In the Shadow of Donald Trump: Not Mindless and Brain-Dead Republicans, But Words like Nuance and Thoughtful Run Counter to Fox News and That is a Problem Which Can be Overcome
March 15, 2023
It is usual now to talk of the Republican Party in some mass movement way, the issue is whether that really is the case. Jacob Chansley, the horned, shirtless Donald Trump supporter became the face of the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th. Some of those marching, protesting, breaking into the Capitol may have harbored several different beliefs of what they thought would happen, whether to prevent the formal counting of Electoral College votes, perform some type of citizens arrest of member of Congress (or the then Vice President, Mike Pence), or, in a fantasy way, think the outcome of their actions would lead to Trump remaining as President. It might be usual to describe Chansley as a Trump supporter (now serving prison time) but should he also be described as a typical Republican Party voter?
In the summer of 1987, Congressional hearings were held on what is known simply as the Iran-Contra Affairs. The Ronald Reagan Administration, against Congressional action, had secretly funneled arms to Nicaragua to support what it saw as fighters against Communism. At the center of this affair stood then Lt. Colonel Oliver North who played a major role in selling arms to Iran which then led to money and arms funneled in a convoluted way to Nicaragua. As the hearings began, news outlet started to refer to what became known as Olliemania, a belief that North was seen as a national hero. Member of Congress began to take their cues about how to believe the broader public saw North from what they got from media presentations about Olliemania. The public, however, was much more complex in how they viewed both North and the Reagan Administration. While Reagan was personally liked by many Americans, many of his policies received low voter support. Letters sent to members of Congress revealed that many Americans also had a low opinion of North. One political scientist wrote, “officeholders champion low common denominator issues that they expect will appeal to many voters. South bites blur into laws.” A newspaper reporter while Olliemania was in full swing, checked with newspapers around the country and discovered that many of the letters received about North were highly critical of him and that what he did was seen as “inappropriate.” One letter written to a congressman while Congressional hearings on Iran-Contra were going on wrote, “We are not mindless and faceless individuals but still strong independent Americans.” Both Reagan and North were criticized in letters written to members of Congress. One letter on Reagan said that he should not be called “the great communicator,” but “the great manipulator.” While on North another wrote, “Colonel North might merit an A in Marketing and Public Relations, but I would certainly give him an F in Democracy and Ethics.”
Recalling how the Iran-Contra Affair played out on television runs counter to a more complex undercurrent that was missed, and still is, by much of television news. The simplicity of saying “Americans are polarized in their politics,” or assuming that Critical Race Theory or Drag Queen Reading Hours are the predominate issues on the minds of many Americans or that Trump’s base of supporters are a mindless mess of Jacob Chansleys, is the stuff, unfortunately, of too much television news but it fails to adequately dissect or appreciate that there are people across the country who have issues that need to be addressed and they want to understand them. Unfortunately, that runs counter to sound-bit television.
The stuff that passes for substance on The View (ABC) between table participants seems more like entertainment than thoughtful conversation. In the case The View it is interesting that when Meghan McCain announced she was leaving the show in July 2021, she was referred to as “the conservative personality.” A replacement was not immediate announced rather different “conservative voices” were used, including Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State (2005-2009) in the George W. Bush Administration. The search process was less focused on “conservative” and more on the theatrical indicating a shallow view of conservative, or for that matter liberal.
The revelations from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit that Fox News personalities (Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, among others) fed their audiences lies about the 2020 election, that Trump did not win the election and election fraud did not happen, makes one wonder how they view the mental capacity of their viewers: Tell them anything and they will believe you. That these three, as well as others on this network, knew what they were covering on their shows was a lie, indicates the low opinion, if not downright disgust they feel toward their audience. Laura Ingraham’s producer emailing, “This is the Bill Gates/microchip angle to voter fraud,” indicates what Fox News thought of Trump’s claim of voter fraud, but it also provides insight into what they think of their viewers. In 2011, a Rolling Stone article described Fox News as, “[a]pioneer [in] a new form of political campaign – one that enables the GOP to bypass skeptical reporters and wage an around-the-clock, partisan assault on public opinion.” The revelations in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, do not sound all that different from where the network was more than a decade ago, prior to Donald Trump in the White House.
In early 1960s, bumper stickers saying, “Keep Christ in Christmas,” were a criticism of some businesses using “Xmas” and these simplified business ads were addressed by priests in church sermons. Decades later, Fox News elevated this issue to a War on Christmas which raises the issue, how different is that from pushing Trump’s election lie: Distortion, misrepresentation, and selective information are part of a pattern that has roots in Fox News storylines. The pattern of Fox News stories was firmly in place by the time Trump's election fraud came along and much of that credit goes to Roger Ailes, the CEO of the network from 1996-2016. Ailes in a 1970 memo titled, “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” wrote of his opinion of television viewers:
Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers…people are lazy. With television you just sit-watch-listen. The thinking is done for you.
Elsewhere in this memo, Ailes addressed what essentially is set design and the appearance of a news anchor. This memo was aimed at reaching out to local news stations, but the pieces are there that eventually fit Fox News:
Television news is crammed. Politics, economy, tragedy, human interest and weather are jammed into a half hour. Weekdays—one minute is the average length of time Washington news gets. the host of the local television program is the anchor man. He must appear informed and be attractive to be successful.
Ailes finally had the opportunity to apply his opinion of television to viewers with the creation of Fox News—his legacy on viewers and set design lives on. In his handwritten notes as part of this memo, remembering this is 1970, Ailes wrote that 29 percent of television viewers completely relied on television, 59 percent “primarily” depended on television and 44 percent “say TV is more believable than any other medium.”
Tucker Carlson may have put the Trump election lie behind him, but since Representative Kevin McCarthy (R, CA), Speaker of the House of Representatives gave him access to the January 6th tapes, his stories on January 6th use the same standards applied to his coverage of the 2020 election. Carlson did not need to spend any great deal of time combing through these tapes. Telling his audience what they are seeing and making sure they see him look profoundly concerned and appalled on camera, no doubt the same looks he projected when he was lying about Trump’s stolen election, was all he needed to do.
Carlson and his segments addressing January 6th, possess the possibility to inflame some individuals or groups who may act based on his fabrications. Just as Carlson’s coverage, as well as others at Fox News on Trump’s assertion of voter fraud have contributed to a continuing plague on American politics with hostile overtones, we can assume that his January 6th stories have the potential to elevate more political tension. Carlson stating, “Very little about Jan. 6 was organized or violent. Surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos,” just continued where he left off on his coverage of the 2020 election fraud story. Where Carlson and his distorted and manipulated January 6th stories might lead is indicated by an election official who described what happened to her as a result of Trump’s election lie. How much did Fox News and its storylines that supported the election lie add fuel to the fire? This election official stated:
A few days after the election, I made the mistake of leaving the bubble of the convention center where the votes were still being counted to get some air. I was followed outside, verbally attacked and videotaped by a member of Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign. After the video of me was posted on the dark corners of the internet, I received a barrage of attacks, some mocking my appearance and weight – an experience all too familiar to women in politics — and some even threatening my life.
The problem with Fox News seeing Republican voters, their primary audience, as a group of mindless children, easily swayed with not much between the ears that passes as brains is that its reflects a low level of trust in viewers that goes along with a low opinion of people. There is something particularly appalling that this network has such a poor opinion of its viewers who trust them to provide them with more than just trivial information and entertainment news.
Contrition does not seem to be part of the makeup of the Fox News evening lineup. Any assumption that there will be changes in coverage of issues at Fox News is pure fantasy thinking.
A New York University journalism professor’s comment about Fox News is interesting, but Republicans in Congress already knew it and rely on it:
When I use the term ‘Fox,’ I mean the commercial arm of a political movement that has taken control of the Republican Party. The product is resentment news. Current ways to resent. Success in that market makes for political power. That’s the Fox I know. A kind of machine.
Just because a lie has been uncovered does not mean there is a need to change how Fox News looks at its consumer-based market.
Two political scientists conducted a study with a group of Fox News viewers who watched CNN for four weeks. The participants in this study were considered solid Republican voters who followed politics. This study concluded that:
[R]educing selective exposure can moderate partisan media viewers’ attitudes because sustained consumption of cross-cutting sources exposes them to new topics [and] information.
On Covid-19 this study stated:
CNN provided extensive coverage of COVID-19, which included information about the severity of COVID-19 and poor aspects of then-President Trump’s performance handling it. Fox News covered COVID-19 much less, and the coverage it did offer provided little of the information CNN did, instead giving viewers information about why the virus was not a serious threat.
I conducted a somewhat complementary experiment for a chapter in a book, where the aim was to understand the level of knowledge received from watching television news versus reading national newspapers. I showed students a few television news segments (CNN and Fox News) on the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, which led to the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. I then had the students answer questions regarding what they learned from television news and to rate themselves on a scale from liberal to conservative. I then gave them newspaper articles to read (New York Times and the Washington Post) and, again, gave them the same questions to answer. Students did not become more liberal if they were conservative (degrees of ideology), because they read about this tragedy as opposed to just watching television news, but they demonstrated more thoughtful interpretations of events surrounding this incident. In addition, after reading articles they were less willing to jump to simple conclusions regarding how to assign blame and they developed more questions for themselves on how to do follow-up readings to learn more. Television news, in general, provides, at best, a superficial overview of political and public policy developments, reading opens students to more complex ways of looking at issues, imagine what reading a few articles from newspapers weekly could do for adults.
Fox News combined with a lack of newspaper reading (Roger Ailes knew this well) point to a political environment of despair, where little looks likely to change: Just more hostile exchanges to come. There is hope that this situation can change, however, but a great amount of effort is needed to bring about change. It is imperative that readers of this article simply suggest to those they encounter with opposing views, or to family members, that they make some slight changes in how they receive political information. In the case of reading, newspaper articles are freely available online, there is no reason to subscribe to national newspapers, just a few articles weekly might help to encourage a way to have conversations beyond an us versus them rigid perspective. In addition, flipping to different news stations is useful to see what others are taking in on political information.
Television news, in general, lacks the substance of newspapers, but Fox News has demonstrated an incredibly low opinion of its viewers—they have managed to take the vitriolic to a new level which has only served to further division within this country. The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit and what has been revealed regarding Fox News personalities, management, and ownership, uncovered a willingness to keep instigating divisiveness for the sake of profit. Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, stating, “It’s not red or blue, it is green,” indicated his true motivation. Reducing the level of us versus them mentality does not have to lead to one abandoning their political values, the aim is simply to reduce some of the animosity and distancing that prevents a conversation with some substance.
Notes
Lia Beck, “This Is Who Will Replace Meghan McCain When “The View” Returns,” BestLife (August 31, 2021): https:// bestlifeonline.com/the-view-new-host-meghan-mccain-news/
David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, “The Impacts of selective partisan media exposure: A field experiment with Fox News Viewers,” OSF Preprints (September 1, 2022): https://osf.io/jrw26/
Joseph Cernik, “Watching TV News: Should We Approach It Like Reality TV?” in Sherri Wisdom and Lynda Leavitt, eds., Advancing Critical Thinking in Higher Education (Hershey, PA, IGI Global, 2015).
Oliver Darcy, “Meghan McCain announces that she is leaving ‘the View’,” CNN Business (July 1, 2021): https:// edition.cnn.com/2021/07/01/media/meghan-mccain-the-view/index.html
Tim Dickinson, “How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory,” RollingStone (June 9, 2011); https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-244652/
Tom Jones, “Opinion, Why Fox News might prevail in court but lose in the court of public opinion,” Poynter (March 4, 2023): https:// www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/fox-news-might-win-dominion-lawsuit-bad-press/
Charlotte Klein, “‘Our Viewers…Believe It’: What Fox News Execs and Stars Were Really Thinking While The Network Boosted Donald Trump’s Election Lies,” VanityFair (February 17, 2023): https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit
“Opinion-We received death threats for just trying to run a fair election,” CNN (October 13, 2022): https:// edition.cnn.com/2022/10/13/opinions/us-election-workers-voting-threats-roundup/index.html
Jim Romenesko, “Memo from 1970: ‘A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News’,” Poynter (June 30, 2011): https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2011/memo-from-1970-a-plan-for-putting-the-gop-on-tv-news/. In the first line of this article, there is a link that is supposed to lead to the original document in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, but the link does not work, the link leads to Gawkernet.com. There are references to this memo in several articles, all referring to a more than 300-page memo. I found a 15-page version in pdf with handwritten notes: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5024551/A-Plan-for-Putting-the-GOP-on-the-News.pdf
David Thelen, Becoming Citizens in the Age of Television: How Americans Challenged the Media and Seized Political Initiative during the Iran-Contra Debate (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996)