBI, featuring the story prominently,” a network spokesperson said. “We will continue to report on developments in all aspects of the ongoing investigations, hearings, and trials.”

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