TELLING IT LIKE IT ISN’T
Quarter-century-old Fox News thrives on misinformation
Congratulations to Fox News on a quarter century of doing for news what professional wrestling did for sports: pretty much nothing. Though they have carved out similar niches in American culture. Tune in to either event exclusively and it becomes easy to ignore what’s real in favor of what’s colorful, bombastic, in your face and, quite frankly, more entertaining. But while WWE wouldn’t try to sell its audience on the notion mainstream sports are fake and shouldn’t be watched, Fox News, which launched on Oct. 7, 1996, has to some degree come flying from the top turnbuckle to execute that very difficult maneuver. And the fans are going wild!
To its credit, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire seemingly anticipated the emergence of reality TV and applied that confrontational formula to conventional news broadcasts. What’s being said isn’t as important to Fox as how it’s being delivered. That amounts to a steady stream of hysterical rhetoric read into a camera by granite-jawed alpha males (and Steve Doocy) seated alongside pastel-clad Barbies. The latter often get sexual misconduct settlements as parting gifts.
Much like professional wrestling, Fox News doesn’t get hung up on nuance. It provides its audience with clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and the good guys always triumph. You wanted Fox fave Donald Trump to win the 2020 election? Maybe he did. Should the COVID pandemic be no big deal? Poof. It’s not. Even the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was a party where a few things got broke if that’s the way you want it reported.
This is (essentially) a 24/7 opinion channel that insists “cancel culture” stops people from saying what they think. That’s like yelling with a mouth full of hamburger that no one is allowed to eat beef anymore.
In a lot of cases, Fox News junkies are well-meaning folks who don’t understand the extent to which they’re being radicalized. But in too many instances, they’re bigots looking to have their viewpoints validated in prime time by hucksters like Tucker Carlson, who has mastered the art of telling scared, largely white and often elderly viewers that they are going to be replaced by dirty dark-skinned people — just like the ones they see on TV!
One of Fox’s biggest cons is making viewers feel smart by insulting the people who make them feel stupid. Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn’t know immunology. You do. Gen. Mark Milley doesn’t understand the military. You do. Now buy a MyPillow for your great big brain.
Never mind that Fox built its TV brand through cartoons, sports and, yes, professional wrestling. Like people who watch televangelists, brainwashed Fox News viewers see themselves as understanding a higher truth. They don’t believe “The Media.” They believe Fox media. A reasonable person can stop watching any one TV station without it changing their lives. Take Fox News away from a Fox News viewer, their entire world view goes with it. Fox News isn’t a channel. It’s a lifestyle.
In Fox World, feed stores are pharmacies, Carlson is an intellectual and Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend is Karen Silkwood.
Rather than encouraging its viewers to get vaccinated, Fox News tells them it’s a personal choice, then proceeds to provide dubious reporting to misinform that choice. Naturally, 90% of Fox staffers are said to be vaxxed. Selling nonsense and believing it are two different things.
It’s hard to imagine Fox News viewers would have believed in 1969, with a Democrat in the White House, that the moon landing happened.
Just think how Fox might have covered John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, let alone the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Would their killers be remembered today as fed-up patriots who were the real victims?
Fox opinionist Laura Ingraham famously told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble” when he voiced his thoughts on politics in 2018. Imagine what she would have said about Muhammad Ali.
Former White House counsel John Dean, who served under disgraced former President Richard Nixon, told Politico in 2018 that “There’s more likelihood [Tricky Dick] might have survived if there’d been a Fox News.” In other words, the nation’s poster boy for corruption — a sitting president who tried to cheat in an election — might be remembered today as a God-fearing ’Murican who got a bad deal.
While there’s no way of knowing for sure how Fox News might have altered history, this divided country can only dread the damage the highly lucrative network will do moving forward.
To Fox’s credit, what they’re doing isn’t easy. Knockoff brands like OANN and Newsmax use a lot of the same tricks, but aren’t kidding anyone. Cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC match up with Fox in terms of production value and snark, but have little to offer conservatives. Unless Lester Holt starts calling people names or Norah O’Donnell starts showing a little more leg, Fox viewers aren’t coming back to traditional network news either. So what’s next?
Maybe Fox News will succeed in killing off its viewers with medical misinformation and reckless alternatives to logic. But if not, another 25 years of real-time revisionism — and an exclusive 2028 interview with President-elect Hulk Hogan — appears to be a given.