Former Fox News Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt Defends Calling Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night

By A.J. Katz 

Former Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt continues to defend his team’s election night decision to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, a move that was criticized by many Fox News viewers, President Trump, and even some of his colleagues at the time.

Stirewalt was laid off by Fox News early last week.

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed out today, he wrote: “I was proud of our being first to project that Joe Biden would win Arizona, and very happy to defend that call in the face of a public backlash egged on by former President Trump. Being right and beating the competition is no act of heroism; it’s just meeting the job description of the work I love.”

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As Stirewalt mentioned, Fox News was the first TV news outlet to declare Biden as having won the state, and his team was eventually proven correct.

Later in the op-ed, Stirewalt then went on to criticize the current state of our media, essentially saying that viewers are being given news that lines up with their already-held beliefs, as opposed to receiving news they really need to hear.

“Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies,” Stirewalt wrote. “As outlets have increasingly prioritized habituation over information, consumers have unsurprisingly become ever more sensitive to any interruption of their daily diet.”

He added: “While there is still a lucrative market for a balanced offering of news and opinion at high-end outlets, much of the mainstream is increasingly bent toward flattery and fluff.”

He did not explicitly mention his former employer at any point in this story, although this line was notable: “The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying.”

Between 12 and 20 Fox News digital staffers (or less than 3% of its digital staff) were laid off by the network nine days ago as part of a restructuring. Stirewalt was one of them. A Fox News spokesperson declined comment on Stirewalt’s status at the time, citing employee confidentiality.

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