Most people understand the National Enquirer isn’t a legitimate news organization. Until recently, most wouldn’t have thought it was propaganda. Most people believed it was nothing more than a gossip rag that got its headlines from stalking celebrities and going through their garbage. It seemed to spare nobody. Then, we learned they paid for stories (which credible news organizations don’t do) about Donald Trump scandals and then buried them. The publisher, David Pecker locked them in safe along with his picture of Elvis in his coffin (really).

The Enquirer didn’t just bury stories that would embarrass Trump and potentially cost him the election. They paid for those stories (along with Trump and Michael Cohen). Such tactics seemed beneath the journalist integrity of even the National Enquirer. You wouldn’t find a major, credible news organization doing that, right?

Wrong.

To be fair, a lot of people don’t consider Fox News a credible news organization. Even though they do some actual reporting and anchors such as Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith are respected, most of Fox News works as Trump TV and actively works to promote and defend the guy in the White House.

Fox is Trump’s favorite outlet. He calls into Fox & Friends in the morning, has nightly phone chats with Sean Hannity, tweets their reports, and praises them at his hate rallies. He even raids Fox News to fill positions in his administration. Hey, Eric Trump only had one wedding planner so Trump has to find candidates someplace.

Now we learn the network’s relationship with Trump has them sharing a journalistic sewer with that Pecker guy.

The New Yorker published an article by Jane Mayer on the “Fox News White House.” In it, she reports that Fox News buried a story on…wait for it…killed a story about Stormy Daniels’ mushroom encounter before the 2016 presidential election. She also reports that Trump tried to spike the AT&T-Time Warner merger over his hatred for CNN, now an AT&T company, and the network he describes as Fake News (though I hear they run decent cartoons).

Mayer wrote, “The White House and Fox interact so seamlessly that it can be hard to determine, during a particular news cycle, which one is following the other’s lead.”

Fox’s Tucker Carlson was pissed and said, “The American Media has changed forever. News organizations that seemed like a big deal are now extinct. Those that remain have now degraded themselves beyond recognition, like the New Yorker.” Detecting no irony whatsoever, Trump tweeted out Carlson’s statement.

According to the New Yorker story, a top executive at Fox told the reporter with the Stormy story, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.” He has since denied it, but that reporter was demoted, sued, came to a financial settlement, and signed a non-disclosure agreement. Fox probably buried that story too.

Mayer also reported that Roger Ailes, then the chairman of the network and now dead guy, tipped Trump off about a question coming his way from then-Fox host Megyn Kelly about Trump’s comments about women during a 2015 Republican candidate debate.

Former DNC official Donna Brazile caught a lot of heat when it came to light through Wikileaks that she fed questions to the Clinton campaign while she was a political analyst for CNN. The network fired her. Guess which network ran a lot of stories about it, heavy with condemnation over the violation of journalistic ethics and the viewers’ trust. Yup. Fox News.

I’ve always hated when people argued for the need of a right-wing media, saying it counters the left-wing media. I don’t see the solution to biased news being more biased news. And, most “left-wing” media is usually described that way because facts have a “left-wing” bias.

Those Smart News TV commercials annoy me. They advertise their app as providing news from both sides. You don’t need news from “both sides.” You just need news. Fox, at this point, isn’t just an uncredible news outlet. They’re not even a right-wing news outlet. Just like the Republican Party and CPAC, they’re a part of the Trump cult.

If you watch Fox News, you’re not watching news. Just like there’s no such thing as “fake news,” there’s no such thing as Fox news.

Watch me draw.