Fox News has learned nothing — the mainstream press can’t let them forget
The most striking thing about the Fox News statement released Tuesday afternoon is the utter lack of remorse. The network had just settled a massive lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, right before the opening of a defamation trial caused by Fox repeatedly airing conspiracy theories accusing the ballot box company of stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the Fox statement reads, before going on to insist on “FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
The statement is, in a word, preposterous. It’s phrased in a way as to imply the falsehoods were unintentional, even though the evidence from pre-trial court documents shows Fox leadership openly discussing the choice to intentionally air information they knew to be untrue. There’s no apology. The false claim of “highest journalistic standards” is pure gaslighting. It’s so silly that CNN’s Jake Tapper struggled not to laugh while reading it.
George Stephanopoulos of ABC News pressed the CEO of Dominion about Fox’s statement, noting, “what you didn’t get was an apology.” Dominion’s lawyers have been tap-dancing around this issue when asked, claiming that they’re satisfied with “accountability,” even though the original suit demanded an apology. Of course, the size of the settlement — a whopping $787.5 million — tells the story. It suggests Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch was willing to pay a lot of money to avoid admitting fault, much less apologizing for it.
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There’s a simple reason for this: Fox News desperately wants to present itself as a real news organization. Their value to their viewers is that they offer the trappings of legitimate journalism. It adds an ennobling air to their real function, which is propaganda.
Unfortunately, Fox has good reason to believe that, as long as they keep up the ruse, the world of mainstream media will bend over backward to validate the right-wing network as a peer.
In accepting Fox’s false claims to be “news,” mainstream media outlets end up degrading the entire profession of journalism.
Tapper may be giggling now, but he has a long history of defending Fox News from its critics. In 2009, the CNN host called Fox a “sister” organization and lambasted Barack Obama’s White House for correctly regarding Fox as a propaganda outlet. He was still at it 13 years later, criticizing President Joe Biden for accurately calling Fox “journalist” Peter Doocy a “dumb son of a bitch.”
As Dan Froomkin of Press Watch wrote in March, “Fox has long been accepted and normalized by establishment media figures.” Part of this is because Fox staffers move in media circles. It’s socially more comfortable for real journalists to play along with the farce, rather than confront people they may later see at cocktail parties. Part of it is that everyone in the media is so used to accusations of “bias,” usually from conservatives, that they reflexively reject it. But in accepting Fox’s false claims to be “news,” mainstream media outlets end up degrading the entire profession of journalism.
Even though Fox has refused to apologize or admit fault, there are already troubling signs that mainstream journalists are entertaining the idea that Fox leaders have learned their lesson and the network will behave like a responsible journalistic outlet from here on out.
“The one question that only time will answer is whether the settlement was enough to cause Fox News to change the way it handles such incendiary and defamatory conspiracy content,” Jim Rutenberg and Katie Robertson write in the New York Times.
In reality, this is not a mystery and we do not need to wait to solve it. We already know the answer: Fox News has not changed and will not change.
The first clue was the refusal to apologize, even though it likely cost the company millions more than they would have had to shell out if they’d admitted fault. More importantly, if you turn on Fox News on any given night, you’ll see that they are still churning out a steady stream of conspiracy theories. As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters told MSNBC Tuesday, Fox News nodded approval of the Big Lie over 50 times in the first two months of 2023 alone.
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In just the past few weeks, Fox News has falsely portrayed Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira as a “whistleblower” exposing “crimes.” In reality, the documents released are valuable as intelligence, not because of any cover-up. Plus, Teixeira appears to have been just trying to impress his online friends and didn’t have any whistleblowing agenda. Host Sean Hannity also falsely accused the government of persecuting Christians in its attempts to prevent domestic terrorism. The network ran with unsourced rumors about the Nashville mass shooter, in order to stoke a conspiracy theory accusing trans people of organizing to murder Christians. And Tucker Carlson has been falsely portraying a convicted murderer as a victim of zealous prosecutors, simply because the guy targeted Black Lives Matter protesters.
The hope is that the goldfish-short memories in the Beltway will kick in and, within a few months, Fox will be back in the good graces of serious journalists and politicians.
Perhaps nothing more perfectly illustrates Fox News’ commitment to lies than the case of Jeanine Pirro.
Her on-air persona is almost comically unhinged. Her devotion to the Big Lie was central to Dominion’s defamation case. Yet Pirro is still on-air and, if anything, she’s even more unleashed. Promoted to a gig on the network’s highest-rated show, Pirro imagines we’re in a “fascist state” because the mainstream networks won’t air her bizarre falsehoods. She defends white supremacists posting unchecked on social media. And she still makes pretty specific accusations, such as claiming that billionaire George Soros “is absolutely behind the destruction of law and order in America,” which is a popular but anti-semitic conspiracy theory.
At best, Fox has simply gotten savvier about who they lie about, targeting vaguely defined groups of people, like trans people, rather than deep-pocketed individuals or corporations that can sue for defamation. But overall, the company hasn’t changed. Their function is still to legitimize often bizarre conspiracy theories and hateful ideas, ones that have often been pulled out of the fever swamps of right-wing social media.
In order for that to work, Fox has to maintain its social status as a “real” news organization. They do that by having other news organizations and mainstream institutions, such as the White House, treat them with the respect and belonging offered to credible outlets. That’s why they were likely willing to pay through the nose to make the Dominion lawsuit go away. The hope is that the goldfish-short memories in the Beltway will kick in and, within a few months, Fox will be back in the good graces of serious journalists and politicians, enjoying the validating glow that keeping such company offers.
Fox viewers, I’ve long argued, know that their network is offering them lies. Indeed, the Dominion court filings show that the major driver of Fox conspiracy content is viewer demand that the network air the lies they’re hearing on social media. But, due in no small part to the well-documented vein of insecurity that fuels the American right, their audience nonetheless craves the trappings of respectability. It’s not enough for American conservatives to wallow in lies. They want those lies dignified with the label “news.” Fox News makes its money by being this laundry service, a fancy news-like network that puts lipstick on the MAGA pig.
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Above all, that’s what the Dominion lawsuit threatened. It’s why Fox would pay more to avoid admitting they lied on purpose. Not because anyone doubts it. It’s that their value to the audience is in maintaining the collective fantasy that their “alternative facts” have the same status as actual facts. It’s a much easier trick to pull off if real journalists play along. There are some signs that some outlets, like CNN, are done playing Fox’s game.
Murdoch and company want this settlement to be an excuse for the Beltway establishment to return to old habits of treating Fox like it’s the real deal. For the sake of the larger profession of journalism, it’s important for the mainstream press to resist the pressure to backslide.