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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

      'Can we have America back?' Fox News video echoes Trump election claims

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      Fox News has come in for criticism over a promotional video in which opinion hosts echo Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden but which he refuses to concede.
      “Oh my god,” Andrew Laurence of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, wrote on Twitter. “Fox is running a promo of their ‘opinion’ hosts casting doubt on the election results and I guess trying to keep their rabid viewers sated.”
      Oliver Darcy, a media reporter for CNN, said the video showed executives at the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel “really have no shame”.
      In the short video, an announcer introduces a montage of “the voices America trusts”. Laura Ingraham is shown first, saying: “These legal efforts are critical.”
      That is a reference to cases Trump has mounted in key battleground states, alleging without evidence that voter fraud and ballot irregularities occurred, and seeking to overturn results via recounts.

      Such quixotic efforts have met with little success and experts say they are almost guaranteed to fail. More than 5m votes down in the popular vote, Trump lost the electoral college to Biden by 306-232, the score by which he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in what he claimed was a landslide.
      On the Fox News video, Tucker Carlson appears next, saying: “There are apparent irregularities.”
      “The media mob, and the Democrats, they lie,” says Sean Hannity.
      “Speaking up for you, and the issues that matter most to the people,” says the announcer.
      “They thought there would be a blue wave, not the case,” says Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends, a morning show favoured by Trump. In fact Doocy’s comment points to an electoral truth: that Trump attracted the most votes of any sitting president, staving off an expected landslide defeat, and that Republicans made gains at state level and in the US House and look set to retain control of the Senate.
      “You’re gonna see something even bigger than Trump in 2022 and 2024,” says Greg Gutfeld, referring to the next two election years.
      “The truth does need to come out,” says Ingraham.
      “Can we speak freely, again, can we have America back?” asks Carlson.
      “We the people deserve better,” says Hannity.
      “Fox News,” the announcer says. “America is watching.”
      Trump has attacked Fox News since the election, in which it was quick to call Arizona, a key state, for Biden, then joined other media organisations in calling the whole race for the Democrat last Saturday.
      “Fox News daytime ratings have completely collapsed,” Trump tweeted on Thursday. “Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was Fox News!”
      Darcy, of CNN, wrote that the Fox News video “appears to be part of a bid to hold on to its bleeding audience – an audience that refuses to believe reality, in large part because Fox has primed millions to distrust credible news sources”.
      Fox News has countered that its ratings remain strong, saying in a recent release it “finished the month of October as the most-watched cable network in both total day and primetime total viewers … notching 52 months in a row in the top spot”.
      According to Media Matters, Trump’s conspiracy theories have crossed into Fox News’ “straight” news operation.
      In the four days after the result was called, the watchdog said, Fox News “cast doubt on or pushed conspiracy theories about the election results at least 255 times. A review by Media Matters found 111 such claims on Fox’s ‘straight news’ shows and 144 claims on the network’s opinion shows”.
      “Where are the adults at Fox?” Darcy asked. “Why aren’t they getting their talent under control? Well, this ad makes it clear: The executives approve their talent behaving the way they have. In fact, they’re so proud of the undemocratic commentary, they’re happy to showcase it in an ad. They really have no shame.”
      Fox News did not offer comment on its promotional video. More

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      in Elections

      Fox draws Trump campaign's ire after calling Arizona for Biden

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      When Donald Trump supporters gathered outside a vote-counting centre in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday night, they had a simple and perhaps unexpected chant: “Fox News Sucks!”
      Although the channel has become synonymous with Trump’s rise to power, in the last two days Fox News has become the focus of the Trump campaign’s anger after it made an early call on Tuesday night that the state of Arizona was going to Joe Biden.
      In the process, the channel switched the media’s attention away from Trump’s substantial success in Florida and undermined the president’s attempts to focus attention on the vote counting in Pennsylvania.
      Such was the level of fury within the Trump campaign at the call that his team reportedly attempted to have the decision overturned. According to the New York Times, this involved Jared Kushner contacting Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, while in Vanity Fair’s reporting it was the president himself who called the media mogul. Regardless of who was placing the calls, Fox has stuck by its decision – much to the anger of many of its viewers who have bombarded the channel with complaints.

      The decision to call the ultra-close Arizona race for Biden – a victory that was later also declared by the Associated Press, which provides results data to the Guardian – was made by Fox’s Arnon Mishkin, who runs the broadcaster’s decision desk. Before the election, Mishkin, a registered Democrat who has worked for Fox News for decades, had made clear that he would not be swayed by internal pressure in making calls for states.
      As a result, Mishkin has been portrayed as a defender of the truth, representing the uneasy balance that exists between Fox’s straight news division and the highly opinionated rightwing hosts who shape the external perception of the channel.
      On Thursday, Mishkin, who has become a target for angry Trump supporters, told the channel’s viewers that he would not be changing his mind on the basis that “we strongly believe that our call will stand, and that’s why we’re not pulling back the call”.
      Dismissing claims from Trump’s team that they could still edge ahead in the ultra-close race as more votes were counted, a visibly exasperated Mishkin pushed back and said the objections were like talking about what would happen “if a frog had wings”.
      “We’re confident that the data will basically look like the data we’ve noticed throughout the count in Arizona,” he said.

      Trump and his team have an increasingly complicated relationship with Fox News. Throughout his presidency he has been an obsessive watcher of the channel, often providing commentary on his Twitter feed about its audience ratings when he objects to its coverage and phoning in to dispute specific issues.
      On the day of the election he complained on air about the channel’s coverage not being sufficiently supportive: “Somebody said what’s the difference between this and four years ago, and I say Fox … In the old days you wouldn’t put ‘Sleepy Joe’ on every time he opens his mouth. You had Democrats on more than you had Republicans. I’m not complaining. I’m just telling people.”
      One of the bigger questions in US rightwing media is what happens if Trump loses the election, with longstanding speculation that he could be tempted to start his own media outlet in a bid to communicate directly with his supporters. More

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      in US Politics

      Hoax review: Fox News, Donald Trump and truth v owning the libs

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      On Saturday night, the Washington Post reported that Mary Trump Barry had been caught on tape accusing her brother, the president, of being an all-purpose piece of work who even cheated his way into college. As framed by Trump’s older sister, a federal judge who retired under an ethics cloud of her own, the president has “no principles. None.”As for his relationship to truth: “The lying. Holy shit.”Barry did not, however, have the media to herself. As the Post’s scoop was breaking, Jeanine Pirro was extolling Trump’s virtues in a primetime flight into fantasy.According to Pirro, “Trump made his own money and he hasn’t asked the government for it and he doesn’t cut deals while he’s in the government for his son and his family.”According to Barry, Trump was incredulous to be told she read books and didn’t watch Fox News.Welcome to the parallel universe, where reality can take a backseat to ratings and resentments. Into the morass dives Brian Stelter with his latest book, Hoax. Under the subtitle Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth, the CNN media critic chronicles the symbiotic relationship between the 45th president and Rupert Murdoch’s most famous product.Fox News has access and influence, Trump a megaphone, both enjoy a devoted followingIt has been win-win. Fox News has access and influence, Trump a megaphone, both enjoy a devoted following.To illustrate: in the fall of 2019, Attorney General William Barr reportedly traveled to New York to ask Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, an in-house critic of Trump. But according to Stelter, Barr was also there to discuss “media consolidation”, at a time when the industry was rife with merger mania.In other words, the attorney general went to the mogul privately rather than having him come to the justice department, where people could see him and notetakers could be present.Yes, Fox News has given voice to those voters Barack Obama derided for clinging to their guns and religion and Hillary Clinton branded as irredeemably deplorable. But Fox News has also promoted baseless conspiracy theories and unhesitatingly stoked racial and cultural animus – as Stelter makes clear.Although Fox News did not embrace Obama and “birtherism”, it did not discourage it, offering Trump a platform to trash a sitting president. Stelter captures Steve Doocy, a host of morning show Fox & Friends, egging the one-time reality host on, describing him as someone “who we all know was born in this country”.More recently, host Jesse Watters has credited the QAnon conspiracy movement with uncovering “great stuff”. Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, singled out Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP for its vulgarity but a few years ago voiced his approval of an email sent by his brother, Buckley Carlson, to a woman he labeled “LabiaFace” while referring to “dick fright”, “spooge neck” and “pearl necklacing”.In Carlson’s words, “I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way.” Then again, Blake Neff, a Carlson writer, was recently dismissed for posting racist and misogynist messages online.As narrated by Stelter, Fox News has deliberately and repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19As narrated by Stelter, Fox News has deliberately and repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19 for the sake of making Trump look good, even as the pandemic took hold in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas, ie: Trump’s base. Hoax describes in granular detail internal measures taken in early March, as Covid’s blight was descending, and contrasts them with the wisdom fed to viewers.Hand sanitizer stations were “added to every door at Fox”, in-person meetings were scaled back, travel was curbed. Yet Sean Hannity and other hosts were talking out of “both sides of their mouth” – this being the same Hannity who in moments of candor reported by Stelter would label Trump “batshit crazy” or ask: “What the fuck is wrong with him?”In Stelter’s telling, “one minute Hannity was saying the virus was ‘serious’” and in the next breath he was “accusing other media outlets of ‘sowing fear’”. Hannity also attacked Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, and Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, for “politicizing this national emergency”, admonishing them to “stop”.Pete Hegseth, another host, announced that the more he learned about Covid, the “less” there was to “worry about”.Now, the US death toll is approaching 180,000. Contrary to the president’s assurances, the virus shows no signs of disappearing.Viewers have argued to the Federal Communications Commission that “the network had blood on its hands”. In its successful defense of a Covid-induced lawsuit, Fox rightly argued that first amendment free speech protections can also shield misinformation. More

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      in US Politics

      William Barr told Murdoch to 'muzzle' Fox News Trump critic, new book says

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      The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network.Barr’s meeting with Murdoch, at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, was widely reported at the time, with speculation surrounding its subject. According to Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, subjects covered included media consolidation and criminal justice reform.“But it was also about Judge Andrew Napolitano.”Stelter’s in-depth look at Fox News, its fortunes under Trump and its links to his White House will be published on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.In early 2019 it was reported that Napolitano, a New Jersey superior court judge who joined Fox News in 1998, told friends he had been on Trump’s shortlist for the supreme court. But he broke ranks later in the year, labeling Trump’s approaches to Ukraine, seeking political dirt on rivals, “both criminal and impeachable behavior”.“The criminal behavior to which Trump has admitted,” Napolitano wrote, in a column dated 3 October, “is much more grave than anything alleged or unearthed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and much of what Mueller revealed was impeachable.”Citing an unnamed source, Stelter writes that Trump “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.”Barr has been widely accused of riding roughshod over the rule of law, in service of Trump and his own authoritarian view of the presidency.Though Barr’s words to Murdoch “carried a lot of weight”, Stelter writes, “no one was explicitly told to take Napolitano off the air”. Instead, Stelter reports, Napolitano found digital resources allocated elsewhere, saw a slot on a daytime show disappear, and was not included in coverage of the impeachment process.In Stelter’s telling, Napolitano thought he was being kept off air by “25-year-old producers” who didn’t think viewers could handle his analysis. Stelter, however, says an unnamed “twentysomething staffer” confirmed that one host, Maria Bartiromo, would only book Napolitano to discuss non-Trump topics, because he would upset Bartiromo too much if he criticised the president.Fox News’ audience remains loyal to Trump as his campaign for re-election continues. Some Fox employees, Stelter writes, “justified the benching of the judge by claiming that viewers hated him: ‘Why are we going to book someone who kills our ratings?’”Napolitano has continued to appear on Fox News and to publish opinion columns. He has remained critical of Trump, for example slamming the actions of federal officers sent to confront protesters in Portland, Oregon; opposing attempts to provide coronavirus relief without congressional involvement; and saying Senate Republicans should have called new witnesses in the president’s impeachment trial.He has also had harsh words for Barr, for example calling his conduct in the case of Trump ally Roger Stone “Stalinistic”; blasting his handling of the Mueller report to Trump’s advantage; and hitting him for “insulting” Congress.Napolitano did, however, back Barr’s attempt to drop charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials. More