Fox News has been gutting its department that actually reports facts: report

Although Fox News has always had a right-wing slant, there has been a real — if porous — division between its news department (Chris Wallace, Andrew Napolitano, Shep Smith before he left) and far-right opinion hosts such as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. But journalists Diana Falzone and Lloyd Grove, in an article published in the Daily Beast on September 29, describe the effect that "mass layoffs" have been having on the news division at Fox News and how "fact-based journalism" has become even harder to come by at the cable news outlet.

Falzone and Grove explain, "The recent mass layoffs at Fox News — an estimated body count of around 70, amounting to a little less than 3% of the cable channel's workforce — signal what current and former employees describe as the purposeful devaluing of fact-based journalism in favor of right-wing opinion, race-baiting and conspiracy-mongering at the top-rated, Donald Trump-friendly cable outlet."

Those cutbacks, according to the Beast's sources, have "cut most deeply into the channel's straight news operations at Fox News Digital and elsewhere" while "protecting the ratings-heavy, revenue-generating domains of 'Fox & Friends' in the morning, and of Trump cheerleaders Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham in prime time."

Fox News, Falzone and Grove report, has decimated its so-called "Brain Trust" or "fact-checking and research unit" — which, according to their sources, is "losing around one-fourth of its 30-person staff along with two supervisors." And the Beast journalists note that employees who have been laid off were bullied into signing "draconian" non-disclosure agreements "in order to receive their severance packages."

One of the Beast's sources, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the publication that Brain Trust staffers are being laid off "because they help fuel journalism and fact-based reporting." Management, that source said, is "not interested in facts. They are obsessed with pitching 'on-brand' stories that include Blue Lives Matter, anything Antifa-related, anyone who has suffered during (Black Lives Matter) protests that can put the protestors in a negative light, anything that threatens Christianity, and anyone who is a Trump supporter who has somehow been wronged."

Another Fox News insider, quoted anonymously, told the Beast that its executives have "long been unsupportive of real, unbiased reporting. They do not see themselves as a real news operation in the sense that people are doing original work, trying to break stories and get to the bottom of things, wherever the chips fall. They are, first and foremost, a collector of other outlets' reports and rewriting, and writing stories about what guests say on their most highly rated shows."