Bringhurst: Fox News Deliberately Spreads Hateful Rhetoric
(Design by Emily Christensen | The Daily Utah Chronicle)
June 2, 2022
Voicing an opinion on Fox News feels like screaming into an echo chamber. While a majority of Republicans trust the news outlet, Democrats like President Joe Biden regard it as “one of the most destructive forces in the United States.” Their selective reporting on gun control, climate change and COVID-19 demonstrate political bias and gross negligence, leading to deadly consequences like the racially-motivated Buffalo shooting.
Fox News intentionally blurs the line between opinion and news to get away with promoting reactionary content. Extreme polarization solidifies loyalty to the network and Republican party, meaning it is in politicians’ and media’s best interests to leave Fox News unchecked.
Between Opinion and Fact
In 2020, former Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News host Tucker Carlson for defamation after he accused her of extorting former President Donald Trump. Carlson won the case despite the falseness of his claims, where the judge cited Carlson’s role as a commentator rather than reporter. “Given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes,” the judge wrote.
If that is true, then Fox News viewers aren’t reasonable. While Carlson doesn’t outright claim vaccines to be ineffective, he floats questions to incite conspiratorial thinking in his audience. As a result, Fox News viewers are less likely to trust vaccines. And during coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection, hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity suggested “Antifa” coordinated the attack. Yet text messages with former White House Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows revealed that the hosts begged Meadows to ask Trump to call off the riot.
Ingraham, Hannity and Carlson propose conspiracies with no basis in fact. Subsequently, Republicans who watch Fox News are more likely to believe conspiracies about Jan. 6 and election fraud than Republicans who watch other news outlets. Viewers clearly take Fox News hosts seriously, where the outlet’s skepticism can be outright disinformation.
Journalists should tell people what issues to think about, not what to think. Fox News does both. In a 2020 study, researchers paid Fox News viewers to watch CNN for a month, and compared their attitudes on current events with a control group. Researchers concluded, “Group participants became more likely to agree that if Donald Trump made a mistake, Fox News would not cover it — i.e., that Fox News engages in partisan coverage filtering.” Though the test group recognized Fox News’s biased reporting, they returned to old viewing habits which fed into their preconceived notions. Reporters must be the ones to ensure the public is receiving all the facts.
The Business of Polarization
Fox News won’t report facts because polarization is profitable. Fox News retains loyal viewers by prioritizing divisive news and presenting issues in a polarizing way, isolating Republicans from other news sources. Sixty-five percent of Republicans trust Fox News, while no more than 33% trust any other news organization.
Fostering a right-wing echo chamber also benefits Republican politicians. Politicians who criticize the left will likely receive more screen time, and the easiest way to gain support from constituents is to amplify polarization.
In the aftermath of two mass shootings, Fox News should have followed other news outlets in debating gun control. But that’s not what their viewers want to hear, so they deflected the conversation. Fox News debated numerous solutions to gun violence following the Uvalde school shooting, but not a single one was gun control. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick later appeared on Carlson’s show, where Carlson asked why “it’s important to pray in a moment like this” instead of grilling the politician on solutions.
Reactionary media has deadly consequences. While the first amendment may prevent the courts from holding Fox News accountable, greed prevents politicians and Fox News from changing the way they report. And unfortunately, the consequences of biased news spread further than party loyalty.
Hold Responsible Parties Accountable
The Buffalo shooter’s alleged manifesto mentions the “great replacement theory,” a debunked racist myth arguing that Democrats support open-border immigration policies to minimize the percentage of white people in the country. Carlson referenced the replacement theory in more than 400 episodes of his show, with other hosts referencing it as well. Following the shooting, Fox News could have provided their audience with clarity and recognized the danger to the myth. Instead Carlson played dumb, claiming he didn’t know what replacement theory was.
“For years, these types of beliefs have existed at the fringes of American life,” wrote Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a letter to Fox News. “However, this pernicious theory, which has no basis in fact, has been injected into the mainstream thanks in large part to a dangerous level of amplification by your network and its anchors.”
We should hold Fox News to a higher journalistic standard. Allowing a popular news network to spread such harmful conspiracy theories only ensures a more violent, polarized future for our society.
As a student studying journalism, the success of Fox News discourages me. A functional democracy relies on accurate, unbiased reporting. Fox News monopolizes viewership by fostering distrust in Republican viewers, and young people should challenge parents and relatives on their primary news sources. Fox News threatens more than just partisanship — it threatens lives.
John Hedberg • Jun 5, 2022 at 3:30 pm
Trigger Warning: This video contains HUMOR!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbkNIoJ-9jY
John Hedberg • Jun 2, 2022 at 10:41 pm
“Re-Tweet”:
Hmm. Krystal Ball is a Bernie Sanders Progressive who agrees with Tucker Carlson entirely about some of the questions surrounding January 6th. Both openly and properly denounce the violence as a matter of principle and public safety, but the pretext that a bunch of unarmed mostly senior citizens was ever a threat to the democratic process, or to most of the Capitol police whom they took selfies with, has been largely debunked across the political spectrum at this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmu1mLcdTuE
The establishment “legacy” media continues to trumpet the story like they’re an arm of the DNC or Pravda, but calling January 6th the worst thing to happen since Pearl Harbor or The Civil War is so grossly exaggerated, it’s comical. There were gunmen shooting and bombs going off in the Capitol all through the 20th Century, with more people hurt than 1 unarmed protester killed without warning by Capitol Police. Doesn’t anyone do any homework in journalism anymore, or is the point now to obscure the truth, rather than clarify it?
A question worth inquiry?
Anyway, I told my Dad one day that Tucker Carlson was being called a racist, and he challenged me to watch the show every day for a month out of honesty, because he didn’t believe it was right to call someone something criminal without evidence. I’ve watched the show now for several years, and not only haven’t I ever heard him say anything racist, but some of his most frequent guests are stars in the civil rights movement, an incredibly diverse crew whose strangest stories on first hearing often turn out to be true as new facts emerge.
Keep an open mind, both about Carlson and about January 6th. The FBI recently refused to deny under direct Congressional questioning that they had agents involved in fomenting the violence on January 6th. The whole political spectrum perked up their ears when that happened. “More news at 11:00?” 😉
All the Best, With Love,
J Hedberg
John Hedberg • Jun 2, 2022 at 9:15 am
Wow, this article is just full of hateful lie after divisive lie after deceitful lie, all echoing DNC talking points defaming Republicans in general and Fox News in particular as deliberately partisan spreaders of disinformation, which is curious, because if you look at the Fox News viewership polls, nearly half of Democrats watch Fox News, with some of the highest Democrat participation watching Tucker Carlson, so if he’s the racist fringe-monger his political opponents like to label him as, about half of Democrats appear to be racist fringe-mongers.
When I told me Dad that I heard Tucker was racist, he challenged me. He said, “Is it fair to label anyone as a criminal without seeking evidence with your own eyes & ears?”. He challenged me to watch Tucker Carlson and see for myself if he said anything racist, misogynistic, or hateful. Not only have I not heard any of these things, but Carlson regularly stands up and openly says he believes in an MLK-classical liberal worldview, since this is the worldview of the Declaration of Independence, the basis of the Constitution, and the “Dream” most Americans have held dear for more than 2 generations of learning from Dr. King’s spiritual apex in public school. Not only that, but he has regular guests who are stars in the civil rights movement, people of all backgrounds, colors, lifestyles, and even ideologies. This is probably why so many Democrats watch him every night. It’s clear from his behavior that he genuinely believes in diversity and respects other people, just by listening to his conversations and who he talks to.
So, Maggie here, who clearly wrote this hit-piece to be popular with the DNC in-crowd, has never watched the show, nor watched the episodes she says she’s quoting, and has no idea how badly she’s lying, nor how poorly she’s treating someone who actually believes in most of her own core values, if I had to guess. Ironically, the DNC echo chamber she’s echoing from is not inclusive, has shown itself to be clearly racist itself, and only stays in power now by falsely accusing everyone around them of the very racism, division, science-denial, and corruption they practice daily themselves. I stand with Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald, and Elon Musk. Today’s Democratic Party has moved so far Left, they’ve left most real liberals (like me) behind in a flurry of hateful rhetoric and empty finger-pointing at folks who are, by and large, entirely innocent of the crimes they’re daily being accused of by racist, bigoted, science-denying Democrats.
In 2020, Joe Biden told black America, “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black”, telling everyone who the true racist leaders are: the ones who only look at a person by their race or “identity”, and erase all of their individual humanity outside those cartoon lines. Democrats have for years bragged about “replacement theory” as an actual policy, with the idea that more “immigrants of color” would automatically vote for them: “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black” is the mind of the real racists. Ironically, increasing numbers of African Americans, Hispanic folks (I qualify), and immigrants from around the world aren’t following DNC hate-narratives, and they’re voting Republican. Most ironically of all, it’s Hispanic folks along the Texas border who are turning against Democrats most strongly, since they see the DNC “replacement” border policy as a crisis in their communities, and they’re fed up enough not only to vote Republican, but to run for office as Republicans. Evidently, to them, replacement policy is actual racism practiced by Democrats against “people of color” they assume to be their own voters, and folks of all colors are plain tired of being deliberately disadvantaged by Democrats who claim they’re here to help, but only mean they’re here to help themselves get more votes while they make things worse.
So, the “replacement theory” is an actual policy bragged about for years by racist Democrats who think that “color” is the only thing that matters, but it’s biting them in the backside, because increasingly larger numbers of ethnically diverse folks like me can see plainly that they care nothing about disadvantaged people aside from the votes and power they represent, and none of the problems Democrats falsely paint onto Republicans ever seem to get better, even in areas where Democrats are 100% in control, and have been for generations. It’s the Democrats now who are actually running their own Plantation, but the people they assumed would “vote for them if they’re black” are actually leaving these lying hypocrites behind… and watching Tucker Carlson, The Five, and other Fox News programming along with their usual diet of NPR and WaPo. They want actual diversity and solutions for a change, not just knee-jerk political labels to stampede their vote.
Finally, regarding the gun issue and the Uvalde massacre, Texas Governor Abbott was asked why he didn’t support more gun control after what happened. He said that areas like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York have those same strict gun laws that Democrats claim will solve the problem, but in those areas with the strictest gun laws, shootings are actually worse than Uvalde. Twenty innocent people, including children, are dying in those cities every weekend, so if those strict gun policies are the answer, why are the shootings getting worse in those areas, not better?
Interesting question, since it asks Americans to use logic instead of empty echo chamber talking points from politicians who like to point fingers, but seem quite content when things get worse, since (surprise!) it seems to keep them in power longer.
Just some thoughts, from me and me Dad.
Best Regards,
J Hedberg