A detailed timeline of Fox News employees’ text message and email correspondence in the aftermath of the 2020 election recently published by The New York Times provides a closer look at how the company wrestled over whether or not to side with former President Donald Trump’s election lies. The messages, pulled from court filings from Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News, illustrate how Fox News executives, producers and hosts panicked about losing viewers to right-wing competitor NewsMax — and then embraced information they didn’t trust or believe to pull out of a ratings tailspin.
In addition to cynical opportunism, there is self-delusion. One striking theme in the messages is that some of the Fox News employees appear to see themselves as victims of Trump’s misbehavior; they think their hand is being forced by his hold over Republican viewers. What they fail to see, at least in their correspondence, is how they were the authors of their own predicament. Fox News helped make Trump and give life to his whole brand of politics. Their ratings problem wasn’t because Trump went too far, but because their business model relied on never drawing a line when it comes to generating fear on the right.
Fox News built its editorial vision around appealing to the American right’s base instincts.
The messages underscore the internal rationalization process Fox News used to justify chasing ratings. Fox News built its editorial vision around appealing to the American right’s base instincts. If it were an even somewhat honest media operation, it should’ve faced no dilemma when ratings dropped — because huge, dangerous lies about democratic institutions should be a clear red line for even the most partisan and sensationalistic media outlets. But that’s not the business Fox News is in.
In the messages documented in the Times’ report, it’s clear that many Fox News employees were initially reluctant to serve as a megaphone for Trump’s…
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