I am regularly criticized (that’s the polite word) for dismissing Fox News as a reliable source of political “news.”

A little history.

If Fox News had a DNA test, it would trace its origins to the Nixon administration. In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide “pro-administration” coverage to millions. William Falk in The Week magazine quoted Ailes saying “People are lazy,” he explained in a memo. “With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.”

Nixon embraced the idea, Falk wrote, “saying he and his supporters needed ‘our own news’ from a network that would lead ‘a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition.’” The 37th president, soon engulfed in the Watergate scandal, never saw his dream network materialize.

Fox News was later founded in 1996 by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who had previously gained experience in the 24-hour news business through his involvement with Sky News and News of the World in the UK. A huge phone hacking scandal originating with News of the World raised questions about the ethics employed by companies under Murdoch’s ownership, as well as the effects the scandal would have on the ethics employed specifically by print journalists and to some extent the wider world of journalism.

Murdoch claimed to be unaware of the scale of the hacking but admitted to a cover-up at News of the World, which led to its closure and significant damage to Murdoch’s reputation and media empire.

In 2005, he purchased Intermix Media, the owner of the then-popular social networking site MySpace.com. Two years later, in 2007, the longtime newspaper mogul made headlines with the purchase of Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch has drawn wide criticism for monopolizing control over international media outlets as well as for his conservative political views, which are often reflected in the reporting of Murdoch-controlled outlets such as Fox News. He preceded Elon Musk as a conservative billionaire owner of a powerful media outlet.

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News Corp. retains a significant share of virtually all forms of media across the globe. Murdoch owns many of the books and newspapers people read, the TV shows and films they watch, the radio stations they listen to, the websites they visit, and the blogs and social networks they feed with content.

In February 1996, after former NBC executive and Republican Party political strategist Roger Ailes left America’s Talking (now MSNBC), Murdoch asked him to start the Fox News Channel. Ailes had a significant background, having worked on the elections of several presidents and serving as an executive at MSNBC before joining Fox News.

Early Fox programming included shows like The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, and Fox & Friends, which debuted in 1998. These shows were instrumental in establishing Fox News as a major player in conservative cable news. An investigation by The New York Times revealed that Bill O’Reilly and Fox News had paid approximately $13 million to settle five cases of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior allegations against him. The network subsequently replaced “The O’Reilly Factor” with “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in the 8 p.m. ET time slot. What an improvement!

In a testy interview Vice President Kamala Harris had with Bret Baier on Oct. 16, Fox News’s chief political anchor, Baier came with a laundry list of right-wing topics, including immigration, the rights of transgender people and Joe Biden’s performance, as Harris attempted to sell herself to the channel’s older, largely Republican, audience.

Their chat began politely. Harris even played to Baier’s vanity by saying, “I know you investigate, and you are a serious journalist.” According to Melanie McFarland in Salon, “Nearly everything that happened after that showed he is not, and she knew it. First came a boneheaded pop quiz: ‘How many illegal immigrants would you estimate your administration has released in the last 3½ years? Just a number. Do you think it’s one million? Three million?’

As Harris tried to speak, he eagerly talked over her. “I was beginning to answer you,” she said after he promised he’d get to another version of the question he’d already asked.

When Harris criticized Trump’s remarks on a Fox News show earlier in the day declaring some Americans “the enemy within,” specifically citing political opponents he called “radical left lunatics” and suggesting the military should be used against them, Baier thought he was ready for Harris. But the clip he then aired from that Fox News town hall conveniently edited out the section showing him saying those very things. What he did not expect was that Harris would call him out on that fallacy.

My issue with Fox News remains that I can’t trust it.

“Connecting the Dots” is published every other Saturday in the Recorder. John Bos is also a contributing writer for Green Energy Times and NJTODAY. Questions and comments are invited at john01370@gmail.com.