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      in US Politics

      'Like a bad joke': Al Jazeera staff bemused at rightwing US venture

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      Al Jazeera’s surprise decision to launch a digital platform for conservatives in the US has left many within the Qatar-based news organisation dumbfounded and confused, staff have told the Guardian.The network has announced the launch of Rightly, a platform that will host programmes and produce online content aimed at “audiences currently underrepresented in today’s media environment”, in this case right-of-centre Americans.It will be overseen by Scott Norvell, part of the founding team of Fox News, who said in a press release that Rightly aimed to show the wide spectrum of the American right.“American conservatism has never been monolithic,” Norvell said. “With Rightly, we are hoping to create a platform that amplifies the voices of an array of personalities that more accurately reflects the racial, cultural and generational diversity of centre-right politics in America than existing outlets.“We aim to bring new Americans, young Americans and Americans of colour together and present conservative ideas that transcend the barriers which identity politics aim to put between us,” he said.The platform’s first show, “an opinion-led interview programme”, will launch on Thursday.The announcement of the new franchise appears to fit awkwardly with a Qatar government-funded organisation that has fashioned itself as a leading international outlet of the global south and an alternative to the western media perspective on regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Africa.“So far the co-workers I’ve talked to are just dumbfounded,” said an Al Jazeera employee who asked not to be named. “They didn’t know it was coming and are confused why they would do this.”An Al Jazeera journalist based outside Qatar said the decision was a shock to staff. “It’s pretty weird,” they said. “I can’t see how it works for them.” Some Al Jazeera staff were calling the new platform Wrongly, they added.A staff member said they learned about the venture from Guardian coverage on Tuesday. “I was convinced there was some new satirical section of the Guardian I didn’t know about,” they said. “It seems like a bad joke or bad dream we’re all waiting to wake up from. Everyone is totally bemused.”Another said it was “worrying” that the network was moving from producing news – albeit from a clear perspective – to trying to promote a political agenda, citing a remark from Stephen Kent, the host of the upcoming interview programme, that he was aiming to “rebuild the right meme by meme”.“Maybe it was said in jest,” the Doha-based staff member said. “I’m going to reserve judgment until I see the show.”Al Jazeera’s Arabic network was controversial in the US in the years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York for regularly airing propaganda videos from al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden. It launched a left-leaning American news channel in the US in 2013, but pulled funding three years later.It has remained a significant presence online with its AJ+ video network and its international channel, Al Jazeera English, remaining popular in the US.Al Jazeera English staff were among those on social media expressing bewilderment and concern over the move.Shutting down Al Jazeera was a key demand of the Gulf Arab states who launched a blockade against Qatar in 2017. Donald Trump, the US president at the time, endorsed the siege, which was finally dropped through negotiations that were clinched on 5 January this year, after it became clear Trump would not serve a second term.Tarek Cherkaoui, the author of a book about international and Arab media outlets, said the launch of the new platform may be “pure realpolitik” on the part of decision-makers in Doha after three difficult years, in which they realised they had failed to build links with the American right.“Decision-makers in Doha knew they had missed something, the coming of Donald Trump to the helm of the White House, but also the fact that [his adviser and media mogul, Steve] Bannon was one of the most prominent people shaping Trump’s worldview, and they had omitted to build bridges to any of these people,” said Cherkaoui, who is the manager of the TRT World Research Centre, part of a Turkish state-funded media outlet.There was logic in reaching out to the centre-right, he added. “They’ve found that they cannot go into the Trump heartland because it’s too hard to play there … They found that this centre-right is very unappreciated and has problems with their narrative and are finding it hard to push against the hardcore Trumpists.” More

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      in Elections

      Fox News cancels Lou Dobbs Tonight

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      Fox Business Network has canceled the show of Lou Dobbs, the ardent Donald Trump supporter with a history of espousing misinformation who promoted baseless conspiracy theories of voting fraud after the election.
      Friday evening marked the final airing of Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dobbs’ regular weeknight program. The Fox host was a major contributor to the false narrative that the election was stolen and continued espousing those views on his program even after admitting that they lacked actual proof.
      “Eight weeks from the election and we still don’t have verifiable, tangible support for the crimes that everyone knows were committed,” he said on air in January.
      Dobbs, 75, has hosted the program since 2011. Trump considered it must-see TV and even reportedly patched the host through during key policy meetings.
      Dobbs is still considered the highest-rated host on the Fox Business Network, and he has remained under contract even though he is not expected to reappear on a new show. His show’s slot, which airs twice on weeknights, will now be filled with a show called Fox Business Tonight, which will feature Jackie DeAngelis and David Asman as hosts.
      News of the cancellation came one day after Dobbs, 75, was named as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election technology company and voting machine maker, which accuses Dobbs and other Fox News anchors of promoting unfounded claims that Smartmatic was involved in a scheme to hand the presidency to Joe Biden.
      Citing the fabricated reporting, Smartmatic sued to the tune of $2.7bn. The 285-page lawsuit, filed in New York state supreme court, claims the network launched a “disinformation campaign” against the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county. Trump’s former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell who appeared as guests on the network, were also named in the defamation suit.
      Fox said the move to end Dobbs’ show had been in the works before the lawsuit.
      “As we said in October, Fox News Media regularly considers programming changes and plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate post-election, including on Fox Business,” a Fox News spokesperson said. “This is part of those planned changes.”
      On the Smartmatic lawsuit, Fox said on Thursday the network was “proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court”.
      Dobbs said he had no comment on Friday. More

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      in US Politics

      Fox lurches further to the right to win back ‘hard-edge’ Trump supporters

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      For two decades, Fox News has reigned supreme as America’s number one cable news channel. Until January, that is, when the network dropped to a once unthinkable third place in the ratings.The response from Fox News has not been a period of sombre self-reflection. Instead, the network seems to have made a chaotic lunge towards the right wing in recent weeks as hosts have dabbled in conspiracy theories and aggressively attacked the Joe Biden administration.Adding to the sense of crisis, Fox News laid off multiple staff in January – including the political editor who backed the network’s early decision that Biden had won Arizona – while on Thursday Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed a $2.7bn lawsuit against Fox News’ parent company, over allegations it participated in election fraud.As CNN and MSNBC, with their more liberal audiences rose to the top spots in January’s ratings, Americans who believe in the nonsensical QAnon conspiracy theory, or who harbor white nationalist beliefs, or who don’t trust vaccines, have all found themselves pandered to by Fox News, as it attempts to shore up its viewership.Nielsen numbers, published this week, found that Fox News ranked third out of the three main cable news channels in January. It was the first time since 2001 that Fox News found itself in third place, and continued a pattern from the end of 2020, when Donald Trump urged his supporters to abandon Fox News in favor of even more rightwing rivals like NewsMax and One America News.“Fox News has led in the ratings for two decades. They have historically been unrivaled in attracting an audience,” said Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at the progressive media watchdog Media Matters.Gertz said he had detected a shift at Fox as the network attempts to win back “the most hard-edge” Trump supporters.“The network really needs to win them back. It’s of great concern for Fox if they’re no longer in first place. It’s not going to be possible for them to command the same ad rates, it’s not going to be possible for them to demand the same fees from cable carriers,” he said.Gertz added: “Their business model really rests on them being number one, in a big way, and it appears they’re going to do anything they can to win that status back.”The plan to boost viewership so far seems to be based on an extremist push, led by its most prominent opinion hosts.Tucker Carlson, whose show is the most watched in cable news, is among those leading the charge. After Democrats called for a crackdown on white nationalists and domestic terrorism following a wave of extremist attacks, Carson had an interesting, and revealing, take for his audience.“They’re talking about you,” Carson told his viewers on 26 January.A day earlier, Carlson had defended QAnon, a racist and antisemitic conspiracy theory linked to multiple violent acts, including alleged kidnappings, the derailing of a train and arrests over threats to politicians.Carlson played a series of clips from left-leaning networks, in which analysts described QAnon as a dangerous, “frightening” conspiracy theory. The FBI has agreed with that sentiment, and warned of its dangers.Carlson, however, was having none of it. He proceeded to stand up for QAnon supporters, as he claimed that believing in and espousing QAnon ideas is an issue of free speech.“No democratic government can ever tell you what to think. Your mind belongs to you. It is yours and yours alone,” Carlson said.Carlson’s colleagues Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Fox News’s two other biggest stars, have waded into similar waters.Ingraham noted that the government was looking into radicalization of some members of the military. She played a clip from a rival news channel where a commentator noted: “We can’t stand by idly and see people in uniform whether its law enforcement or military have QAnon patches on.”Ingraham’s take? “This is absolutely poisonous for the country,” she said.It’s not just white nationalism and QAnon that are getting airtime on Fox News. Hannity has been accused of dabbling in anti-vaxx ideas, after he hemmed and hawed over whether he would get vaccinated – citing skeptical friends of his in what seemed like an effort to appeal to anti-vaxxers watching.“I don’t know when my number gets called, I’m actually beginning to have doubts,” Hannity told his audience on 26 January. “I’ve been telling my friends I’m gonna get the vaccine,” he said. “Half of them agree and the other half think I’m absolutely nuts. They wouldn’t take it in a million years.”Hannity added: “I don’t know who to listen to.”Fox News has been floundering since earning the animus of many viewers on election night. It was the first news outlet to announce Biden had won Arizona – it would be days before most TV channels and newspapers made that call – and Trump was furious.So were his supporters. “Fox News Sucks!” Trump voters chanted at a vote-counting center in Arizona, and conservative social media were rife with people saying they were turning off Fox News. Trump even demanded on his now defunct Twitter account that people ditch Fox News and instead watch NewsMax and OAN.The trend to the hard right hasn’t just come from the primetime stars. In January, CNN’s media correspondent, Brian Stelter, noted: “Tucker Carlson Tonight essentially expanded to Tucker Carlson Day and Night.”“Part of their strategy in the wake of losing parts of audience has been to de-emphasise the news side and really start bringing opinion side voices into the news hours,” Gertz said. “You see Fox opinion hosts being guests on those news programs as well.”Some of the moves Fox News has made in recent weeks seem to illustrate a de-emphasis on “straight news”. On 19 January, the day before Biden’s inauguration, the network fired Chris Stirewalt, the Fox News political editor who was the public face of the Arizona call. A Fox News spokesperson declined to comment on the Stirewalt decision, citing employee confidentiality.The same day, Fox News laid off more than a dozen digital reporters – seen as relatively non-partisan journalists. A spokesperson for the network said it had “realigned its business and reporting structure to meet the demands of this new era”.Even Fox News’s less firebrand, daytime news anchors have courted controversy.After it emerged that Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican congresswoman who has expressed QAnon beliefs, had also suggested the Parkland, Florida, school shooting was a false flag and claimed that California forest fires had been started by Jewish space lasers, she found a defender in the Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, who claimed a false equivalence between Greene and the Democrat Ilhan Omar.In the long term, Fox News isn’t likely to go anywhere – even despite the Smartmatic lawsuit.“Fox News Media is committed to providing the full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear opinion. We are proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court,” a spokesperson said.In terms of viewers, Newsmax, Fox News’s most ideologically similar competitor, averaged 247,000 daily viewers in January, far lower than its bigger rival. Fox News has also experienced dips in viewership following previous inaugurations – although during those dips it never fell behind CNN or MSNBC.Still, a Fox News spokesperson pointed to Nielsen ratings which showed Fox News outperformed CNN and MSNBC during primetime hours in the last week of January, while internal research conducted by Fox News, which was shared with the Guardian, suggests viewers seemed to be taking a break from news altogether in January – although several programs on CNN and MSNBC experienced their best ratings ever during the same time period.Overall, there’s a sense that it didn’t have to be this way.After Trump lost the election, media experts predicted Fox News could do well “financially and politically”, as a sea of agitated viewers seek a network that will mirror, and augment, their anger at Biden. CNN, MSNBC and other leftwing or centrist news organizations made huge audience gains during Trump’s presidency, but the same isn’t yet working for Fox News.Ultimately, the struggles at Fox News to represent radical elements of the right wing mirrors a problem facing the Republican party itself – where Trumpist politicians like Greene and more establishment figures like Liz Cheney or Mitch McConnell wrestle for its future.“Rupert Murdoch and Fox News generally sees itself as mouthpiece of Republican party. They were moving away from conspiracy theorists, they were moving away from Trump and hoping to turn the page,” Jonathan Kaufman, professor and director of the school of journalism at Northeastern University, said.“But like the Republican party, Fox is discovering that Trumpism, and conspiracy theories, have taken deep root in the Republican party and in their viewers.” More

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      in Elections

      As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency

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      When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
      After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
      All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
      The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition. The network has done this before, of course – the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency weren’t that long ago – but Biden presents a different challenge.
      “Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
      “In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
      That’s not to say Biden’s government will escape attack, even if he dodges the worst.
      Kamala Harris will be the first Black vice-president, and could become a target for Fox News’ hosts. If Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50, and Harris will cast the deciding vote.
      “[If that happens] she’s going to be out there front and center as a tie-breaker in Congress over and over again,” Hendershot said.
      “And every time that happens that is a way to tangentially attack Biden – it gives [Fox News and other rightwing outlets] a kind of ‘red meat’ to attack Kamala Harris, because she is both a woman and a person of color.”
      Biden claims he has nominated “the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced”, with Janet Yellen set to be the first woman to be secretary of the Treasury, while Lloyd Austin, if confirmed, poised to become the first Black defence secretary.
      Pete Buttigieg, an occasional Fox News guest, is set to be the first openly gay cabinet secretary as head of transport.
      Fox News has already been attacking another diverse set of Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other female, non-white members of Congress.
      Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, said that’s a theme that has continued to dominate, even since Biden became the president-elect.
      “A lot of what we’re seeing right now is less of a focus on Joe Biden himself and more of this idea that he will somehow be a puppet for other figures that they find easier to attack – whether that is Kamala Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Gertz said.
      “That is an angle they pursued quite a bit during the campaign, and it’s something they’ve focused on during the transition as well.” More

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      in US Politics

      Fox News retracts Smartmatic voting machine fraud claim in staged video

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      Fox News has taken a further step back from Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud with a bizarre apparent legal retraction aired during shows hosted by some of the president’s most fervent supporters.First broadcast on Fox Business on Friday, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, and repeated over the weekend on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, the segment was presented as a news interview with election technology expert Eddie Perez.In the three-minute video, described as “a closer look at claims about Smartmatic”, Perez answers questions posed by an unidentified interviewer about a Florida company that provided voting systems for the November election.Perez is asked questions such as “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the US in this election?” and “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending US votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?”He says he has not seen any such evidence.Earlier this week, Antonio Mugica, chief executive of Smartmatic, sent legal notices to Fox News and two other networks promoted by Trump, One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, assailing them for spreading “false and defamatory claims” in a “disinformation campaign”.“They have no evidence to support their attacks on Smartmatic because there is no evidence,” Mugica said in a statement. “This campaign was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine legitimately conducted elections.”Trump lost the election to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and trails by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. But his false claims of voter fraud and irregularities in voting systems and technology have received sympathetic hearings on the three rightwing networks.The Fox News interview with Perez was described by a network source as “a fact-checking segment aired in the same format” as original reporting about Smartmatic.Speaking to CNN, Perez said: “My reaction was to observe, as many others have, how kind of strange and unique that particular way at presenting the facts was.“There was nothing in any of the preliminary conversations that I had with Fox News that gave me any indication that Smartmatic would be a matter of conversation. It was never mentioned that this was going to be a discussion about Smartmatic or even claims about private vendors. I was anticipating a broader discussion about the debate around the election [and] election integrity.”Perez said Fox News’ coverage of the election was “speculative and not based in fact” and conspiracy theories peddled by hosts were “harmful to enhancing public confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes”.“I am not accustomed to seeing Lou Dobbs air very straightforward factual evidence,” he said.A Fox News spokesperson declined comment. Earlier, the network referred CNN back to the video.Erik Connolly, an attorney for Smartmatic, said the company would not comment “due to potential litigation”.In a statement to CNN, Newsmax denied making direct claims of impropriety against Smartmatic and said questions about the company and its software were based on “legal documents or previously published reports”.“As any major media outlet,” Newsmax said, “we provide a forum for public concerns and discussion. In the past we have welcomed Smartmatic and its representatives to counter such claims they believe to be inaccurate and will continue to do so.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Walked a fine line’: how Fox News found itself in an existential crisis

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      It was about 11.20pm on election night when Fox News made the call. The Democratic candidate had clinched a key swing state, a win that could set them on a path to be president of the United States.In the Fox News studio, Karl Rove, conservative panelist and longtime Republican strategist, was apoplectic. Around the country, Republican supporters were bereft. Fox News launched an immediate inquisition into its own decision, but the network stood by the call.Barack Obama had won Ohio, defeating Mitt Romney. Obama would be sworn in as president, for the second time, on 20 January 2013.Fast forward eight years, and Fox News found itself in a strikingly similar position on 3 November 2020. The rightwing news channel was the first to call Arizona, which has gone blue once in the past 72 years, for Joe Biden.Donald Trump and his campaign were furious, barraging the network with a series of phone calls in an attempt to get the decision overturned. The president’s supporters were upset too.At protests outside a vote counting center in Phoenix, Arizona, a crowd chanted: “Fox News sucks!”, turning their ire on a channel whose hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have spent the past four years praising Trump’s almost every move or utterance.Now, in the tumultuous week following that Arizona call, Fox News, the most-watched cable news channel in America, has found itself in a sort of existential crisis. More

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      in US Politics

      Is this the death of Fox News's love affair with Donald Trump? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Poor Donald Trump. Not only has he lost the election, it looks as if he has lost the love of his life. I’m not talking about Melania – although some rumours have it that she is “counting the minutes” until she can get a divorce (which she has denied). I’m talking about Fox News.For years, Trump and Fox News have been in a committed, loving relationship. Recently, however, there has been trouble in paradise, with Trump complaining the network is a “much different place than it used to be”. The relationship might have been salvaged, but then Fox News did something unforgivable: it flirted with real journalism. On election day, it was the first major outlet to declare Joe Biden would win Arizona, sending the Trump administration into a meltdown. Since then, Fox News has continued to infuriate the White House by refusing to encourage Trump’s delusion that he won the election. On Monday, for example, it cut away from the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, when she claimed that the Democrats had encouraged voter fraud. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the Fox News anchor said to the viewers. “I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”Trump’s supporters are outraged their leader’s once-beloved network is treating him this way. Some believe Fox News has gone “full lefty” and have started labelling it “fake news”. Which begs the question: where’s the real news? If you can’t even trust Fox News to fuel your deranged conspiracy theories these days, who can you trust? The internet, obviously. Parler, a rightwing version of Twitter, was downloaded almost 1m times between 3 November (election day) and 8 November – making it the most downloaded free app in the US over the weekend. While Parler, a safe space for those who don’t want their hate speech heavily moderated or their unfounded ideas factchecked, may be experiencing a spike in popularity, I’m not sure it will be long-lived. The interface feels as though it was designed by an extremely angry three-year-old and is difficult to navigate. Parler is not going to take down Fox News any time soon.You know what might replace Fox News, though? Trump News. According to one school of thought, Trump never intended on winning the 2016 election; the campaign was just a publicity stunt to kickstart his own media network. Now that he has been relieved of his political duties, it’s widely expected he will launch Trump TV. But who knows, perhaps Trump will surprise us all and actually follow through on his campaign promises. “If I lose to [Biden] … I will never speak to you again,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina rally in September. “You’ll never see me again.” I really hope that is not fake news.• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      in Elections

      CNN’s John King and his ‘magic wall’ keep viewers entranced

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      As the US election has dragged on and people remain glued to their screens, a new type of celebrity has emerged: the results analyst. And none has been more popular than CNN’s John King.
      King, CNN’s chief national correspondent since 2005, has been a nearly constant presence for viewers, fronting the broadcaster’s “magic wall” tirelessly through the week.
      With the coronavirus pandemic leading to vastly more postal votes, which take longer to process than in-person ballots, analysts such as King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki have become the must-watch stars of the small screen. The Los Angeles Times has said King’s indefatigable efforts and insight have made him the election’s “MVP”.
      King, who said he managed just two-and-a-half hours’ sleep on election night and four hours on Wednesday, has fronted The Wall at every election since 2008. A giant interactive touchscreen that allows CNN anchors to see up-to-date voting detail by district and to analyse every possible voting permutation, The Wall has come into its own as this year’s vote count drags on.
      The 59-year old has fronted The Wall for 12- to 14-hour shifts on-screen, dissecting updates county by county and state by state, and informing viewers of the changing “pathways” for Donald Trump and Joe Biden to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to make it to the White House. More