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- Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes joined Fox News as contributors in 2009.
- Both Goldberg and Hayes resigned over tensions between Fox News coverage and their own publication.
- In a statement, the pair said the misinformation pushed by “Patriot Purge” is dangerous.
Fox News contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes have resigned following the release of Tucker Carlson’s documentary on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, “Patriot Purge,” citing concerns about the documentary’s potential to incite violence and the cable news outlet’s direction of coverage in the post-Trump era, The New York Times reported.
Goldberg and Hayes joined Fox News as contributors in early 2009 while also working for conservative political magazines. In 2019, they worked together to found The Dispatch, a conservative online publication with nearly 30,000 paying subscribers, according to The New York Times.
Ultimately, the release of “Patriot Purge” brought the pair to an impasse, which they said forced them to choose between running their own publication and remaining loyal to Fox News, according to a statement about their resignation.
The “Patriot Purge” documentary baselessly suggested that the January 6 insurrection was a “false flag” plot by President Joe Biden to conduct an ideological purge and persecute conservatives.
“This is not happening. And we think it’s dangerous to pretend it is. If a person with such a platform shares such misinformation loud enough and long enough, there are Americans who will believe — and act upon — it,” Goldberg and Hayes said in a statement. “This isn’t theoretical. This is what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”
The duo were not the only Fox News employees to publicly condemn the documentary. One of Carlson’s colleagues, Geraldo Rivera, called the false flag theory pushed in the documentary “bullshit.”
Insider has reached out to Goldberg, Hayes, Carlson, and Fox News for comment.
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