Opinion

JASON CHAFFETZ: Fox News has never let DC scandals become mere footnotes

Fox News Channel went on the air October 7, 1996. Thirty years later the scandals have new names. The instinct to look away does not

By Jason Chaffetz Fox News

Published September 28, 2026 9:00am EDT

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Jason Chaffetz: Republicans need to come out and 'play offense'

'The Big Weekend Show' co-host Tomi Lahren and Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz discuss the Republican Party's road to victory in the midterm elections on 'Hannity.'

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Long after the rest of the media passed on exposing the corruption in D.C., Fox knew when there was a real story.

In December 2009, I sat down with Neil Cavuto. It was one of my earliest national interviews. As a freshman who had been in Congress less than a year, I was sleeping on a $45 cot in my closet in Longworth at the time. Cavuto didn’t book me because I had a famous name. He booked me because a member who refused to load pork into an omnibus was news. Fox was willing to bring on a back-bencher from Utah because the story mattered.

As a junior member of the House Oversight Committee, I did not know then that this would become the only place some of our hearings got traction after the initial press release died down. Viewers who wanted the whole story knew they could find it on Fox.

JASON CHAFFETZ: A DECADE........

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