Former Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan is furious that Fox News didn't frame this week's headlines the way she prescribed — and that tells you more about the establishment press than anything Fox did.
The Supreme Court on Monday denied the Trump administration's emergency request to lift an injunction blocking USPS ballot-mail rules, ruling the government was "unlikely to succeed on the merits" at this stage. Separately, ProPublica reported a Russian oligarch helped bankroll Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamas wedding. Sullivan's gripe: Fox didn't treat either story as a cataclysm for Trump.
Here's what Fox actually did. The network covered the ballot ruling — but framed it around Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence, which stated there is "at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority." Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. The Honest Elections Project's Jason Snead told Fox the case "is still alive and well" and could return to the Court before 2028. Fox reported the ruling and the legal pathway forward. Sullivan wanted a funeral procession.
On the wedding story, Fox gave it roughly a minute on Monday evening programming, according to Media Matters, the progressive watchdog Sullivan relies on for her data. Sullivan calls this "negative space" — Fox pretending something "is simply not happening." But a minute of coverage isn't silence. It's an editorial judgment about what leads a broadcast. Sullivan's real objection is that Fox made a call she doesn't control.
Sullivan's column reveals the actual playbook. "Normal news outlets are concerned with informing their audience," she writes. Fox's executives have "a different priority." Who decides what counts as "normal"? Sullivan does. The same press corps that spent years pushing Russia collusion, that buried the Hunter Biden laptop story, that branded the lab-leak theory a conspiracy — they're the "normal" ones. Anyone outside the consensus is coddling.
Media Matters, Sullivan's cited source, is a progressive watchdog that exists to monitor and attack conservative media. Sullivan presents its findings as neutral observation. It's opposition research dressed up as media criticism.
Sullivan cites an Axios poll showing 53% of respondents call Trump "corrupt" — meant to prove Fox viewers are ignorant. Another reading: millions of Americans watched the establishment press cry wolf for a decade and stopped trusting their framing. That's not a bubble. That's a survival instinct built on experience.
The Supreme Court ruling matters. The wedding story matters. What doesn't matter is Margaret Sullivan's demand that every network process the news through her lens before you're allowed to see it. The press doesn't get to decide what you think about the facts. You do.
