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By David Enrich
HOAXDonald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth By Brian Stelter
Almost everyone understands that Fox News is the leading cheerleader for a tv-obsessed president. We know the traffic of the channel in erroneous information. We’ve noticed that hosts ask questions about softball in their normal conversations with President Trump. Did anyone really be surprised to see Sean Hannity warm up the crowd at a Trump rally?
Still, it’s simple to the extent of Fox News’ strength over the Trump administration. The channel generated some of the presidency’s defining myths and led Trump to take such radical positions that they are not appropriate even for Congressional Republicans.
A small pattern of Fox’s fictions: The “caravan” of terrorists and criminals marching north to invade the United States. The conspiracy theory debated that a member of the Democratic National Committee was killed for filtering emails from crusade. The false claim that Ukraine, not Russia, was concerned in the 2016 election. More recently, the fatal perception that coronavirus is no worse than seasonal influenza.
For a moment, those lies were served through Fox personalities. The next day, the president repeated them, decorated them, amplified them to his tens of millions of social media fans, including through Fox’s plagiarism of chyrons parody.
Such is the case of “Hoax”, the new e-book through CNN journalist Brian Stelter. It provides a full and damning exploration of incestuous quotes between Trump and his favorite channel, and Fox’s role for democracy as a White House propaganda arm disguised as conservative journalism.
“Deception” probably wouldn’t replace the opinion of many readers. His fundamental thesis – that Fox is tough and poisonous – is already traditional wisdom, thanks to the exhibition component through Rupert Murdoch, whose company owns Fox, was licensed last year in the New York Times. (Also, let’s be honest, it’s very likely that few Fox enthusiasts will read this book.) Still, Stelter’s cataloging of Fox’s strength and poison is a vital addition to the library of book development documenting this era of American history.
Fox’s influence goes far beyond people’s understanding of the world. Stelter shows, for example, how the fake attacks through Fox hosts led Trump to the chimney closet secretaries and shut down the federal government. This is the kind of outdated muscle flexion of the media that would be under a more powerful president.
Stelter is more productive when he explains the underlying forces that led Fox to embrace propaganda. (Once upon a time, he wrote, Fox had a journalistic culture.) Part of the explanation for why it’s money. Fox News makes almost $2 billion a year. Its incredibly unwavering audience allows the channel to rate more for advertising and rates assessed through cable companies. Encouraging the audience is keeping scores high.
But there’s another force at stake. Many Fox workers see their task as taking care of the president. Nothing makes other people vibrate like a tweet @realDonaldTrump. “Everyone at Fox can see that it’s the way to get attention, to be promoted, to hitchhike with Trump and never look back,” Stelter writes. Some Fox hounds, yes, still exist! – discovers it disturbingly. Very few have the courage to say it publicly.
Stelter lines up Trump-Fox synergies until 2011, when Roger Ailes, the channel’s former boss, gave Trump a weekly phone space on the morning show “Fox and Friends.” The platform provided him with a direct line in the brains of millions of Republican voters number one. For his part, Fox had his penchant for the bomb and demagoguery turned out to be an audience winner.
This symbiosis has animated Fox hosts, as has Hannity.
Before Trump, Hannity was in trouble. It’s producing soft, predictable hats opposed to President Obama. Some manufacturers were contemplating pairing it with a co-host to bring things to life. At Trump, Hannity felt the possibility to make a difference. He glanced at the emerging candidate, expressing fears of rigged elections, violent immigrants and murderous Democrats, and presented Trump as the panacea.
By the time Trump swore, Hannity’s alliance with the new president went far beyond flattering conversations and fabricated plots. Almost every day, Hannity served as a presidential soundboard, and Stelter described the TV star as exhausted with 24-hour advice.
Stelter comes from being an independent observer. He is the host of a CNN media show, and his regular Fox critics have turned it into a popular strike bag for Hannity and others.
At the beginning of “Hoax”, Stelter admits that he is “shocked and angry” by what is happening on Fox, and his feelings seem to overcome him. She turned to insults and spread free gossip about Fox’s personalities, and at one point came a statement from an unnamed source that a female presenter “knew how to use sex to move on.” Coming from a victim of Fox’s defamation, he feels a little retributive.
Stelter also overlooks the fact that CNN is to blame for its own Fox-lite edition of partisan pimping. Some hosts tend to ask left-wing questions. Everyone is encouraged to say things that go viral; hyperbole triumphs over nuances. This isn’t new. Tucker Carlson, who has become Fox’s main racist lie promoter, has become a flamethrower on CNN’s “Crossfire.”
To be clear, there is no equivalence between the erroneous and misleading “liberal media” that rarely acknowledge their mistakes, and Fox’s highly productive lie factory. But in a polarized America, wired data networks reflect and contribute to varying degrees of polarization.
My greatest sadness with “Hoax” is that Stelter doesn’t realize the greatest mystery of Fox’s success: why is the channel’s rampant demagoguery so seductive? Does the audience realize they’re playing? Care?
The e-book cites studies that show that Fox’s audience probably has mis perspectives on vital issues, but what happens in their heads when they sit in front of television? Stelter is closer to answering this question when he claims that, for some, “Fox is an identity.” Almost a way of life.
That may be true, however, I would be curious to listen to and perceive those viewers better. There’s no indication that Stelter discussed this. Readers deserve Fox’s millions of worshippers as gullduous members of an extremist sect. It’s the kind of easy-to-digest but unsubstantiated conclusion that will work well in wired news.
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