Fox

Fox News has caught a bad case of COVID-19 misinformation fever, according to a report from Media Matters for America, which counted 253 cases of reported "fake news" about the virus on Rupert Murdoch's network over the course of five days (July 6 through 10).

Nearly half (115 cases) of the misinformation dealt with undermining the science behind the coronavirus and health recommendations from experts. Politicizing the virus came next, with 63 cases about face masks and business closures.

Most distressing about the Media Matters study: a third of the COVID-19 misinformation occurred during the "straight news" portion of the broadcast day.

It appears that the prime-time propaganda spewed by rightwing nuts like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham has seeped into the "fair and balanced" part of Fox.

Ingraham and her "The Ingraham Angle" show traded in the most COVID-19 misinformation, followed by the morning program, "Fox and Friends," which is must-see programming for Donald Trump.

For those keeping score, Fox and Friends get an assist for the more than 20,000 lies, whoppers, falsehoods and misrepresentations spread by Trump since he became president.

And speaking of misinformation, let's hope Trump was just joshing when Chris Wallace on July 19's "Fox News Sunday" asked him if he would accept the outcome of the election, win or lose.

Here is what the tweeter-in-chief said: "I have to see. Look, you—I have to see. No, I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no. And I didn't last time either."

Trump's legacy may not be about how he totally mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 140K Americans—so far—and thrown 20M people out of work.

He may be remembered as the first president involved in a non-peaceful transition of power, breaking a string that dates back to 1800 when John Adams handed the presidency over to his bitter rival, Thomas Jefferson.

The New York Stock Exchange suffered a blow to its prestige after China's Ant Group on July 20 stiffed it for the listing of its initial public offering, which is expected to rank as one of the biggest IPOs of 2020.

The mobile payments network, which processes payments for Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba, selected the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai's upstart STAR market for a dual listing.

STAR, which looks a lot like the NASDAQ, is a year old.

In announcing the dual listing, Ant Group CEO Eric Jing said the innovative measures implemented by the STAR market and Hong Kong Stock Exchange "have opened the doors for global investors to access leading-edge technology companies from the most dynamic economies in the world and for those companies to have greater access to the capital markets.

Left unsaid by Jing: trade tensions between China and the US, which probably sounded a death knell for the NYSE's chance to corral the Ant Group's IPO.

The NYSE was good enough for billionaire Jack Ma when he used it in 2014 for the Alibaba IPO, which raised $25B.

Reuters reports the Ant Group is valued at $200B. Tough luck, NYSE.