Dan Pfeiffer has some ideas on how Democrats should respond to the Fox News crisis:
Fox News is fucked.
Rupert Murdoch and his merry band of insurrectionists (Hannity), racists (Tucker), propagandists (Ingraham), and fake journalists (Baier) are in a whole heap of legal trouble.
As I am sure you know by now, Fox News is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.6 billion for defamation. The testimony and text messages released in the court filings have been devastating. Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his Viet Dinh, the Chief Legal Officer, both admitted under oath that the network failed to meet its responsibility to knowingly stop false information from making it onto the airwaves.
While defamation cases are typically tough to win, the folks at Fox decided to violate the “Stringer Bell” principle and repeatedly text about their culpability in real time. Many legal experts believe Fox will lose the case, and executives and on-air personalities could get the ax to stanch the bleeding.
In some ways, my career in political communications has been defined by the rise of Fox News and the rest of the Right Wing media. For the entirety of the twenty-first century, Fox News has been the most powerful weapon in the Right’s arsenal. From Capitol Hill, the campaign trail, the White House, and now from my perch in progressive media, I watched Fox start wars, beat Democrats into submission, drive reams of mainstream press coverage, and make Donald Trump President. But they have never been more vulnerable. Here’s how Democrats should adjust their approach to Fox News.
1. Treat Fox News Like Breitbart
It’s been ages since any Democrat bought the fiction that Fox News was “fair and balanced” or even a Center Right journalistic entity. No one thinks they are the same as CNN or the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. But the culture of Washington, D.C. still gives Fox and its “journalists” an undeserved legitimacy. Fox News is still part of the White House network pool covering presidential events. They are given access; and their questions are taken seriously and answered by White House and Congressional aides. Journalists from legitimate organizations rush to Fox’s defense when Democrats threaten to treat them like the propaganda network they are. Bret Baier and other Fox “journalists” are regulars on the Beltway social circuit.
This is not an argument to kick Fox out of the White House or prevent them from doing their “job.” The White House and Congressional press corps are filled with Right Wing outlets. When Obama was in the White House, Breitbart, the Washington Examiner, and the Daily Caller positioned representatives in the White House briefing room on a daily basis. These outlets show up to cover events. Democrats don’t interfere with them. When they call Democratic press offices with their loaded questions, no one returns the call.
We understand these fringe outlets are the opposition — functionally the same as the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. In fact, most of these outlets are the same people who fund the GOP and Trump. But that’s not how most Democrats treat Fox News. They are treated more seriously. Their questions are often answered. Fox gets called on in press conferences and White House briefings. Because Fox is a cable television network — and a successful one at that — they are too often given an outdated imprimatur of legitimacy. Democrats and reporters consider the people working on the “news” side of Fox to be part of the broader journalistic community. They are considered different from the MAGA-addled hacks at Trump’s favorite digital outlets.
The revelations in the Dominionlawsuit make it clear that even “journalists” like Bret Baier are complicit in the worst behavior at Fox. They are propagandists — nothing more and nothing less. And it is essential that we treat them like political adversaries. Never again, should a Democrat feel a need to accommodate a Fox News reporter, answer their question, or appear on their show out of fairness or duty.
Those days are over. There are no objective journalists at Fox. There are just obvious propagandists writing opinion pieces and, more dangerously, subtle propagandists who pretend to be journalists.
2. Reset the Terms of Engagement
Do the revelations in the Dominion lawsuit mean Democrats should stop appearing on Fox News programs?
Yes… and no.
In recent days, Democratic activists and others suggested that Democrats should stop going on the network.
Even before these revelations, I believed that Democrats going on Fox News to reach persuadable voters was a waste of time. It’s an interview held by a network created to destroy Democrats. The even more nakedly political Fox News digital team often uses the interview to push whatever narrative is most damaging to Democrats. Do the math for a minute; a little more than two million people are watching Special Report with Brett Baier on any given day. That is a very good number by the paltry standards of cable television in the age of cord-cutting. But that is barely more than one percent of the 155 million people who voted in 2020. We also know from countless studies that the Fox News audience is overwhelmingly die-hard Republicans. Let’s be (very) generous and say that 15 percent of Brett Baierviewers are open to voting for a Democrat — that means that we are now talking about only 300,000 people. Let’s say you are a Democratic member of Congress running in a Red or Purple district, what are the odds that one of these 300,000 people lives in your district and is part of the small universe of voters who decide elections? The odds are better than winning the lottery, but not by much.
There may, however, be reasons to go on Fox News. A well-executed appearance on Fox News can send a message about a politician’s skill or their willingness to step into the proverbial lion’s den. Pete Buttigieg mastered this tactic. He often goes on Fox and exposes the hosts for their biases and the stupidity of their questions. Bernie Sanders had similar moments during the 2020 Democratic primary.
The audience in those situations is not the typical Fox News viewership.It’s the people who will see the clip on social media or read a write-up of the exchange on some other news site.
With that in mind, I advise Democrats to stay off Fox News unless you have a plan (and the talent) to go on offense and create a moment that breaks out of the Fox News bubble.
3. Win the Information Wars
If Fox News is so vulnerable, how do we actually take them down and reduce their malignant influence?
There are a number of possible strategies. First, convince Fox News viewers to abandon the network. The Lincoln Project and MoveOn both created ads aimed at Fox viewers. The putative goal is to inform the audience about the scandal that they will never hear about on the network itself. Fox banned its “journalists” and opinion hosts from covering the case — which is yet another piece of evidence that Fox does not engage in journalism.
There are some limits to this approach. It’s unclear how Fox viewers will ever consume these ads (but many liberal donors will undoubtedly smash the RT button). Even if a Fox News viewer saw the ad and decided to abandon the network, they won’t stop watching Hannity and start watching PBS Newshour. The most likely outcome is that these now disillusioned viewers move to another Right Wingoutlet.
Second, there are a series of ongoing efforts to use these revelations and others to hurt Fox News’ bottom line; and to convince advertisers to abandon the network by raising questions about whether brands want to be associated with the bigoted, conspiracy theory-oriented rhetoric that dominates its airwaves. In one sense, these pressure campaigns are successful. You will see almost no ads for blue chip brands during Fox News primetime. It’s all ads for MyPillow, Trump gold coins, other Fox News programs, and virility supplements. The problem is that ads are not where Fox News — or other cable channels — make their money. You and everyone else with cable television fund Fox News — even if you have never watched the channel. Cable companies like Comcast pay Fox News (and all the other channels) to offer the network as part of their cable package. There are efforts to pressure cable providers to ditch Fox News, which would effectively cripple the network. This is an uphill battle because Fox News is extremely successful — and the most watched cable channel for seven consecutive years. The cable industry as a whole is in an inexorable decline. In 2022, only 50 percent of U.S. households were cable subscribers — down from a peak of 90 percent not too long ago. Because the median age of Fox News viewers is 69, they profile as unlikely cord-cutters and are therefore a very valuable audience for cable providers. It’s hard to imagine that cable companies, who are not exactly known for their generosity of spirit, would sacrifice a cash cow out of a sense of patriotism.
Therefore, the best way to beat Fox News (and its allies in the MAGA media) is to use this moment to focus time, energy, and resources on building up a progressive media ecosystem to counterbalance what exists on the Right. This includes consumers patronizing the outlets that exist, and smart and well-resourced individuals creating new outlets and platforms that allow Democrats to shape the political conversation and fight back against Fox News.
It may not be as satisfying as crushing Fox News or watching them be forced to turn out the lights, but it is the more productive path. Sometimes we must choose constructive over cathartic.
That last has been part of the conversation as long as I’ve been blogging. We thought the independent media supported by small donors might do the trick but that didn’t pan out. You need rich people to invest for the long term and stay hands off to make it work and the only example we’ve seen is Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post, which isn’t explicitly progressive (no matter how much the wingnuts insist it is.)
I’m all for creating that progressive media space, obviously, but I’ve lost hope that it’s going to happen. We’ll have to keep fighting the good fight as a guerrilla war with nothing but the truth and reality as our weapons. Son far, we’re holding our own. But I honestly don’t know if it will last.