I’m not sure I understand the distinction. They are smart enough to know they’re wrong, but they’re doing it anyway. So that’s what, semi-evil?
They’re quasi-evil. They’re semi-evil. They are the margarine of evil. They are the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.
… Modern conservative information consumers aren’t looking to be informed: instead they seek reassurance in the form of factual or nonfactual reinforcement of their preconceptions. It’s a preference. Modern conservative information purveyors are just providing what the market ordered. Nothing wrong with that.
Of course such people should be kept as far away from the levers of policy as possible. In fact, I wouldn’t trust them with a dull butter knife. To create such tortured intellectual edifices requires intelligence. And there’s nothing immoral about spinning fantasy. The demonstrably weak deserve to be catered to as well. I mean you have to be pretty screwed up to avidly listen to information sources that repeatedly mislead. So Fox News is providing a service for the temperamentally less fortunate.
Pre-emption!
No, liberals don’t do it too. Contrast conservative media commentators with liberal ones. The liberal Media Matters harps on media inaccuracy, falsehood and bigotry: admittedly the latter has little to do with truthfullness: I just mention it for the purposes of completeness. The conservative organization Accuracy in Media focuses on bias, which translates to hurt conservative feelings. Very different criticisms.