Fox News Keeps Getting Foxier

[TexasTowelie]

Like right-wing politicians, they’re primarily interested in catering to the most extreme parts of their base.


The Atlantic’s invaluable Ron Brownstein makes the point that in red states, including Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, and Montana, “Republican legislators and governors have operated as if they were programming a prime-time lineup at Fox News. They have focused far less on the small-government, limited-spending, and anti-tax policies that once defined the GOP” and instead are obsessed with things like loosening gun restrictions, functionally banning abortion, targeting transgender folks, preventing minorities and other traditionally Democratic constituencies from voting, and attacking masks and vaccinations. As Brownstein points out, “Very few of the [states or right-wing districts within them] are competitive [in a general election], so all they are worried about is being primaried.” Alas, the people likely to do that successfully are almost all even crazier, given the fact that virtually all the energized support in the party today is motivated by a slavish devotion to Donald Trump.

Absent (the unimaginable) reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, these people are a lost cause. The death of the local news ecosphere in many communities and the void being filled by Fox and other national behemoths has made it impossible to hold a conversation with a common set of facts. As Barack Obama told Ezra Klein, when he first ran for president in 2008, he could “go to the fish fry, or the V.F.W. hall, or all these other venues, and just talk to people” in red states. “And they didn’t have any preconceptions about what I believed. They could just take me at face value. If I went into those same places now—or if any Democratic who’s campaigning goes in those places now—almost all news is from either Fox News, Sinclair news stations, talk radio, or some Facebook page. And trying to penetrate that is really difficult.”

Fox’s prime-time post-pandemic ratings are down, but remain almost equal to those of MSNBC and CNN combined. Tucker Carlson Tonight leads the pack in total viewers, averaging 2.94 million, and the audience is fed comically idiotic bullshit like this: “You can still go see a baseball game if you want to. But be warned, you will be sitting in your own roped off section marinating in your shame with the other disobedient bad people. Medical Jim Crow has come to America. If we still had water fountains, the unvaccinated would have separate ones.” As for the rest of the crew, the no less nutty Hannity was next with 2.63 million, and The Five at 2.63 million. Rachel Maddow snuck in with an audience of 2.52 million just before Laura Ingraham’s egregious program clocking in at 2.06 million.

Meanwhile, the (no doubt vaccinated) grand pooh-bahs at the network have chosen this moment of maximum political and social peril to double down on the damage they are doing to the health and sanity of the world, by making Fox ever more Foxier. In recent weeks, they lost two relatively sane Fox personalities: Juan Williams left The Five, and Donna Brazile is gone from the station entirely. The network canned its politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, at the beginning of the year, apparently in retaliation for his correct call of Arizona going for Joe Biden, along with Washington bureau chief Bill Sammon. White House correspondent Kristin Fisher, who according to The New York Times “aggressively debunked lies about election fraud advanced by Mr. Trump’s lawyers” has been shown the door as well. The (relatively) respectable newscaster Shepard Smith has been gone since 2019. Crazy people like Greg Gutfeld and Dan Bongino have been rewarded with new shows.

Read more: https://prospect.org/politics/altercation-fox-news-keeps-getting-foxier/
(American Prospect)