Analysis: Fox News is misleading its audience about Trump's election chances
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New York (CNN Business)
Right now anything is possible, but a Joe Biden win is probable. Reporters and anchors up and down the dial are being careful with their language, adding all the appropriate caveats and hedges, but virtually all the data is pointing in the direction of President Biden. Which is why the Fox factor is so important right now. Fox News is the preferred media outlet of President Trump's America. The president views the world through Fox goggles. His base is the Fox base. His rants and raves come straight from what he hears on his favorite TV shows. So Fox's editorial choices have outsized importance right now.
Here's what you need to know: Fox viewers are being misled about Trump's chances of winning the election in the following ways. --
The network is so chock full of pro-Trump commentary and rally coverage that viewers come away with the impression that this race is a whole heck of a lot closer to 50/50 than it actually is. --
The network's highest-rated shows are portraying Biden as "sleepy" and crooked and corrupt. They are painting Kamala Harris as an un-American, un-electable radical.
The network's talk shows are constantly suggesting that a minority of people are actually the "silent majority." Case in point, Sunday's "Fox & Friends" featured Trump voter after Trump voter at a diner in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The segment was not at all representative of a blue state. --
The shows are also emphasizing state polls that are outliers.
-- And about the lies: I was about to write that Trump's lies are being treated with kid gloves, but that's insulting to gloves. The lies are barely even touched at all. Fox's coverage is one of the reasons why Trump's base might believe that any Biden victory is a fraud, a crime, a hoax. For all the talk of anxious Democrats refusing to believe the polls, there are lots of aggrieved Republicans who feel the same way, due to distorted right-wing media coverage. That's the Fox factor...
Fox's weekend narrative
One of the banners during Tucker Carlson's special Sunday hour asserted "BIG ENTHUSIASM FOR TRUMP DESPITE CONFLICTING POLLS." Sean Hannity's show carried the same message: "MASSIVE ENTHUSIASM FOR TRUMP." And on Laura Ingraham's show too: "TRUMP CLOSING THE GAP IN KEY BATTLEGROUND STATES." All night long, the hosts insisted that the race is tightening. Bret Baier said on Carlson's show that "in these battleground states, it is narrowing and narrowing fast." Is it, really, and can anyone say that for sure? I asked CNN's Harry Enten, who responded, "This race has been fairly consistent for a long period of time." -- Important reminder: Nearly 100 million votes have already been cast...
Concerns about Fox's Election Night coverage
Will Fox play it straight on Election Night or will the coverage be bent in Trump's favor? Whenever I am asked this question, I point out that the network's political anchors and journalists are in charge of election coverage -- not Trump's flacks. Anchors like Baier and Martha MacCallum care about their reputations. So do the decision desk staffers, led by Arnon Mishkin, who is well-respected by his peers. Mishkin is not going to cave to pressure. In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Wallace asked him, "What role will politics play in making any calls on election night?" Mishkin's answer: "Zero. Arithmetic is more important than politics when it comes to making a decision. You've just got to check your preferences at the door and decide who has won this thing." That's what he will do. My concern is not about the Election Night coverage per se. It's about what happens on Wednesday and beyond, in the event of a nail-biter election, when the stars of "Fox & Friends" and "The Five" and the prime time shows all repeat Trump's talking points. The fire-breathing partisans will be a lot louder than the sober number-crunchers. And that could have a really destabilizing impact. If the journalists at Fox are saying "be patient" and "let the votes be counted," but the higher-rated propagandists are saying "Biden is trying to steal the election from Trump," the Fox base will dismiss the former and trust the latter.
All eyes on the Murdochs
No matter what happens this week, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch will have the ultimate responsibility for keeping the network tethered to the truth. They must not let the network's talk shows devolve into "rigged" conspiracy theories and civil war talk. As Philip Bump said on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," the Murdochs have "a strong moral responsibility" in the coming days. >> In his Monday NYT column, Ben Smith says "the approaching election has executives around Lachlan Murdoch, Fox's chief executive, preparing to battle on several fronts: with left-wing critics, with what senior executives fear could be regulatory retribution from Democrats and perhaps most of all from James Murdoch, Lachlan's more liberal brother and critic, according to a person familiar with the company's plans." He also notes that Lachlan has "no real control of the network's high-profile talent..."
Trump or Biden, Fox wins either way
I hope this point came through loud and clear in my recent book "HOAX:" Heads, Fox wins, and tails, Fox wins. The network's base is so loyal that it doesn't matter whether a Republican or a Democrat holds the White House. Historically a Democratic presidency has been embraced by Fox... the network casts itself as the "voice of the opposition..." and that's exactly what will happen again if Biden prevails. >> "Talk Radio's America" author Brian Rosenwald tweeted the other day: "Conservative media has always thrived w/Democrats in power. Rush Limbaugh even admitted as much after Bill Clinton won. People are afraid, they feel voiceless, they're angry, & it's generally easier to be on the outside throwing stones. You similarly have seen some of the most fruitful periods for liberal media come when Democrats had the least power 2004-ish & again in 2017-2018."
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Fox News is deluding it's audience, which, if trump loses, is going to make the aftermath much more difficult. Fox will have its audience thinking that the only way Trump can lose is if he is cheated out of the win.
Reality dictates that a candidate whose approval ratings are usually in the low 40's could easily lose, but Fox tells its audience Trump has a "silent majority" behind him.
More "alternate facts".
reality is not dictated by polls... LOL
they are just now catching up to reality.
I have been saying for yrs now...
trump will have historic support from the black and hispanic communities
If someone has been president for four years and have rarely had approval ratings above 43 or 44, and have often had lower approval ratings, there is a good chance they will lose the next election. Thats just common sense.
your starting with the assumption those polls were truthful and accurate. they were neither.
hint : "push polling" does not work
What a strange complaint. It is well known that polls and predictions were very wrong in 2016. Now we're supposed to accept that the same people making the same kinds of predictions are somehow correct in 2020? Based on what, exactly, does anyone have the right to say that Fox is misleading people?
There is? From where? What is this writer talking about? Democrats have been cheering the polls for months, just like they did four years ago. This very article is saying the polls are right and that it's misleading to suggest otherwise.
No, it's because the polls in 2016 were dead wrong. It's not because of distortion or propaganda. It's because of history.
But none of this is as absurd and hypocritical as this:
I mean, come on. CNN, MSNBC, and the like were openly in the tank for Clinton in 2016. They were unashamedly shocked and disappointed when it was close, and even worse, when it was clear Trump had won.
What are we talking about here? Destabilizing what? The nation? So, that's a bad thing, now? Like when liberal news media and politicians in 2016 immediately started insisting that electors should ignore the votes in their states and vote for Clinton? Or are we talking about when those same people declared without evidence that Trump and the Russians had illegally stolen the election?
How can anyone with integrity or self respect who took part in that nonsense in 2016 and beyond, dare to start a panic over what FoxNews might do on election night in 2020?
I guess the question answers itself. They don't have any integrity or self respect.
Donald Trump was not fit for office in 2016 either. Of course people wanted his opponent to win. Who wishes disaster on their own country?
I always get a kick out of those who say Trump hasnt been treated well for these four years. No shit , he wasnt treated well.
He has been treated way too good by the national media. The man has lied to the American people thousands of times SINCE HE HAS BEEN IN OFFICE.
Um. Ok.
I'm genuinely curious about something. Do you even want people to come to your seeds and comment on the specific content of the article? That's what I tried to do.
I dont in the slightest control who can or cannot comment on any seed. I just comment myself. .
' People are afraid, they feel voiceless, they're angry...'
Translation:
The working class [the 90%] is politically disenfranchised. Holding 'citizenship' in a formal sense, that so-called 'citizenship' has been stripped of any effective import. While meeting the formal requirements of representation, the working class is subjected continually to elected misrepresentation. This comes at a time when Capital MUST open new markets, access abundant raw materials, and buy labor at Mongolian prices. This can be achieved ONLY by redividing the world's assets through war and world war. With the population weary of endless 'for profit' wars, this policy demanded by Capital [Wall Street, etc.,] can be implemented SOLELY through repressive and authoritarian forms of rule.
This explains Trump's rise, why Biden has no material alternative to Trump, and why many elect NOT to vote.
Elections are a fraud. They are a swindle perpetrated on an increasingly rebellious 90% who increasingly perceive these rites as an attack on their vital material interests. The intelligent in the ruling class [they do exist] know that is increasingly understood. They feel the ground is shaking beneath their feet, and they are terrified for good reason. But with Capital hitting the wall, they can offer ZERO solutions even to a single crisis.
As this 'election' is prosecuted against the working class at a time when the ruling class has weaponized a global pandemic into an instrument for 'restructuring' with the result that its wealth has increased vastly while unemployment rises to Great Depression levels. Be the issue pandemic, the deliberate and coercive exposure of millions of proletarians [deal with it] to unsafe work environments and of their children to unsafe school environments, hunger among America's youth, the war on refugees, radicalized narratives as the basis for criminalizing public dissent -- neither party can offer even one, solitary solution to any of our multiple crises.
Under these circumstances, elections are a lie. With their material necessities precluded systemically from the process, such 'elections constitute NO binding arrangement upon the 90%, who have every right to walk away from them at any time. 295,200,000 working class people need no permission from anyone to do this.
Afraid? Voiceless? Angry? These don't even begin to describe the outrage which defines today's civic milieu.
We all know that politics is about the adoration of false images. Increasingly, the ruling class faces a 90% which regards everything from the constitution to the beatific vision of glories never to be revealed because they are postponed perpetually -- always around the corner of the 'NEXT' election cycle -- as a lie. Together with the institutions and processes of state, your glorious elections, your glorious administrations, courts, congresses -- the narratives which purport to tell us who we are, what we are about, where we are going and how we are to get there -- all these together are being recognized as A lie.
Political discourse has devolved into necromancy. Partisan conjurers try to animate dead things [called 'issues']. They want these dead things to seem to come to life, to 'sit up' and 'talk to us' as if they were alive. The partisan conjurers/peddlers of dead things have no interest in the material necessities of the 90%. The pretense that they -- the 1% plus Next 9% which together ARE the ruling class -- have the right to make ALL the decisions by which the rest of us are morally, legally, politically and spiritually obligated to live is a lie.
Why should the 90% agree?