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      Fox News and Republicans try to shift attention to crime as midterms loom

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      Fox News and Republicans try to shift attention to crime as midterms loomRightwing leaders push ‘soft on crime’ narrative to propel Republicans this fall, as most voters focus on abortion rights With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.As Democrats seek to maintain razor-thin advantages in both congressional chambers, an analysis from Media Matters for America notes that on 19 August, the highest-rated Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, implored “every Republican candidate in the United States” to pitch themselves as favoring “law and order and equality under the law”.‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson the next Donald Trump?Read moreSince then, the word “crime” has appeared in 29% of Republican political ads, up from 12% in July, Media Matters said, citing reporting from the Washington Post.In one of the most closely watched contests, the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Dr Mehmet Oz, then launched ads attacking his Democratic rival, John Fetterman, on criminal justice.Blake Masters – a past Carlson guest and Republican Senate candidate in Arizona – last week derided the Democrats as “the party of crime”.A new survey by the Pew Research Center showed 56% of voters said abortion would be “very important” at the polls after the US supreme court struck down the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that established the right to terminate a pregnancy.A separate poll from the Wall Street Journal found that 60% of voters support abortion rights in most or all cases.Media Matters said it is not new for Republicans – who hailed the supreme court ruling in June – to fixate on crime and the concept of “law and order” as a topic in national elections.The left-leaning nonprofit pointed to a notorious ad about a convicted murderer, Willie Horton, that George HW Bush aired during his successful run to the Oval Office in 1988. The ad accused his Democratic rival, Michael Dukakis, of being soft on crime while Massachusetts governor because Horton raped a woman and robbed a man during a temporary furlough from prison in that state.Media Matters also said that Carlson and Republicans have echoed each other before. For instance, Republicans joined the star Fox News host in characterizing Black activists’ protests against police brutality after the 2020 murder of George Floyd as a threat to safety.But despite the increase in overall crime that the US has experienced in recent years across Democratic and Republican cities and states, murder and other violent offenses remain well below levels in the early 1990s, part of which was under a Republican White House.While property crime rates have fallen, murder rates have increased roughly equally in Republican-controlled cities as in their Democratic counterparts, said a Brennan Center for Justice report cited by Media Matters.The analysis also found that Republican candidates have not clearly outlined what federal-level policies they would adopt to drive down crime.Despite claims that Joe Biden has done nothing to address crime, the president recently signed both the first federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years and the American Rescue Plan, under which he successfully pushed for $10bn for policing and public safety.Every Republican in Congress opposed the American Rescue Plan, which was aimed at helping the national economy recover in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.A spokesperson for New York City-based Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Media Matters analysis.TopicsRepublicansFox NewsUS television industryUS politicsTV newsTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      Correspondent abruptly leaves CNN after calling Trump a ‘demagogue’

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      Correspondent abruptly leaves CNN after calling Trump a ‘demagogue’ John Harwood is out as the company’s new head signals shift away from liberal-leaning political coverage A White House correspondent for CNN – whose new leader wants the channel to adopt what he considers a more politically neutral voice to its coverage – has departed the network after calling Donald Trump “a dishonest demagogue” on the air.John Harwood announced his exit from CNN on his Twitter account Friday, a day after he spoke favorably of a nationally televised speech by Joe Biden in which the president said that Republican forces loyal to his Oval Office predecessor, Trump, imperiled American democracy.“The core point [Biden] made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true,” Harwood said on CNN after the address, which was in primetime. “Now that is something that is not easy for us as journalists to say.”“We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view, and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we are talking about. These are honest disagreements. The Republican party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”By midday Friday, the 65-year-old Harwood tweeted that he was out at CNN.personal news:today’s my last day at CNNproud of the workthanks to my colleaguesi’ve been lucky to serve the best in American media – St. Petersburg Times, WSJ, NYT, the NBC family, CNNlook forward to figuring out what’s next— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) September 2, 2022
      “Personal news: Today’s my last day at CNN,” said Harwood, who added that he has been “lucky” to serve other prominent American media outlets like the St Petersburg Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and NBC. “Proud of the work. Thanks to my colleagues.“Look forward to figuring out what’s next.”CNN didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Harwood’s departure was motivated by his remarks supporting Biden’s speech and criticizing Trump. Network officials instead issued a statement saying, “We appreciate John’s work covering the White House, and we wish him all the best.”Harwood had two years still left on his contract at CNN when he announced his exit, veteran media reporter Dylan Byers said later Friday.According to the Hollywood Reporter, which cited an anonymous source with insight into the situation, Harwood learned “last month” that he was out at the channel.New leadership took over at CNN in April, having been appointed by its owners, Warner Brothers Discovery. CNN chief Chris Licht – who inherited his post after Jeff Zucker’s departure in February – has been open about wanting to tone down its shows’ opinions and return to an older school, straighter and in his interpretation less overtly liberal style of reporting.Harwood’s exit comes after the 21 August departure of Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s media affairs show, Reliable Sources, which was canceled after 30 years on the airwaves.Stelter was doggedly criticized by conservative viewers over his coverage of the Trump administration, which – among many other things – tried to sow doubt about the validity of the results in the 2020 election that he lost to Biden.Stelter, on his last show, also invoked the word “demagogue” as he verbally rebuked CNN’s new brass.“It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues,” said Stelter, who also reportedly had multiple years left on his CNN contract at the time of his departure. “It’s required – it’s patriotic.”Harwood joined CNN in January 2020, about a year before Trump supporters mounted a deadly attack on the US Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of the former president’s electoral defeat to Biden.Before that, he was the chief Washington DC correspondent for CNBC, where in 2019 he drew significant attention for another remark that was critical of Trump and his Republican supporters.Harwood at that time had said that Trump and the Republicans who buoyed him to the Oval Office in 2016 were “fundamentally broken”, making them particularly challenging to cover for journalists who operated in good faith.TopicsCNNTelevision industryTV newsUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Broken News review: fired Fox News editor has broadsides for both sides

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      Broken News review: fired Fox News editor has broadsides for both sidesChris Stirewalt helped call Arizona early and right, enraging Donald Trump. He has harsh words for the US media in general Late on 3 November 2020, Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden. In that moment, Rupert Murdoch’s US flagship upended Donald Trump’s re-election bid. Chris Stirewalt, a decade-long Fox News editor, was part of the team that put the state in the Democrat’s column. One insurrection and two months later, the network fired him.‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreFox called it a “restructuring”. Others, including Stirewalt, shared a different view: he and more than a dozen others had been sacrificed to mollify Trump, Republicans and Fox’s fanbase.“I got canned after very vocal and very online viewers – including the then-president of the United States – became furious,” Stirewalt writes.According to Stirewalt, viewer anger had bled on to Fox’s bottom line: “The high ratings born of a presidential coup attempt in the midst of a global pandemic were never going to be sustainable, but the decline was sharper than industry experts expected.”The suits in the Fox C-Suite and elected Republicans demanded scalps. But Stirewalt would have the last word.This past June, he appeared before the January 6 committee. Under oath, he testified that Biden won and Trump lost. He also accused the ex-president and his minions of seeking to “exploit” a systemic “anomaly”.Specifically, during the 2020 election, in states like Arizona where same-day votes were counted before mail-in ballots, Republicans appeared to lead early on election night.Generally, Democrats tended to vote by mail or before election day while Republicans appeared at the polls on election day itself. On the night, as the hours pass, an apparent Republican advantage may evaporate, leaving little but a red mirage – and enraged viewers.Stirewalt’s book is both a critique of the media and a rebuke of his former employer and Trump. He spares no one. The Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC and Joe Scarborough all fare poorly too.Substantively, he contends that much of the news business is about the pursuit of ratings. In part, the media inflames passions to monetize all that passes through its domain. No story is insignificant if it can double as clickbait.Stirewalt says Fox News failed to prepare Trump followers for the possibility that he would lose to Biden, a failure far beyond negligence. Fox News, he writes, stoked “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred”, in order to entice viewers to buy a $65 “Patriot” streaming service. These days, Fox is facing rather higher costs, battling defamation lawsuits arising from repeatedly airing Trump’s “big lie”.As for the Times, Stirewalt attacks the paper of record for using its 1619 Project, which casts American history in light of racism and slavery, as a vehicle to “upsell super-users from subscriptions to $35 books”. He also characterizes the 1619 Project as a “frontal assault on the idea of America’s founding as a new birth of freedom that it very plainly, if imperfectly was”.Stirewalt’s devotion to journalism spills on to the page. He places a premium on individual freedom and the classic liberal tradition. He is sympathetic to the intellectual underpinnings of liberalism and conservatism but casts a wary eye toward progressivism and nationalism. He takes both to task for fetishizing the collective will and distorting history.“Progressivism seeks to ameliorate the problems of humankind,” he writes “… but not necessarily within the framework of the American system or the humanistic concept of human rights.”By contrast, “nationalists believe that the appropriate aim of the federal government should always be the improvement of life for the greatest number of Americans, even when that comes at a cost to individual rights greater than a strict reading of the constitution would allow”.Steve Bannon, Sohrab Amari and JD Vance might disagree. Or not.Stirewalt also tackles the issue of the media and politicians being cowed by their bases. As Stirewalt sees it, the threat of the mob – real and virtual – leads people to avert their gaze from our national train wreck.He knocks “liberals who believe in free speech” but “look at their shoes when people are shouted down or fired for their beliefs”. Likewise, he takes to task those “seemingly normal members of Congress” who went “along with Trump’s efforts to steal a second term”.Not surprisingly, Stirewalt has little patience for performative politicians. He lumps together Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and pairs Marjorie Taylor Greene with Rashida Tlaib. He suggests such figures excel at triggering partisan outrage but lack Trump’s entertainment chops.Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump bookRead more“They’re Showtime after 10pm,” Stirewalt cracks. “Trump was hardcore.”Stirewalt is unsparing in his takedown of Cruz. Broken News recalls the Texas senator’s groveling for Tucker Carlson, for referring to the January 6 insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol”. Cruz was a “quavery mass of regret and humiliation” on Carlson’s show, Stirewalt writes.Turning to Carlson, Stirewalt lets us know the Swanson frozen-food heir is loaded, yet at the same time rails against the “big, legacy media outlets”. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance in prime time. For good measure, Stirewalt reminds the reader that Carlson’s employer is a “multinational corporation led by an Australian billionaire who owns arguably the single most powerful news outlet in America”.Stirewalt offers no easy way out. He “urges us to question our own assumptions when consuming news” but does not assure us that doing so will actually lower the volume and temperature. He hopes we can see the other side of the political divide, but sounds uncertain. He provides plenty of food for thought.
      Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back is published in the US by Hachette
      TopicsBooksFox NewsUS television industryUS press and publishingTV newsUS politicsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’

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      Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’Chris Stirewalter, who was forced out after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, says Fox failed its viewers with 2020 election coverage A former Fox News politics editor who was forced out of the conservative television network shortly after its opinions hosts’ preferred candidate Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential race has said that the channel failed its viewers with its election coverage.In his upcoming memoir, Chris Stirewalt says Fox News resigned its duty to prepare Trump followers for the possibility that he would lose, instead stoking the “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred” which fuels white supremacist groups but translates into big ratings.Has the love affair between Trump and Fox News gone sour?Read moreStirewalt’s Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machines Divides America and How to Fight Back also reiterates the belief held by many that Fox fired him because he always defended – even on-air – his team’s decision to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona’s 2020 electoral college votes on the same night that polls closed.The call enraged Trump, prompting the incumbent president and his allies to mount a pressure campaign aimed at getting Fox to retract the decision while that camp pushed forth lies that electoral fraudsters in other battleground states were stealing the election for Biden.The New York Times obtained and reported on an advance copy of the book.Fox officials have previously said that Stirewalt’s departure from the network in early 2021 was simply a layoff amid a broader company restructuring, and they have noted that the employee who was actually in charge of the desk that made the Arizona call during that fateful hour remains at the company.A statement from the network Monday also dismissed its former editor’s other recollections about his time at Fox News by saying, “Chris Stirewalt’s endless attempts at regaining relevance know no bounds.”Nonetheless, in his memoir, Stirewalt maintains that Fox News’s alliance with Trump and other Republican political candidates has nothing to do with ideology. Instead it has everything to do with delivering ratings and fattening profits, without caring that its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, endorses conspiracy theories that radicalize violent, far-right white supremacists, including ones who staged the deadly January 6 Capitol attack.“Even in the four years since the previous presidential election, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectation,” Stirewalt’s memoir adds.That was even the case when viewers’ expectations amounted to “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred”, according to the memoir.Stirewalt says his team’s decision to accurately project on election night that Trump had lost Arizona to Biden in front of an audience who had been thirsting for the Republican incumbent to cruise to victory over his Democratic challenger “came as a terrible shock to their system”. The memoir likens that call to “serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice-cream sundaes for years”.Stirewalt also expresses disbelief that Carlson’s viewers portray him as bravely discussing topics that are taboo to the mainstream when – according to the ousted editor – he is simply regurgitating the things his audience already believes.“Carlson is rich and famous, yet he regularly rails about the ‘big, legacy media outlets’,” the memoir argues. “Somehow, nobody even giggles.“It does not take any kind of journalistic courage to pump out night after night exactly what your audience wants to hear.”Among the conspiracy theories that Carlson has espoused is the racist notion that white Americans, faced with declining birthrates, are being deliberately replaced through immigration. He suddenly went quiet on that idea after a white man who shot 10 Black people to death at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, cited it as his motivation.Stirewalt’s departure from Fox News – where he spent about 11 years – happened less than two weeks after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Biden. A bipartisan Senate report linked at least seven deaths to that attack.Since then, Stirewalt has been vocally critical of Fox News and testified before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack, telling that panel he knew the Arizona call would be consequential because it involved a true battleground state on which Trump’s chances for victory depended.TopicsFox NewsTV newsTelevision industryUS television industryUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Brian Stelter rebukes CNN on final show: ‘It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues’

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      Brian Stelter rebukes CNN on final show: ‘It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues’ Host says, ‘It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue,’ after CNN cancels media show Reliable Sources Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s media affairs show Reliable Sources which was cancelled last week after 30 years on air, used his final episode Sunday to make a pointed rebuke of the network’s new bosses and their intention to pursue a more “neutral voice” to its coverage.“It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue,” Stelter said in his final monologue, which he stressed was unvetted by CNN management before he delivered it live. “It is not partisan to stand up to demagogues – it’s required, it’s patriotic.”He added: “We must make sure we do not give a platform to those who are lying to our faces.”CNN gave Stelter his marching orders last Wednesday, just four months after the network came under new leadership appointed by its owners, Warner Brothers Discovery. CNN head Chris Licht, who took over after the February departure of Jeff Zucker, has indicated that he wants to tone down the opinion quotient of its shows and “return” to an older, straighter and in his view less overtly leftwing style of reporting.It is perhaps predictable that Stelter was to become one of the first casualties among CNN’s stars under the new leadership. As NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik explained, Stelter was a thorn in the side of the Donald Trump White House, regularly exposing its lies and misinformation.As a result, he was “targeted for frequent criticism from conservatives for his coverage of the media during the Trump years”.Since Stelter’s booting, New York’s medialand has been rife with speculation about its causation. Some have pointed the finger at John Malone, a powerful Discovery investor who has led the charge that CNN is too partisan.Malone has criticized the network for broadcasting too much commentary and not enough on-the-ground reporting. Last November, Malone told CNBC that he would like to see CNN “evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing”.Other speculation has focused on Stelter’s CNN salary – reported to be almost $1m a year – amid intense pressure to cut the network’s budget given heavy debts within the new media conglomerate.So far the number of star scalps has been relatively small. A week before Stelter was axed, CNN’s chief legal analyst for 20 years, Jeffrey Toobin, announced that he was leaving.Toobin had previously been suspended from the network for eight months after he exposed his genitals during a Zoom call with colleagues of his then-other media outlet, the New Yorker.With Stelter’s departure, the focus at CNN is now likely to shift to whether further casualties of the new “neutral” reporting policy lie ahead. Speculation rippled through social media that Don Lemon and Jim Acosta, two of the more outspoken hosts, might be vulnerable, but according to the entertainment news website The Wrap they are safe for now.Part of Stelter’s argument as host of Reliable Sources, CNN’s longest-running show until its demise, was that it is the role of the media to hold power to account. That function was especially critical in the febrile age of Trump.With Trump hinting at another presidential run in 2024, Stelter appealed on Sunday to the bosses who had just fired him to remain resolute. “The watchword here is accountability,” he said. “CNN needs to be strong. I believe America needs CNN to be strong.”In his at times emotional last address on Reliable Sources, the largely bald-headed Stelter recalled his astonishment at becoming a TV star. “I never thought I’d actually be on TV – I just liked writing about TV,” he said. “I know this is going to sound like BS, but I thought I didn’t have enough hair to be on TV.”TopicsCNNTV newsTelevision industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims

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      Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims Rightwing networks Fox News, OAN and Newsmax could be found liable in cases brought by voting machine company DominionIn the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Read moreIn June, Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to 28 states, was given the go-ahead to sue Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, in a case that could draw Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, into the spotlight.In the $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp, and the Murdochs specifically, of allowing Fox News to amplify false claims that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.Fox Corp had attempted to have the suit dismissed, but a Delaware judge said Dominion had shown adequate evidence for the suit to proceed. Dominion is already suing Fox News, as well as OAN and Newsmax.“These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,” Judge Eric Davis said.Davis’s ruling is not a guarantee that Fox will be found liable. But the judge made it clear that this isn’t some frivolous attempt by Dominion – and media and legal experts think Fox could be in real trouble.“Dominion has a very strong case against Fox News – and against OAN for that matter,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor who teaches constitutional law at Stetson University and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.“The reason Dominion is suing is because Fox and other rightwing news outlets repeated vicious lies that Dominion’s voting machines stole the 2020 election from Trump for Biden. But all of these conspiracy theories about Dominion’s machines were just pure bunk, and Fox as a news organization should have known that and not given this aspect of the big lie a megaphone.”“What’s particularly bad for Fox is [that] Dominion asked them to stop and correct the record in real time, and Fox persisted in spreading misrepresentations about the voting machine company.”Indeed, in his ruling, Davis noted that “other newspapers under Rupert Murdoch’s control, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, condemned President Trump’s claims and urged him to concede defeat”.In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson said: “Limiting the ability of the press to report freely on the American election process stands in stark contrast to the liberties on which this nation was founded, and we are confident we will prevail in this case, as the first amendment is the foundation of our democracy and freedom of the press must be protected.”A potential precedent in the Dominion v Fox case could be found in a recent case involving Sarah Palin, who sued the New York Times. Palin claimed the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. In February a jury sided with the Times, finding that a Times employee had not acted with “actual malice” against a public figure or with “reckless disregard” for the truth – the criteria necessary to prove defamation.But the Times victory shouldn’t give Fox too much hope, said Torres-Spelliscy.“In the Palin case, the New York Times quickly corrected the mistake about Palin that had been added while an article was edited,” Torres-Spelliscy said.“By contrast Fox News kept up the bad behavior and repeatedly told myths about Dominion’s voting machines. This is likely why judges in several of these Dominion defamation cases have not dismissed them.”Dominion isn’t the only company seeking damages from Fox and its contemporaries.Smartmatic, an election software company which provided voting software to precisely one county in the 2020 election but found itself subjected to claims that it was founded “for the specific purpose of fixing elections” by associates of Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela who died in 2013, is suing Fox Corp, Fox News and associates for $2.7bn.Still, Fox News is the most-watched and arguably most influential cable news channel in the US, and is probably too big to fail.But that isn’t the case for the smaller rightwing networks OAN and Newsmax, which are also both being sued by Dominion and Smartmatic – in June, a Delaware judge refused Newsmax’s motion to have the Dominion case dismissed, but did not weigh on whether Newsmax was innocent or guilty.“I think OAN is going to be wiped out from the litigation costs. Forget about any judgment,” said Angelo Carusone, president and chief executive of Media Matters for America, which monitors rightwing media.Carusone pointed out that OAN is already struggling to survive, after it was dropped by the DirecTV cable company – which was reportedly responsible for 90% of OAN’s revenue – in April.“We’ve started seeing, already, them scaling back programming, they’ve been laying off staff, they’ve been cutting back the number of programs. So it’s pretty clear that they don’t have sufficient resources to weather a protracted litigation.”Newsmax, which is still carried by DirecTV, is “relatively cash flush” in comparison to OAN, Carusone said – enough to survive a trial, if not to pay the billions of dollars Dominion and Smartmatic are seeking.In a statement, Newsmax said it had “reported on allegations made by President Trump and his surrogates and at no time did we report these allegations were true. We also reported on critics of the Trump claims”.It added: “The Dominion suit is an assault on a free press and endangers all press outlets if it were to prevail.”OAN did not respond to a request for comment.As for Fox, the most significant thing could be if the Murdochs are subjected to discovery – where they and Fox could be forced to hand over documents potentially including communications data – as part of the legal process, Carusone said.Text messages obtained by the January 6 commission have already revealed that there was communication between Fox News hosts and White House officials regarding the insurrection – and it seems unlikely that is the only thing that was discussed.“I think once you start to pull the discovery material, what you’re going to find is there was a lot of communication between the Trump people both internally and externally about pushing very specific lies and narratives,” Carusone said.While Fox is more financially comfortable than OAN and NewsMax, it is not invulnerable. Fox News is due to renegotiate its contracts with cable providers at the end of this year, and Carusone said cable companies could use the lawsuit to drive down prices.The Dominion and Smartmatic cases are likely to drag on for some time, and it remains to be seen how Fox News, OAN and NewsMax will react.As for the news channels’ conspiratorial claims of election fraud, at least that is one thing that has already been settled.The courts, the Department of justice, election officials have investigated and dismissed the accusations, as has the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.“The November 3 election was the most secure in American history,” the agency said in a statement in 2020.“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, put it in rather less sophisticated terms.The claims of election interference, Barr told the January 6 committee, were “bullshit”.TopicsFox NewsUS politicsRepublicans21st Century FoxUS television industryTelevision industryUS press and publishingnewsReuse this content More

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      Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’

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      Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Check My Ads targeting news channel website at a time when its prominent hosts are downplaying January 6 insurrection After two years which have seen Fox News lunge even further towards the right wing of US politics, the news channel may now start to suffer the consequences, with the launch of a campaign to strip the news channel’s Foxnews.com website of advertising revenue.Check My Ads, an organization run by two former marketing executives, launched its campaign to target Fox News in early June, accusing the news channel and its website of “working overtime to fuel the next insurrection”.More than 40,000 people signed up in the first five days, forming an increasingly powerful lobbying group which aims to get ad exchanges to drop Foxnews.com.The campaign comes at a time when prominent Fox News hosts are downplaying the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC as “a forgettably minor outbreak” of “mob violence”, continuing to dabble in election conspiracy theories, and have most recently begun to brand school teachers and drag performers as “groomers”.Check My Ads was founded by two marketing executives who have a deep understanding of how advertising appears on websites. Despite its record of dabbling in misinformation, adverts for companies like Walgreens and Optimum can still be found on Foxnews.com. The adverts are largely placed there, Atkin said, by ad exchanges, which handle the distribution of adverts for advertising agencies.“Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable,” Atkin said.A number of large companies have already stopped advertising on the Fox News after various misdeeds by its TV hosts over the years. But ads for Walgreens and the like still pop up on the Fox News website, despite the obvious link between the two entities. Whereas viewers of the TV channel might see adverts for relatively little known companies, like Nutrisystem and Balance of Nature, visitors to the website see the names of big companies, which can suggest to the reader that this is a respected website.“When Fox is plugged into that ads supply chain, it gives them the legitimacy of a real news outlet, when in fact they are publishing disinformation regularly that leads to real-world violence.”In the two weeks following the 2020 election, Fox News cast doubt on, or pushed conspiracy theories about the result 774 times, according to Media Matters for America, a watchdog group. That helped to fuel anger among Donald Trump’s supporters – rage which came to the surface on 6 January, when hundreds of Trump’s adherents stormed the US Capitol.Since the Capitol attack, Fox News hosts have rubbished the idea that the storming of the building – done in an attempt to stop Joe Biden being declared president – was an insurrection. Fox News viewers have instead heard that it was a minor skirmish, one which may even have been orchestrated by the government.That’s why, Atkin said, Check My Ads is determined to trim the network’s wings.“Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It’s not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence,” Atkin said.Ad exchanges vet certain websites before placing adverts on behalf of their clients. If a website meets their criteria – and the criteria often include statements that the website does not endorse or encourage harassment or bullying – then ads are placed on them.But the exchanges, Atkin said, are “not checking their inventory” thoroughly enough, and websites like Fox News are slipping through the cracks.Check My Ads’ campaign works by finding which ad exchanges are active on a given website, which is easy enough to do: typing https://www.foxnews.com/ads.txt brings up the list.The innovative part of Check My Ads is how the organization has set up a way for people to send swift, concise complaints to those ad exchanges. The organization sends out email templates to those who sign up, which they can send on to ad exchanges, flagging sites where the exchange has placed ads on sites which are incompatible with the exchanges’ stated policy.“The ad exchanges promise in their legal documentation in these policies that are available online to anyone: ‘We only work with premium publishers and we will never work with websites that publish election disinformation, the promotion of real world violence, all of these other things,” Atkin said.“That is providing a sense of false confidence to advertisers. Because as we know, these ad exchanges are still sending ads and money and data to the propaganda outlets that are doing our society the most harm, and who are the most brand unsafe.”In a statement, Fox News said: “Fox News Media strongly supports the first amendment and is proud to lead the industry in featuring more dissenting viewpoints on the major issues facing the country than our cable news competitors, which is why we attract the most politically diverse audience in television news.”The campaign isn’t going to financially cripple Fox News. Some 95% of Fox’s revenue comes from cable contracts, as opposed to advertising, NPR reported this year. But Atkin believes the campaign, as well as removing ads which lend legitimacy to Fox News, could also prevent Foxnews.com from collecting data on its users so that they can be later targeted with specific content – potentially anti-democratic content.Fox News is the most-watched cable news channel in the US, and is a huge opponent. But Check My Ads are hopeful that they have found a foolproof way to at least take away some of its power.“The fact is that the advertising industry, in general, has said one thing and it has done another,” she said.“We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough.”TopicsFox NewsAdvertisingTV newsTelevision industryUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      US networks to air January 6 hearings – but Fox News sticks with Tucker Carlson

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      US networks to air January 6 hearings – but Fox News sticks with Tucker CarlsonPublic hearings by House committee investigating Capitol attack will be broadcast live on all main TV networks except Fox News The public hearings by the House committee investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, which start on Thursday, will be broadcast live by all main TV networks and cable channels in America bar one – Fox News.The historic proceedings kick off at 8pm New York time, and in Watergate style will attract near-blanket live coverage on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and more. By contrast, the most-watched TV news channel, Fox News, will stick with its primetime show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.The decision pits Carlson’s introductory monologue against the opening remarks of the January 6 committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, as the latter outlines how Donald Trump tried to undermine the 2020 election in order to hang on to power. Carlson has used his platform consistently to belittle the investigation and to downplay the significance of the Capitol attack that led to the deaths of seven people and forced the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to flee a violent mob.On the anniversary of the attacks, Carlson said on air that the insurrection “barely rates as a footnote”. He has championed false conspiracy theories about it, including the claim that the attack was a “false flag” operation spearheaded by federal officials to discredit conservatives.News coverage of the hearings will be relegated from Fox News to its sister channel, Fox Business Network. As CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, Fox News is the leading cable news network at prime time with more than 3 million viewers while Fox Business on average attracts fewer than 100,000.The scheduling plan drew fire from members of the January 6 committee. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the committee who are participating in the hearings in defiance of their party, accused Fox News of hiding the truth “if it disagrees with your narrative”.Kinzinger, a representative from Illinois, made a direct appeal to Fox News staff: “If you work for Fox News and want to maintain your credibility as a journalist, now is a good time to speak out, or quit. Enough is enough.”The relentless efforts of Fox News stars to diminish the significance of January 6 stands in contrast to what some of them said on the day itself. As hundreds of Trump supporters were storming the Capitol building, Laura Ingraham sent a text to the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, saying “the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”Later that night, Ingraham used her show, The Ingraham Angle, to blame the violence on antifa.Brian Kilmeade, co-host of the morning show Fox & Friends, and primetime star Sean Hannity, privately made similarly frantic appeals to Meadows as January 6 unfolded.Fox News’s response to the congressional hearings forms part of wider counter-programming against the proceedings being waged by the right. Top Republicans including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, are planning aggressive pushback, including a rapid response unit and talking points that describe the proceedings as “rigged”.Republican leaders and others who remain loyal to Trump are also hoping that “January 6 fatigue” will have set in, and that large sections of the American public will fail to tune in.TopicsFox NewsUS Capitol attackTV newsUS television industryTelevision industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More