Fox News

Frustrated Old Xenophobes

You gotta spin it to win it Media

Stop the presses!

Homicide bombing The Economist Ted Rall Melodrama James Burke Breitbart.com Piers Morgan Digital Rights Management Geopolitika

We want pictures of Spider-Man!

Journalism Newspapers All articles

Extra! Extra!

WIGO World v - t - e

“”I created a TV network for people 55 to dead. Nobody believed it could be done, but I did it. It's for guys who sit on their couch with the remote all day and night.

—Roger Ailes

“”20% accurate as usual, Morty.

—Rick Sanchez

“”To be frank, oftentimes this show is critical of Fox. But only because they're terrible.

—Jon Stewart on The Daily Show's relationship with Fox News

“”Today's Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.

—Ralph Peters, retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and former Fox News analyst

“”There now exists a legal record of [Fox's] dishonesty. The public should now understand that Fox personalities are willing to say things they know are false as part of a business model to keep viewers glued to its propaganda machine.

—Jennifer Rubin on the Dominion Voting System lawsuit against Fox

Fox News Channel, also called Fucked News, Faux News (by people who don't know how to pronounce "faux"), Fox/Faux Noise, Pox News, 7ox News, "Bullshit Mountain", America's Pravda, and so forth, is an American cable and satellite news channel whose owner News Corp perpetrates all sorts of right-wing slants and sensationalist headlines back home. Bullshit is in fact Fox's internally-recognized brand, having labeled its own host Neil Cavuto's pushback against Donald Trump's 2020 election denial as "brand threat".

The name "Fox News" is misleading, as the channel is better described as entertainment, like the National Enquirer in audiovisual form. As documents from a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems confirmed, it can also be thought of as a propaganda network for the Republican party, with even its so-called "news" division under considerable pressure to align with the GOP and advance its power. Unlike other news organizations, Fox News does not have a department of ethics and standards, nor does it publish ethics guidelines.

Conservapedia now regards Fox News as "a promoter of the homosexual agenda" (!) and a "RINO backer", and has characterized it as undergoing an increasingly "left-wing shift", which only goes on to show how many more screws loose they have.

The network is generally highly reluctant to retract fake news that it spreads, such as that about Seth Rich, or promoting Donald Trump's Big Lie "fraud" claims for the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In the later case, Dominion lawsuit documents revealed that top Fox on-air personalities promoted Trump's "fraud" claims despite detailing in internal emails and messages that they, along with top executives and board members all the way up to Rupert Murdoch, knew that Trump's claim was complete bullshit. To avoid a potentially very embarrassing trial, on April 18, 2023, Fox News settled with Domininon for $787.5 million and acknowledged tepidly that they had promoted falsehoods against Dominion.

Ownership

“”We Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we're discovering that we're working for Fox.

—David Frum, former American Enterprise Institute fellow, 2010

Fox News was founded as part of the now-defunct News Corporation, the media empire of Australian-born American media mogul Rupert Murdoch. News Corporation also owned The Sun, a similarly awful newspaper in the United Kingdom that's a great companion to Fox News. The network, similar to its gutter siblings like the Sun and the Daily Mail, has a reputation for pandering to the lowest common denominator via the Page Three Girls. No, you can look them up yourself. (Warning: NSFW!)

Murdoch isn't easily embarrassed by much, but when the now-defunct tabloid News of the World was caught hacking into phones and bribing police, the British Parliament held hearings, forcing Murdoch to distance himself (arguably, to a degree, from his own son). Curiously, his other news outlets in Australia and the United States, including Fox News, barely acknowledged its sister-rag's disaster across the ocean.

In addition to being started by a dude from Australia, News Corp has as its Nº2 shareholder Alwaleed Bin Talal, a Saudi prince and businessman who also heads the "Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation" (formerly the "Kingdom Foundation"). In 2010, Fox News reported that the "mosque" to be built next to the site of the former World Trade Center was funded by the Kingdom Foundation, an organization they said "funds madrassas all over the world", as a possible link to terrorist motives for the building of the mosque; however, they failed to mention that the guy who funded it is also in business with Murdoch.

So if some hypothetical unbiased observer were to judge Fox News by its own standards of guilt by association, the channel would qualify as a terrorist front. Still, by the same token, all real estate developers in New York City are the same.

Slogan

"Fair & Balanced" is a trademarked slogan of the network, initially used in conjunction with "Real Journalism."

Slogans previously trotted out include:

• "We Report. You Decide." — Closer to "We Report, You Believe" than you'd like to think. Sometimes heard as "We Distort, You Deride". (Other suggestions include "We Retort, They Have Lied," "They Purport, We Decry," "They Are Short (of truth), We Decry (the truth)", and "Smorty Smort, Blort Deblort.")
• "The Most Powerful Name in News" — You don't need to be trusted or even merit trust; you just need to be powerful to have people believe in you.
• "America's News Headquarters" — Don't go anywhere else; we have all the information you want (no word on what non-Americans or liberals would use).

Staffing

Fox News employs people from a broad base of the political spectrum, from the sort-of-far-right to the mostly-far-right to the ultra-far-right. Nevertheless, on-air personalities tend to fall into recognizable categories: angry Irish guys, attractive women (often blonde, chosen for their nice legs for cameras to creepily pivot around), and milquetoast liberals.

"Anchor babes"

“”The United States of America is awesome. We are awesome. But we've had this discussion. We've closed the book on it. The reason they want the discussion is not to show how awesome we are. It's to show us how we're not awesome.

—Andrea Tantaros "explaining" the Senate report on CIA torture

“”I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.

—Roger Ailes

A play on their favorite pejorative term "anchor baby" for immigrant children. To capture the lonely hetero male demographic that's too old to either Google for porn or buy Playboy, Fox News employs a host of attractive women in a cunning, devious strategy to let their viewers watch the very thing they want to see (those heartless bastards!). Since many of these women were former models or have used the network to bolster their modeling careers, Fox News does not hire them for their qualifications, agency, or journalistic integrity, but to have them look good in short skirts and hooker boots while regurgitating wingnut talking points. In fact, this phenomenon might be another case of wingnut welfare, but with sexist seasoning. It's one thing to be presentable and attractive, but qualifications come first, and while we can't blame women for wanting to be hired at Fox News to be successful, we can certainly blame Fox News for being the ones making the judgment calls to prioritize appearance and leering over good journalism.

Fox News is the only network that employs a full-time "image consultant". Compared to other news networks, the amount of makeup used on the network has also been said to be much greater by guests like Liza Mundy.

Given the questionable dynamics that Fox News encourages for female employees, women may have had to endure unwanted advances and other abuse; otherwise, their careers would not advance. Former network president Roger Ailes was Tricky Dick's media advisor; he resigned amid widespread accusations of sexual harassment from several women, suggestive of a culture tolerating sexual harassment at the network. There is an allegation that at least one woman was pressured to get other women into positions where they would be vulnerable to harassment and forced to put up with sexual advances from Ailes, who was about twice her age at the start. The victim claimed that this led to her mental health severely deteriorating.

Notable (dysfunctional) personalities

• Keith Ablow, the in-house shrink, Beck co-author, and Chaz Bono admirer
• Bret Baier, host of Special Report
• Shannon Bream
• Julie Banderas, one of Fox News' more moderate reporters. In June 2006, she gained international media attention for her infamous on-air clash with Shirley Phelps-Roper, former spokeswoman for the Westboro Baptist Church. In June 2015, she publicly supported gay marriage after the Supreme Court legalized it.
• Tammy Bruce, token pro-choice feminist and lesbian
• Tony Bruno, racist sportscaster
• Pat Buchanan, Formerly Most well-known fascist in america.
• Neil Cavuto, who actually takes Trump to task on occasion
• Jason Chaffetz, Hillary Clinton witch hunter and anti-Planned Parenthood crusader
• Ann Coulter, who bathes in the blood of Canadians to keep her bitchiness and Marfan syndrome in check
• Steve Doocy (pronounced /'duːʃi/)
• Peter Doocy
• Susan Estrich, a token feminist and Democrat who, in another life, was the first presidential campaign runner (for Michael Dukakis in 1988) and a pioneer in advocating changes to rape and sexual harassment laws
• Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party
• Steve Forbes, also known as "Mr. Flat Tax."
• Newt Gingrich, serial adulterer and former Speaker of the House
• Sebastian Gorka, former Trump advisor, alt-righter, and bonafide fascist
• Jennifer Griffin
• Greg Gutfeld, the resident 'comedian', who made a 'joke' about the Holocaust to a Jewish co-host based on utilitarianism
• Sean Hannity, of the eponymous Infowars wannabe program Hannity
• Bill Hemmer
• Brit Hume, once lauded for his Iraq War coverage, now another retired hack turning up on Fox every Sunday.
• Laura Ingraham
• Julie Kelly, Fox contributor best known for calling Capitol police officer Michael Fanone a "crisis actor" following the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
• Gene Koprowski, global warming denialist
• Dennis Kucinich, token actual leftist… who went pro-Trump and pro-Assad in recent years.
• Tomi Lahren, everyone's favorite screeching conservative millennial
• John Bradshaw Layfield, financial analyst and former professional wrestler (gotta get that hard-hitting journalism!)
• Mark Levin, wingnut host of Life, Liberty, and Levin on Sundays
• Martha MacCallum, host of The Record, and a botched clone of Megyn Kelly^{[citation NOT needed]}
• Michelle Malkin, anchor baby
• Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter, known for her coverage of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 Iraq invasion, which was later discovered to have been based on inaccurate information from the intelligence community.
• Steve Milloy, of their "science" show
• Father "Knows Best" Jonathan Morris, member of the secretive Legion of Christ.
• Andrew Napolitano, former judge and libertarian crank
• Oliver North, occasional appearances (when not betraying service, nation, and president)
• Candace Owens, an outspoken critic of Black Lives Matter
• Caribou Barbie
• Dana Perino, Dubya's former Deputy Press Secretary and one of five who hosts The Five
• Jeanine Pirro, host of Justice with Judge Jeanine and a bonafide wingnut if there ever was one
• Karl Rove, "political analyst".
• Jon Scott
• Stuart Varney, economic consultant
• Jesse Watters, Bill O'Reilly's former protégé
• Allen West, former Congressman and U.S. Army officer, and resident Tea Party nutcase
• Juan Williams, fired from NPR after racist "Muslim garb" crack and quickly hired by Fox.
• The cast of Fox and Friends (Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade)

Former personalities

• Glenn Beck, host of the Glenn Beck Show and frequent contributor who now runs TheBlaze
• Bob Beckel, token liberal strawman, former Walter Mondale campaign runner, racist, misogynist, and self-described Islamophobe who was finally booted out after going a bit overboard with the racism.
• Eric Bolling, fired over sexual harassment allegations.
• John Bolton, one of Dubya's chickenhawks who was also Trump's newest National Security Advisor, resigned in 2019.
• Herman Cain, former 2012 Republican presidential candidate and another wingnut, died of COVID-19 in 2020.
• Gretchen Carlson, fired by Roger Ailes after she refused his sexual advances and complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment. Ailes was later forced to resign after Carlson exposed him.
• Tucker Carlson, was the main face of the network after taking over the ol' Bill O'Reilly stardom and Megyn Kelly's prime-time spot. Parted ways with Fox in 2023 shortly after the Dominion Voting Systems settlement.
• Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who's also a creationist wingnut. Trump administration's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
• Alisyn Camerota, defected to CNN.
• James Carville, former Democratic strategist, Bill Clinton loyalist, and "It's the economy, stupid" guy. He's since left Fox for MSNBC.
• Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney
• Alan Colmes, died of lymphoma in 2017.
• Steven Crowder, the right-wing's favorite stand-up comedian, fired in 2013 after he made negative statements about Sean Hannity.
• Monica Crowley, a former foreign affairs analyst who later defected to MSNBC but still pops up on occasion
• S. E. Cupp, defected to CNN.
• Lou Dobbs, cancelled due to being one of the primary promoters of Donald Trump's Big Lie and thus a large target of defamation lawsuits against Fox.
• Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report
• Kimberly Guilfoyle, forced out over sexual harassment allegations.
• Ed Henry, fired over sexual misconduct allegations.
• E. D. Hill, whose show was canceled in June 2008 after asking whether a fist bump between then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle after the final 2008 Presidential Democratic primaries was a "terrorist fist jab". She was fired in November 2008.
• Catherine Herridge, defected to CBS.
• Mike Huckabee, now hosts a revival of his old Fox show on Trinity Broadcasting Network.
• John Kasich, hosted his own show after leaving the House of Representatives and left to run for Governor of Ohio.
• Megyn Kelly, who successfully laundered the network's image. Self-described as a "mix" of Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey [!!], Grace Kelly, and Larry the Cable Guy. Defected to NBC in January 2017 and was fired from the said network in October 2018 for on-air remarks she made on her talk show surrounding the appropriateness of blackface as part of Halloween costumes.
• Charles Krauthammer, former psychiatrist. Died of small intestine cancer in 2018
• William Kristol, a professional chickenhawk who is now a contributor to CNN
• G. Gordon Liddy, one of Tricky Dick's ratfuckers
• Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, now on The View
• Dick Morris, an "expert" on all things related to Bill, especially Hillary Clinton. He was fired in 2013 in his own admission, for being wrong with his political predictions.
• Heather Nauert, resigned in April 2017 to join the Trump administration.
• Bill O'Reilly, the host of The O’Reilly Factor, fired due to his various sexual harassment scandals; eventually, the payoffs got too large ($50 million).
• Ralph Peters, a military analyst who left in 2018 after calling Fox News a "propaganda machine" for Donald Trump (which it is).
• Kirsten Powers, left for CNN due to the Ailes sexual harassment scandal.
• Trish Regan, who had also been at CNBC in the past.
• Geraldo Rivera, defected to NewsNation.
• James Rosen, who was fired over sexual harassment allegations.
• Rick Santorum, who served as a political analyst, is now (surprisingly) at CNN.
• Shepard Smith, the "straightest" newsperson out of the entire network, which doesn't say much, but he has had some points of solid gold. Defected to CNBC.
• John Stossel, who went to Reason TV.
• Greta van Susteren, who defected to MSNBC, then left after less than six months.
• Andrea Tantaros, was fired for violating a major part of her contract and later filed a lawsuit for sexual harassment. Ironically, the lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
• Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday. He was one of the network's more moderate reporters. Moderated the third presidential debate for the 2016 election. Defected to CNN+.

Programming

“”The North Koreans do a more nuanced show [than Fox].

—Jay Wallace, President of Fox News in September 2020

Fox News' usual programming includes anything containing the words Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, celebrity, or other such pointless drivel. Occasionally, they let actual news slip by, but it's always quickly removed. They are also your national headquarters for uninteresting Southern California car chases.

Fox News mostly enjoys providing shouting matches about anything that bothers them. Say what you will about Rupert Murdoch; he knows a good business model when he sees it. Instead of training journalists and shipping them to newsworthy spots, he hires demagogues to scream hysterically for hours. Filling airtime with real stories costs much more money than having lunatics rave, and besides, temper tantrums are often morbidly fascinating. During the temporary short periods of relaxation to catch your breath, they occasionally mention some real "news" but quickly change the subject.

Fox News was the first to try and convince us that Barack Obama is a Muslim sleeper trained in a radical Islamic madrasa, a co-conspirator of terrorist Bill Ayers, who salutes his wife with a "terrorist fist jab". The network is still awaiting a Pulitzer for these notable revelations.

Covering international affairs, Fox News finds a way to point out whatever effect it has on the United States, such as: "Lots of murder and genocide is going on in that small African country, but fortunately, the US has no plans to send soldiers there at all," or: "The Asian stock market crashed today in a total collapse of their economy; as a result, the US stock market will likely suffer slightly until the Asians get their act together."

Fox News invented the technique of showing one thing on the screen while commenting upon the opposite, such as Sean Hannity repeatedly asserting that Rudy Giuliani was winning in the 2008 Republican debates, despite live polls showing Ron Paul winning. In November 2009, Hannity marveled at the turnout for a conservative political rally while showing footage of another. Hannity and Fox News reported long queues for Sarah Palin's book signings, but the video actually came from a McCain campaign rally a year earlier.

When a major news story is breaking, and the news is injurious to conservatives or Republicans or can't otherwise be avoided, Fox News takes one or more of these strategies:

1. Remind viewers that President Bill Clinton had fellatio in the White House and "damaged" the Presidency
2. Bring in some sort of reminder about 9/11 and emphasize that the nation is safer from terrorism because of what the Republicans are doing.
3. Offer 'proof' that Barack Obama is a radical Muslim/Nazi/communist/socialist/anti-American/n-n-Negro/terrorist/born in Kenya or somewhere else foreign
4. Change the subject by presenting celebrity gossip or covering "breaking news" (Fox News Alert), such as an oil refinery fire in Arkansas, far away from the damaging news on Capitol Hill
5. Blame liberals, leftists, socialists, communists, Antifa, centrists, progressives, fake Republicans, Democrats, Clintons, France, O.J. Simpson, and/or actual news media
6. Bringing up the Steele Dossier or something about FISA reports, just when they're losing you, to give the impression they speak from evidence-based facts
7. When all of the above fails, just go ahead and change the party affiliation (from R to D) of the person who's in trouble (see below)

Flogging wingnut pseudoscience

An astounding 120% polled, mathematics according to Fox News

“”"Oil slicks help keep seals youthful, supple" study finds

—The Simpsons, "Mr. Spitz Goes to Washington"

Naturally, Fox News loves manufactroversies over evolution and global warming. They've gone as far as to hawk Ken Ham's Creation Museum, and global warming denial is also a favorite. During the breaking of the Climategate "story", VP Bill Sammon sent a memo encouraging anchors to run with the story, writing, "It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies." Steve Milloy, of course, is a constant source of denialism, general anti-environmentalism, and copious amounts of hippie-punching.

In April 2018, Fox News promoted the contrasting opinions of conspiracy theorist/Biblical numerologist David Meade and young-Earth creationist Jonathan Sarfati while briefly mentioning NASA regarding Planet X/Nibiru.

Ad refusals

Fox News is known for occasionally refusing advertisements that don't align with Murdoch's view of what's good for America. For example, in May 2010, it refused to air an ad from VoteVets, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, which asked for clean energy development to reduce the U.S.'s dependence upon Middle Eastern oil.

Gold coin ad scams

“”No one in their right mind would pay the premiums that these guys are charging

—Ken Lewis, chief executive of online coin dealer Apmex, reacting to the outrageous prices of Fox News hawked gold "collectible" coins

Fox News, however, is happy to run many advertisements that are outright scams. Specifically, its favorite scam advertisements concern gold. As far back as the late 2000s, Fox News host Glenn Beck was happy to shill gold (as a supposed "hedge" against "economic collapse") from a shady company called Goldline. Goldline pioneered the business model of baiting customers seeking to invest in gold bullion and instead selling them highly overpriced gold coins by using bullshit paranoid claims, such as insinuations that the government will come after any standard bullion gold and claims that an economic collapse is coming soon. For this, in 2011, they were charged with false advertising, conspiracy, and theft by false pretenses. In 2012, Goldline received an injunction where they had to refund $45 million to defrauded customers and drop the paranoid bullshit advertising tactics.

Despite Goldline's bust-up, several other scam organizations (many of them fronted by ex-Goldline employees) copied Goldline's model of running gold advertisements on Fox News (and other conservative outlets such as Newsmax) with tales of economic doom designed to scam senior citizens out of their retirement savings. Naturally, many of these advertisements took advantages of the hyper-partisan propaganda Fox News was spewing by darkly parroting similar Chicken Little style doom bullshit about Democrat politicians like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden. Sometimes, in order to enhance the appeal of the scam ads, the advertisements used actors recognizable to the Boomer demographic target (such as the 1980s primetime soap opera star William Devane, who shilled for a shady gold coin operation called Rosland Capital.) In other cases, in a similar manner to Beck's Goldline shilling, conservative pundits political figures directly did the shilling themselves (as an example, Rudy Giuliani shilled for yet another shady gold company called American Hartford Gold on his podcasts). As anecdotal examples, in July 2023, the Washington Post reported that one disabled retiree was scammed out of $80,000 by a gold scam company called Lear Capital, and another senior citizen was scammed out of $47,000 by American Hartford Gold.

Of course, the scam companies don't just rely on Fox News TV advertisements. These companies also specifically look online for Fox News viewers so that they can run gold coin scam ads on their Facebook feed, using the same fear-mongering tactics.

Musical interludes

In 2006, Trent Reznor of the rock band Nine Inch Nails issued a cease and desist to Fox News for using his band's songs "La Mer", "The Great Below", and "The Mark Has Been Made" on their program War Stories with Oliver North without his permission. Reznor posted on his blog, "Thanks for the Fox News heads-up. A cease and desist has been issued. Fuck Fox Fucking News."

In 2011, Adam Levine of Maroon 5 issued a similar cease-and-desist order to the network for playing the band's song "Moves Like Jagger". He stated on Twitter, "Dear Fox News, don't play our music on your evil fucking channel ever again. Thank you." Fox News anchor Andy Levy replied in a tweet, "Dear @AdamLevine, don't make crappy fucking music ever again. Thank you." Wait, if they hate Maroon 5, why did they even play their music in the first place?

Language

Fox News is known to continually pervert the English language to further a right-wing agenda. Thus, suicide bombers became, in Fox Newspeak, homicide bombers at the same time the Bush administration was encouraging news outlets to use this term. Don't like political correctness? Fuck you libtards; let's make our own!

Availability

As of 2020, Fox News is available to 90 million households in the United States and to other viewers internationally. Many more outrageous or potentially controversial clips, particularly those of their opinion pundits, are widely available on YouTube.

Towards the end of 2014, the satellite television company Dish got into an altercation with Fox News's parent company, with the network claiming that Dish needed to pay them more to continue carrying their channel due to the rising cost of maintaining it. Dish reported that Fox News attempted to double their contract rate, which Dish was willing to meet, but the network tried to triple the rate on an unrelated channel that had a contract not set to expire for some time. As a result, Fox News was blacked out on all Dish Network devices for several weeks, causing quite a nasty dip in its ratings before the two could reach a new deal.

Fox News was available in the United Kingdom via Murdoch's Sky satellite TV service until 2017, when it was withdrawn. It had a tiny audience in the UK (2,000 viewers a day) and was the target of some Ofcom rulings, although its withdrawal may have been related to a Murdoch takeover attempt, even though Sky stated it was because of the audience, which for them is due to Fox News being made for an American viewership.

Popularity

Fox News effectively secured a dedicated and loyal audience of considerable size, virtually all conservative Republicans. Many viewers consider Fox News the only reliable source of information in America, with the channel literally being the only media outlet out of 30 American media sources that most Republicans trusted in a Pew survey in January 2020. It would be laughable if it wasn't so awful for American politics.

Polls

Popularity

In January 2010, a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling revealed Fox News as the most trusted name in television, voted top by three-quarters of Republicans and considerably fewer Democrats.

“”A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news. But the media landscape has really changed and now they’re turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.

—Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling

Despite their higher-than-everyone-else ratings, everyone else is labeled as the "mainstream media". That fact, combined with the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group's dominance over local television news, could bring one to wonder where the "mainstream liberal media" idea ever came from.

Reliability

Popularity does not translate into integrity or knowledge. In 2010, a University of Maryland study found that Fox News viewers aren't merely the most uninformed but the most misinformed. In 2015, 58% of Fox's rated statements at PolitiFact rated "Mostly False" or worse, with 29% of all statements rating "False" outright.

In 2011, a study conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University found similar results: that people who watched no news were better informed than those who watched Fox News. Fox News viewers were much more likely "to believe false information about politics." The study also revealed Fox News fans had a poor grasp of situations in the Middle East.

Political involvement

George W. Bush White House communications director Nicole Wallace credited Hannity and El Rushbo with shaping Republican strategy.

In February 2023, it was revealed in the Dominion lawsuit that Rupert Murdoch personally shared un-aired Joe Biden campaign ads with Donald Trump advisor Jared Kushner, potentially violating the law.

Republican Governors donations

In August 2010, Fox News Corp continued its 'fair and balanced' doctrine, donating $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. Bloomberg News reports Fox News Corp is the largest corporate donor to the RGA.

Tea Party

Throughout the 2009-2010 congressional campaign season, Fox News Corp strongly backed and at times took credit for the Tea Party movement, showcasing Sarah Palin and often backing fringe candidates such as Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle, as well as lunatic figures such as Michelle Bachmann. They've also been notorious for racist and sexist slurs against politicians such as President Barack Obama, House member Nancy Pelosi, and congressman Maxine Waters.

Fox News took out full-page ads in the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal. In promoting the Tea Party, Fox often took the false approach that mainstream news ignored this important news story, crafting prominent headlines reading, "How did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this story?" This blatant attempt at smearing the media offended a lot of hard-working and real journalists.

Gabrielle Giffords shooting

Fox backed away from self-criticism in the January 8, 2011 shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, in which six others were killed, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. In repudiating responsibility for rhetoric, Sean Hannity implied liberals were at fault. On January 12, Sarah Palin issued a “blood libel” video statement, denying her Giffords-in-the-crosshairs attacks could be at fault while implying she (Palin) was the real victim.

Meanwhile, Fox canceled a planned appearance of Joan Rivers, who partially blamed the Arizona shootings on Palin and referred to Sarah as "stupid and a threat." Fox naturally denied cancellation, insisting it wasn't censorship but a 'mistake', immediately refuted by Joan's daughter Melissa Rivers and a Rivers producer and representative.

Criticism

Fox News has been the subject of a variety of criticisms.

Conspiracy theories

Fox News has supported many conspiracy theories about subjects such as Benghazi, the IRS, Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare, the deep state, and many others, to the point of idiots citing them.

Fox has been sued for spreading defamatory information from conspiracy theories but has been happy to (rightly) claim that YouTube also spreads conspiracy theories.

Disguised opinion

Instead of sourcing, Fox News uses phrases like "some say…" or "someone asked…" to obscure editorial manipulation and opinion-casting. 'Some' have called it (wink) empty calories of journalism.

Their inclination towards being a comedy show is heightened by their ridiculous opinion debates, where they all sit around a table, spouting out rubbish propaganda that conservatives have paid them to say. They have also contradicted their own reporters when they find the news not to their liking. They then try to think of a way to disguise this travesty of a debate into a legitimate one by inviting a guest, who then debunks them before they cut them off. This is a regular occurrence in the Fox News network - conservative propaganda, ignoring stories that hurt the Republican party, and if they can somehow squeeze it in - bash President Obama and sing songs of Trump. One could call Fox News a comedy show, but one of poor, unintentional humor.

Graphics

Looks like someone read How to Lie With Statistics... According to this graph, 6,000,000 / 7,066,000 = 84.9% 33%. Given the rapid nature of TV news, who's gonna stop and critically examine the graph before camera goes back to a commentator's ugly mug?

Fox News exploits the mathematical illiteracy of the public by using graphs distorted beyond what mere incompetence could explain. In many cases, their figures don't add up, and in others, numbers are graphically misrepresented - as people rarely examine the traits of the graph such as scaling, numbers on the X and Y axis, and proportions of the pieces of the graph.

On their website, Fox News has also been known to publish digitally manipulated images altered to suit their narrative.

Fox Nation

In April 2009, Media Matters began documenting Fox Nation's false and blatantly biased stories. After one year, their laundry list of the most extreme examples contained approximately 425 entries.

Transphobia and homophobia

“”I don't do what Bradley Manning wants me to do.

—Fox News host Gregg Jarrett defending his decision to continue referring to US Army Pvt. Chelsea E. Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, as a man, [2]

Fox News has long been criticized for transphobic and homophobic bias. Back in 2014, Fox News played an important rule on turning the Jack Phillips controversy--a story based around a homophobic baker who didn't want to bake a wedding cake for gay customers--into national news. Fox News also has a long history of giving the spotlight to Christians who attempt to use their religion as a justification for homophobia.

In 2015, Fox's homophobia led them to believe a utterly nonsensical story about a student in California being bullied on the basis of anti-gay beliefs.

Fox has also long been accused of transphobia, to the point where multiple experts have said that their coverage of transgender issues contributes to violence and discrimination against transgender people, with many taking the time to document the various ways Fox fear mongers about transgender people.

During the first two months of the Biden Administration, Fox aired eighty six segments vilifying transgender people.

Outfoxed

The documentary Outfoxed examines the biases and internal pressures at Fox News and its network outlets.

Further wingnut welfare

Besides its stable of news babes, Fox keeps many other wingnuts on its dole. The two most egregious examples are the former GOP convicts it employs, Oliver North, an architect of the Iran-Contra affair, and G. Gordon Liddy, one of the Watergate plumbers. (Bets on when Tom DeLay gets hired?) Then there are the "analysts" like Frank Luntz and Karl Rove. Don't forget your Steve Milloy-type corporate shills, either.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia dedicates an entire article to Fox News distortions and questionable acts. It is 88 kilobytes, about 10,000 words long, while the main article is only around 64 kb and 8000 words long. Their "Fox News" article is so controversial they had to semi-protect it. Constant changes to this article were found to have been made from an IP address in a Fox News office.^{[citation needed]}

Media Matters

Media Matters reports instances in which Fox News altered images of people, places, and things to influence viewers. They even have subcategories for individual programs and personalities.

The party switch

One of the more interesting Fox techniques involves the fairly consistent "party switch" from Republican (R) to Democrat (D) when a prominent GOP member is caught up in a public scandal. The following is a list of various examples of such:

• Mark Foley — A Republican member of the House of Representatives from Florida, Foley was alleged to have sent sexually inappropriate messages via email and text messages to teenage male pages. Ironically, he also introduced the "Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act of 2002". In several interviews, Fox News tagged him as a (D), or Democrat, on their subtitles.
• John McCain — Seen by many as a more moderate Republican during and following the 2004 Republican primaries, Fox News also labeled him a (D).
• Whitehouse / Chafee — During the pivotal 2006 Senate election in Rhode Island, eventual victor Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse was polling 10+ percentage points over the incumbent Lincoln Chafee. Fox News reported that Whitehouse (R) was leading Chafee (D) by 11 points.
• Ted Stevens — Before the 2008 Senate elections, this Senator from Alaska faced charges of failing to disclose benefits received. Fox News labeled him a (D).
• Mark Sanford — The Republican Governor of South Carolina in 2009 was dramatically found to be having an affair with an Argentinian woman after a week in which his whereabouts were unknown. During his press conference in which he admitted his affair, Fox News identified him as a (D).
• Eric Greitens — Missouri governor who was indicted on invasion of privacy in early 2018. While he was a Democrat until 2015, he switched parties and ran for governor as a Republican, but Fox decided to pretend the latter few years never happened and identified him as a (D).

Foxual revisionism

Fox has notoriously edited crowds at staged events to inflate the appearance of large numbers that attended Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Tea Party "events". Writer James Hibberd shows a "fun gotcha" how Fox photoshops (or videoshops) footage to exaggerate crowd number sizes for their reality program Master Chef.

Chris Wallace interviewed Jon Stewart on his show Fox News Sunday, where Stewart gave a pretty decent spanking to Fox News and Wallace. However, when it was broadcast, Fox had deleted 10 minutes of the 24-minute interview, including all the embarrassing bits.

Not to be deterred by revisionism, the following Tuesday, Stewart used the predominant theme "Fox News doesn't lie" in the edited interview and listed dozens of Fox lies. Wallace's response to the editing and lies pointed out by Stewart was to apologize for saying Fox News provided the other side of the story instead of the full story... or, as Stewart paraphrased, "That's your 'setting the record straight'? 'I accidentally told the truth and now I wish I could take it back'?"

Alleged racism

In 2008 a former employee named Harmeen Jones complained of daily racism against him and others, to which he was fired. These comments concerned African-Americans, Arabs, Muslims, Hispanics, women, and Jews. The said employee proceeded to sue Fox News. Harmeen also claims he was often told "you look like a gangster" or "like you're ready to shoot someone" and that he was advised by other minorities to keep his head down.

Criticism of Fox's use of ISIS raw propaganda video footage

In February 2015, Fox News embedded an Islamic State propaganda video in its entirety of captured Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh being burned to death, including the (untranslated) ISIS propaganda narrative. Jack Nance, an expert on Islamic extremism, including ISIS, stated,

“”[Fox News] are literally — literally — working for al-Qaida and ISIS’s media arm. They might as well start sending them royalty checks.

COVID-19

See the main article on this topic: COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox News spent much of the time downplaying the severe nature of the disease and was more likely to spread disinformation about social distancing or promote medical quackery by Donald Trump. Fox News hosts (Tucker Carlson in particular) also regularly promoted anti-vaccination skepticism. A 2020 study found that exposure to Fox News was correlated with decreased social distancing and less inclination to heed public health guidelines, harming containment efforts and contributing to the higher death toll of COVID-19 in the United States. A 2022 study found that Fox News reduced vaccination rates among viewers, separately from the known effect of Republicans getting vaccinated less often than Democrats. Tucker Carlson's show was particularly noteworthy for spreading misinformation about vaccines in the study.

Supporting Trump's bullshit election fraud claims

See the main article on this topic: 2020 U.S. presidential election

“”[N]o reasonable person would have thought that.

—Fox Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt, "on whether the allegation that Dominion rigged the election was true", and indirectly what Fox thinks of its audience

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trump's response was to repeatedly make baseless allegations that widespread fraud caused his defeat. This led to a noticeable split in network coverage, particularly after December 10, 2020, when voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic threatened legal action. One side of the network knew very well the libelous nature of Trump's claims and was reluctant to support them. There even were a few anchors that pushed back against Trump's claims as bullshit "designed to undermine your faith in American democracy". The other side (particularly prime-time hosts like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson) were all too happy to portray the election as rigged. This despite that, privately, many of these prime-time stars (as well as many other Fox News staff) knew that Trump's election fraud claims (as well as the over-the-top antics of Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell) were completely full of shit.

The mere suggestion from the "news side" of Fox News (where facts still mattered a little) that Trump lost the election was a step too far for some Fox News viewers. Preferring Trump ass-kissing propaganda outlets where facts didn't matter, they fled to "news networks" like Newsmax and OANN.

Ultimately, these fraud allegations accumulated on January 6, 2021, to spark the 2021 U.S. coup attempt, where a few thousand far-right terrorists, fueled by the rhetoric of Donald Trump at a rally a few hours earlier, stormed the Capitol building to try and stop the Electoral College vote count confirming that Joe Biden won the election. Predictably, Fox News hosts tried to shift the blame to Antifa despite there being zero evidence that Antifa activists were any part of this attack. At least one Capitol riot defendant claimed that he suffered from "Foxitis" and "Foxmania" and believed the lies about the 2020 election propagated by Fox News and Trump.

On February 4, 2021, voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic got tired of the bullshit and filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, along with three Fox anchors that were prominent in making baseless fraud claims (Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro). Fox News responded 24 hours later by canceling Lou Dobbs as a sacrificial lamb. Dominion Voting Systems followed up on March 26, 2021, by filing a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News over false claims.

In September 2023, a former Fox News producer named Jason Donner, who had worked there for 12 years as a Capitol Hill producer until he was fired from his job in September 2022, sued Fox News for wrongful termination. According to the lawsuit, Donner alleged that his firing was punishment for his political views, as part of a "purge" of employees who refused to only report information that would "appease" Donald Trump and his supporters. In particular, Donner who was inside the Capitol when the 2021 coup attempt happened, vehemently disagreed with Fox News' coverage of the self-coup participants. (When he heard Fox News report that rioters were "peaceful" in spite of the actual violence going on, he called the Fox News control room to yell a bunch of expletives at them and declare that "you're gonna get us all killed".) Donner also was ticked off by Tucker Carlson's pseudohistorical schlockumentary "Patriot Purge".

Quotes about Fox News

“”You know what a fake news show on Fox News should give you? Real news!

—Lewis Black (speaking about The 1/2 Hour News Hour)

“”Fox tends to lean more to the right than a man who's just had his right leg blown off.

—Charlie Brooker, Newswipe

“”Understand, this is an adjunct of the Republican Party.

— then Congressman (now Senator) Bernie Sanders, VT (I), Outfoxed

“”The Republicans should be paying Fox News.

—Jon Stewart, after Fox NewsCorp donated $1 million to Republican party

“”They can go fuck themselves. (Also reported as "They can go fox themselves.")

—Joan Rivers, after Fox canceled her appearance, then lied about it, following criticism of Sarah Palin

“”They're getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.

—Chris Wallace in response to Jon Stewart asking if Fox News is as ideologically neutral as most of the mainstream media

“”That to Fox, any editorial view that doesn't favor conservatism is elitist, but favoring conservatism is justified because it needs to be protected against liberal biases. And if you question this logic, it only proves how right they are.

—Jon Stewart's depiction of Fox News and rationale for bias

“”Once again, we [Fox] put something on the air that's a flat out lie and distortion.

—Bob Beckel on distortions of Obama's comments about infrastructure (01-Aug-12)

A string of lies too big to swallow

In the aftermath of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris by Muslim extremists, anti-Islam fever was at an all-time high. Naturally, this led to much speculation from many news channels about how Islam would be affected by the general public's new attitude toward it. Over on Bullshit Mountain, however, they decided to cut the speculation crap and dive into their asses headfirst to feed the hysteria.

On a Friday much like any other typical Friday at Fox, Fox Report host Julie Banderas was hosting a self-described "Islamic Terrorist Expert" going by the name of Steve Emerson. During the interview, Emerson referred to the "fact" that Birmingham in England was a city with a population composed of 70% Muslims (somehow overlapping with the 46.1% of the population that are listed as Christian in the 2011 and most recent census) and that there were several places in Sweden, London, Germany, Paris, etc. that had sharia law set up as that region's law, and that they were almost "a country within a country". However, the huge lie that got everyone's attention was Emerson's claim of supposed "no-go zones" in Paris, which Fox repeated in other reports.

The following Saturday, the network apologized for the factual errors not once but four times. Within minutes, memes were flying, and FOX's usual detractors were rolling out the "I told you so"s. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced plans to sue Fox News for the slander and libel brought about by the network and received approval from the city's council.

Even if we disregard Steve Emerson's comments, the days following the Hebdo attacks were an awful week for racist scaremongering by Fox pundits. Bob Beckel lamented the increase in interracial dating among young people and suggested this helped make them more receptive to radical Islam. Shannon Bream wondered aloud how we can tell whether masked criminals are "typical bad guys" if we can't see their skin color. Jeanine Pirro launched a hateful rant calling for the mass extermination of Islamic extremists by arming other Muslims and then "simply looking the other way".

Not even two weeks later, Bill O'Reilly pushed that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had not been charged with desertion (no doubt to impassion his viewers against our "Muslim-in-Chief"). However, this lie had been confirmed since that morning, and they were again caught in the act. While it is true that there will first be a hearing held to determine whether to proceed to trial, this is a far cry from not charging the man.

Things quieted down on the network for a few months after the Bergdahl claim. Although during the Brian Williams scandal Bill O'Reilly fended off statements by his former employers and coworkers that he had not covered those wars with his pen in the thick of it. While Bill had called for Brian Williams to be pulled off the air, Fox and Bill didn't have a single care about the many exaggerations of Bill's experiences, dismissing them as part of a left-wing campaign while admitting that at least some of the detractors' claims appeared to be correct.

However, then came the 2015 Baltimore riots. News media, in general, was pretty incompetent when it came to informing the public about the Baltimore riots, and Fox was no exception. All the news media organizations focused on the actual rioting, and very few focused on the peaceful protests, but when they did, it was full of blunders. Geraldo Rivera mistakenly attempted to speak to one of said peaceful protesters whom he thought was Russel Simmons, then claimed he looked like Russel Simmons when the man denied he was Mr. Simmons (though it's worth pointing out that CNN took it a step further and actually speculated Mr. Simmons was masquerading as the man in question when he wasn't). But Fox took their coverage of the riots further than anyone else.

On May 4, 2015, Fox attempted to get fears of the rioting started again with Mike Tobin, who claimed to be on the scene in Baltimore with the Fox crew, and that a Baltimore police officer had shot a young black man. Greta Van Susteren then stirred the pot by announcing this on Twitter without adequately following up on it. She followed up with a couple more tweets until the Baltimore Police Department tweeted that no one had been shot, refuting Tobin's claim. Van Susteren attempted to save face by saying everyone should turn on Fox to watch as they tried to sort it out.

Eventually, a freelance reporter managed to get Tobin to admit that he had not actually witnessed the crime he had apparently witnessed and that he had been in his van the entire time, the exact opposite of what he had said 20 minutes before. After a few hours, Shepard Smith had to step in, bring it back to the set, and apologize for screwing up yet again.

Nevertheless, it didn't stop people from circulating the information after the retraction, but the Baltimore Police Department is firm in that it didn't happen. The whole saga can be seen on Snopes Today.

See also

• Fun:Fox
• Fake news
• Fox Going Out of Business Network
• GB News — Whose backers deny being the British version of the Fox News
• Liberal bias
• Mainstream media
• MSNBC — The liberal counter
• Newsmax — A Fox News competitor that's somehow even more loonier
• OANN — The conservative counter
• Pravda.ru — the Russian affiliate
• Roger Ailes

External links

• Official YouTube channel
• Idiocracy - Fox News Opening - never has a Fox parody been so simple.
• Caos on bullshit mountain ! lolololol
• Murdoch rips competitors for bias even as more Fox critics emerge on the right (source of Frum quotation)
• David Frum: Fox News Has An Interest In Marginalizing The GOP
• Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, PIPA
• NewsHounds: We watch Fox so you don't have to!
• #FoxNewsFacts -- Try scrolling to the bottom. (Hint: There doesn't seem to be one.)
• fox & friends is nicer to your march if it includes neo-nazis