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It was around 11:20 p.m. on election night when Fox News made the call. The Democratic candidate had landed a key swing state, a victory that could put them on the path to the presidency of the United States.
In the Fox News studio, Karl Rove, a longtime Conservative panelist and Republican strategist, was apoplectic. Across the country, Republican supporters were private. Fox News launched an immediate investigation into its own decision, but the network answered the call.
Barack Obama won Ohio by beating Mitt Romney. Obama will be sworn in as president for the second time on January 20, 2013.
Fast forward eight years, and Fox News found itself in a surprisingly similar position on November 3, 2020. The right-wing news channel was the first to call Arizona, which has turned blue once in the past 72 years. , for Joe Biden.
Donald Trump and his campaign were furious, hitting the network with a series of phone calls to try to overturn the decision. The president’s supporters were also upset.
During protests outside a vote counting center in Phoenix, Arizona, a crowd chanted, “Fox News sucks!”, Turning their anger at a channel whose hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have spent the past four years at to praise almost any move or statement Trump made.
Now, in the tumultuous week after that Arizona call, Fox News, America’s most-watched cable news channel, found itself in some sort of existential crisis.
Trump remains furious. Wednesday it posted a series of Twitter posts criticizing Fox News, even suggesting alternatives.
But despite Trump’s fury, he then moved on to directing people to Sean Hannity Fox News broadcast. The reality is that the president’s inconsistency currently matches Fox News content, which goes from relatively straightforward news to outrageous news.
Depending on the anchor in the air, the network has either been dilapidated or leaning against the guard, Trump’s unfounded allegations of voter fraud, while the perceived lack of continued support for the president prompts viewers to say they will never watch Fox News again.
“Fox News has always crossed a fine line between trying to sound like an independent news organization and supporting conservative politics,” said Eric Deggans, television critic for NPR and media analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
“There must be times when they act like a real news agency in order to maintain their appearance as an independent news organization.”
The channel has not found a transparent way to maintain this balance. On screen on Fox News, the days after the election saw a dizzying shift from reality to fantasy.
In the middle of the day, more traditional journalists dominate. The channel interrupted a press conference by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday when she made a series of unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. “I can’t in a good mood keep showing you this,” Fox News presenter Neil Cavuto said.
However, on the night, Fox News’ most popular presenters Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson step out to play and the network enters an alternate universe, where Democrats have, according to the state, either suppressed the number of ballots. , or inflate the number. ballots. Either way, Trump won.
This makes the effort to look like a news organization more and more difficult.
“What is happening now is that the Republican Party is getting more and more tense, and there is a growing sentiment among Fox News viewers that anything that contradicts a worldview that supports the conservatives are wrong, ”Deggans said.
“I think it’s getting harder and harder for Fox News to keep that balance.”
You just have to wonder why they bother.
The most watched shows on Fox News are the Propaganda Hours provided by Carlson and Hannity. In the second quarter of 2020, Carlson’s Tucker Carlson Tonight set a record for viewership, with 4.331 million viewers, while Hannity’s show Hannity drew the second-best number in history, with 4.311 millions.
So why doesn’t Fox News stick to right-wing conspiracy theories, black Lives Matter activists’ bashing, and Dear Leader-style coverage of Trump?
“Ultimately, their power comes from the size of their audience,” said Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog.
“Not just the size of their audience, but also audience engagement – and that relationship that they then leveraged, along with some tough negotiating tactics, to squeeze out extremely high cable charges.
“[Fox News is] in fact renegotiating a lot of their cable contracts right now, and if they’re seen as some kind of extremist and dashing, and they don’t have that journalism veneer, it actually affects their ability to negotiate effectively.
Disturbingly for Fox News, on the Facebook pages and groups supporting Trump, people are glowing.
“It’s time to switch to Newsmax or One America News,” is just one example of posts suggesting a withdrawal from Fox News.
“Fox News has officially joined the corrupt media.”
Another article said viewers should “F FOX News”.
“They sold their souls and lost the respect of millions of loyal viewers, [thinking emoji] [crying emoji]Boycott and show them the power of the almighty [money bag emoji] dollar.”
So could Fox News be in danger? Obviously, he’s already survived criticism. But in 2020, there are young competitors.
“What did not exist in the past exists now,” Carusone said.
“That is, you have entities like Newsmax and One America News Network that can actually put together quite a bit of audience.”
Newsmax and One America News Network are more to the right than Fox News, and each have been pushing wacky conspiracy theories, including that there was a deep state or Democrat-led plot to infect Trump with coronavirus, and that Anthony Fauci, the head of the CDC, funded the creation of the coronavirus.
Over the summer, Newsmax TV was getting about 25,000 viewers per day, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter. In election week, that climbed to 182,000 viewers. But the chain has seen a real push since the election, after Fox News came under fire, and Newsmax’s nightly broadcasts drew 700 to 800,000 viewers, according to Nielsen.
Fox News far exceeds these two upstarts. But it could be that Trump’s promotion of Newsmax is having an effect.
Trump retweeted five different messages renting Newsmax Thursday, and put in Fox News, claiming that the channel’s daytime ratings – where Trump is treated relatively evenly – have “completely collapsed” and Fox News “has forgotten the Golden Goose.”
If the fracture is permanent, it could be damaging to Fox News. But given Trump’s need for attention, the president is going to have to find a network he likes.
A Trump TV network could be another candidate for the right-wing and Trump-loving crowd.
This has been mentioned in the past – although it is less likely given that Trump is in debt and will likely face legal battles once he leaves the presidency, said Heather Hendershot, film professor and media at MIT studying. conservative and right-wing media.
OANN and Newsmax, which are underfunded compared to Fox News, would be options for Trump, but perhaps the president, who has gone in and out of grievances with Fox News in the past, could still turn to the established network. .
“I guess Trump continues to develop the Trump brand, which has always been his thing, and finds a platform that wants to host it, like Fox News or OANN,” Hendershot said.
“But who is going to pay the most to appear on their network?” Fox News. OANN is seriously underfunded, its budget is very low and there are not enough cable packages. “
Fox News clearly survived 2012 and Hendershot believes the channel is not in danger of disappearing. With a Democratic president, it might even give Fox News a chance to regain its strength.
“Having Biden in the White House could definitely help Fox,” Hendershot said.
“They do well when they’re oppositional. They did very well when Obama was in power because they had a clear enemy to fight.
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