Media

Fox News Quietly Rehires Editor Responsible for Seth Rich Debacle

THAT’S RICH

In this week’s edition of Confider, we reveal how Fox News has quietly brought back the editor who pulled the trigger on its disastrous, conspiracy-stoking report.

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Photo illustration of an old tv with a “now hiring” sign altered to read “rehiring” hanging.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

This reporting is featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

Fox News has quietly re-hired the man behind its disastrous Seth Rich reporting that was debunked and cost the network a pretty penny.

Earlier this month, Confider has learned, Fox News Digital boss Porter Berry brought back former deputy managing editor Greg Wilson to once again oversee the conservative cable giant’s website—except this time as a weekend managing editor.

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Wilson was the editor who pulled the trigger on Fox’s story that baselessly claimed Rich, a Democratic staffer who was murdered in 2016, “had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks.”

Besides suggesting Russian hackers didn’t steal Democratic emails during the 2016 election, the story also gave credence to fever-swamp conspiracy theories that Rich was killed by top Democrats (including Hillary Clinton) for colluding with WikiLeaks.

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While the report immediately fell apart and Fox was forced to retract a week later, Wilson felt that the story would “be vindicated” in the end. Instead, the network was sued by Rich’s family, resulting in a 2020 settlement for an undisclosed amount just as Fox News star Sean Hannity—who heavily promoted the story on-air—was set to be deposed.

Wilson, meanwhile, moved up the ladder to Fox News Digital’s managing editor before leaving in 2020, allegedly due to clashes with Berry. “It felt like Wilson was shown the door rather than shoved through it,” a Fox News staffer told The Daily Beast at the time.

After taking a similar position at the conservative Washington Examiner, Wilson then jumped ship last year to Ben Shapiro’s right-wing media empire The Daily Wire to serve as its managing editor, moving to Nashville to work at the company’s headquarters. After only 17 months there, however, Wilson suddenly exited in August.

Despite reportedly driving Wilson out of Fox News just three years earlier, Berry welcomed his former deputy back to the fold a few weeks ago—albeit in a lower position than the one Wilson held last time around.

The network, meanwhile, did not publicly announce Wilson’s hiring, though it would be slightly unusual to do so for a weekend editor anyhow. Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

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