• by Joe Mandese , November 7, 2018

It's morning again in America. And I'm so bleeping proud of you guys! The midterms are over, but the biggest loser wasn't a candidate for a federal, state or local office. It was the credibility of a national "news" network.

Sometimes, headlines write themselves.

Today's was written when Fox News' Sean Hannity took center stage during the President's Election Eve campaign rally, pointed to the back of the crowd and asserted: "By the way, those guys back there are fake news.”

It was the moment Fox News stepped over the thin red line separating it from simply being a partisan booster to being what many accuse it of: state news.

Yes, the network issued a statement Tuesday calling Hannity, as well as Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro’s stumping, “an unfortunate distraction,” adding that it “has been addressed.”

But unless the network addresses it in a way that publicly sets the record straight, we can assume it was just a slap on the wrist -- “nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more” -- and that Fox News is a willful participant in a state news industrial complex that has become this presidency’s White House.

The fact that the episode was executive produced by former Fox News chief and current White House communications chief Bill Shine makes it harder to believe there isn’t an explicit connection.

It’s time for Fox News to set the record straight. Are you or aren’t you state news?

As for the people in the back Hannity called “fake news,” I’m so bleeping proud of you.