Todd Starnes calls himself a 'proud,' 'Bible-clinging' Trump supporter after Fox News axes him

The network has quietly axed Starnes from its lineup, according to The Wrap, and has ceased production on his three-hour Fox News Radio show as well as his Fox Nation program, "Starnes Country."

Fox News did not provide an explanation about the decision not to remove Starnes' contract. It's unclear when the decision was made, but Starnes retweeted a promotion that labeled him as a "Fox News radio host" just hours before the news broke.

Starnes seemingly responded to reports of his termination with a blunt tweet on Wednesday afternoon: "I'm proud to call myself a gun-toting, Bible-clinging, Deplorable Trump supporter," he wrote. "I am a rock-solid conservative and I do not compromise my beliefs. Period."

Although many Fox News personalities are considered controversial, Starnes is known for being particularly extremist in his far-right views. On Sept. 30, one of his guests, pastor Robert Jeffress, said that Democrats worship a demon pagan god.

"I believe that," Starnes replied, adding, "I have no doubt that they want to especially go after and target Christians in America."

As The Daily Beast notes, Starnes was previously fired from Baptist Press for continually making "factual and contextual errors" and "misrepresentations."

It's not known whether the recent interview was related to the decision not to renew Starnes' contract.

“Don’t know who, yet, will fill it, but Fox is no longer the network it once was.”

Unfortunately free market economics don’t apply in the media business. It is an oligopoly, in bed with big government. Politics, not economics, drives the decision making of the oligopolists.

In a truly competitive situation, the CEO of ATT would be scrutinizing the decline of CNN and demanding a strategic shift. If CNN’s audience were growing instead of shrinking, it would be making more money and the parent company would be more profitable. With Fox shifting left, CNN is faced with a new competitor. Its market is getting more crowded and competitive yet the market to sell news to moderate to conservative voters will be virtually uncontested by 24/7 news outlets once Fox completes it shift. The logical move for ATT/CNN is to fire Zucker, put a real old time journalist in charge, and shift to purely objective old “who, what when, where and why” factual reporting in the news shows supplemented by clearly labeled commentary. Moderate and conservative viewers (the majority of Americans) would flock to a national, widely distributed 24/7 news network without an obvious political bias. Fox pored there was a big market for the “fair and balanced” positioning. That demand has not gone away and may actually be growing with many Americans disgusted with the deep state and the constant false outrage spewed by political leaders.

Fox moving left is more evidence market forces are not at work. It originated the “fair and balanced” positioning and became the dominant 24/7 cable news network. However, due to the political leanings of the founder’s children it is throwing away the strategy that built the business and abandoning its audience, pursuing a smaller audience served by two smaller competitors. The new strategy is economic suicide, yet the network is serving political masters and not the market.

Unfortunately the government no longer enforces anti-trust law. As a result, many industries are dominated by large corporations allied with government to keep new competitors out.

Note the calls to censor “hate” speech and other speech politicians or political interest groups find offensive. In a free and highly competitive marketplace, with many competitors clawing to build market share, the press in unison would be allied against the censors knowing censorship would kill their business. Instead we find social media and the mainstream traditional media actively censoring news progressive politicians don’t want aired. Censorship by private companies is a manifestation of tyranny and suppression of freedom, not sign of a vibrant a free market.

The solution is small, decentralized government and private markets with many competitors. Downsize the federal government, give most of its functions back to the states, and use anti-trust law to break up the oligopolies in every industry. Otherwise we are on the fast lane to dictatorship.

There is an opportunity out there, for real.

Don’t know who, yet, will fill it, but Fox is no longer the network it once was.

That miscasts the issue. Journalism is about bad news. Always has been, always will be.
Bad news about society promotes the conceit that “government should do something.” Consequently there is no such thing as profitable conservative journalism.
What there can be is openly conservative, philosophically based commentary. IOW, talk radio.
The journalism cartel defines both “liberal” and “objective” as both meaning the same thing - philosophically in perfect agreement with the journalism cartel. Only the usages are different: “objective” is applied exclusively to members of the journalism cartel, whereas “liberal” is never applied to any member of the journalism cartel.
Hence “objective” journalism fills the “liberal” talk radio" niche completely.
There is no market for conservative news - and there is no market for “liberal” talk radio, either.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.