For the first time in its 20-year history, Fox News is stumbling. Roger Ailes, its founder and guiding force, has been driven out by embarrassing revelations of repeated sexual harassment. The newsroom is sharply divided, some long-term contributors are leaving, and the channel’s parent company has started the expensive process of settling with Ailes’ accusers.
This might sound like bad news for the Republican Party, which has tied itself to the network for years. But Fox News has long been a double-edged sword for Republicans, and perhaps nothing illustrates that contradiction quite like the rise of Donald Trump.
Fox News can be a virtual kingmaker leading up to the primaries, providing candidates with a platform, firepower for their arguments — including Trump’s long-held assertion, which he rejected only last Friday, that US President Barack Obama was not born in the United States — and a large, receptive audience. But it also boxes in candidates with the narrow, cosseted views of its audience, making it almost impossible to reach out to more moderate Republicans during the general election.
Now some conservative intellectuals, such as the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens and the Wisconsin radio talk show host Charlie Sykes, are asking whether Fox is a net plus or minus for their movement. They wonder what good it accomplishes when it leads to the nominations of Republicans like Trump, who have a low chance of winning a general election.
A year ago I tried to describe the Fox News effect in an academic paper. Fox had become so influential among conservatives that many refused to believe any news or opinion that wasn’t vetted by the network (an effect I called “self-brainwashing”). Those who inhabit this world live in a kind of bubble sometimes called “epistemic closure,” where they won’t believe many things taken for granted by people who get news from other sources.
As a result, Fox News viewers score low on general news knowledge, lower even than people who consume no news, on questions like whether the stimulus caused job losses or whether Obama was born in the US. Fox News viewers are more likely than Republicans overall to believe that the US found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or that discrimination against white people is as bad as discrimination against minorities.
Shift to right of centre
When it began in 1996, Fox News did not advertise itself as conservative, but rather as being in the centre. I, like many conservatives, thought the mainstream media was liberal, so being in the centre meant Fox was relatively to the right of most media. But after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Fox began shifting to the right of centre, creating, along with talk radio and conservative websites, an ideological cocoon for viewers. One result is that crazy ideas and conspiracy theories can circulate without any correction or resistance. Fox tends to normalise such notions, because guests espousing them are treated as part of the conservative mainstream and are almost never contradicted by a liberal voice or one of the Fox anchors.
The sealed universe of Fox News might be an excellent strategy for a niche television audience, but it’s a disastrous one for presidential candidates who have to appeal to swing voters. Trump continues to double down on his most outrageous opinions and proposals, like the Mexican wall, cutting his campaign off from the support of moderate Republicans, undecided voters and disaffected Democrats.
Ten years ago I stopped watching Fox because I found that it distorted my worldview, causing me to pay attention to issues that Fox emphasised at the expense of those that were objectively more important. Since at least 1969, when US Vice-President Spiro Agnew gave a speech criticising the US media, conservatives have believed that the media is overwhelmingly liberal and hostile to their values. I thought so myself for a long time, but no longer. I think it hews pretty much to the objective centre, with Fox well to the right.
Could Fox News be that outlet that a broader coalition of conservatives wants? The recent ouster of Ailes and the inevitable takeover of the company by the sons of 85-year-old Rupert Murdoch mean that some change will come. Opening Fox to broader political views could be a plus for both it and the conservative movement.
If Fox News remains an entrenched part of the conservative extreme, the result will be more Republican candidates like Trump and more defeats at the polls.
— New York Times News Service
Bruce Bartlett served in senior policy roles in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He is the author of How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.
