Fox News has lost control of its viewers [View all]

[marmar]

Fox News has lost control of its viewers
Fox News was founded to control the GOP base — but now the hosts are in the thrall of their worst viewers

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED APRIL 17, 2023 6:05AM (EDT)


(Salon) Roger Ailes came up with the idea for Fox News in the 70s, when he was working as an image consultant for then-president Richard Nixon. From the get-go, the idea was that a TV network would be a top-down propaganda outlet that would manipulate and control voters, especially more conservative ones. "People are lazy," read a document titled "A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News" that was presented to Nixon in 1970. "With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you." Even though the document was unsigned, it's widely believed to be the work of Ailes, who wanted a "pro-Administration" mouthpiece that could go around the traditional media.

The plan didn't get off the ground during the Nixon administration. It's arguable, and Ailes certainly believed, that if such a network had existed at the time, Nixon would have very well been able to survive Watergate. A Fox News would have been able to blast Republican voters with non-stop excuses that they could use to ignore the uncomfortable reality that their president was irredeemably corrupt. The proof of concept is evident: Donald Trump has survived multiple scandals that all make Watergate look like small stakes, largely because Fox is on hand to feed GOP voters all the rationalizations they need to stick by Trump's side.

Ailes, who died in 2017, was able to make his right-wing "news" network a reality in 1996 when he used Rupert Murdoch's backing to found Fox News. A defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, which a judge delayed start of until Tuesday, has already revealed that Fox News does not work as Ailes imagined it would. It is not a top-down propaganda outlet exploiting the empty heads of its right-wing audience in order to exert mind control over them. On the contrary, pre-trial documents filed by Dominion show the opposite: Fox's content is determined largely by the audience. Fox viewers want their favorite network to affirm the various racist conspiracy theories that proliferate on right-wing social media, and Fox leadership, eager to keep viewers and ad dollars, has been all too willing to comply. Even when, as the documents show, they're well aware that the "news" they're reporting isn't true.

....(snip)....

"Respecting this audience whether we agree or not is critical," host Sean Hannity wrote in one text, arguing that Fox needed to step up its game in airing these election conspiracy theories, even though he knew full well that Biden was the actual winner.

....(snip)....

It's likely that the relationship between Fox News and its viewers did, at one time, exist how Ailes imagined it, where Fox News tells people what to believe and they obediently listen. The advent of social media, however, shifted the locus of power away from the network to its viewers. On social media, there's no real check on how wild conspiracy theories can get or how far misinformation can spread. To compete with that, Fox News has to offer the same high-octane right-wing nuttery. It's likely that the trial will result in even more embarrassing evidence of how much Fox has reshaped itself to appeal to its audience's ugliest desires. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/17/fox-news-has-lost-control-of-its-viewers/