Willing Co-Conspirators Fuel Trump Victory, While Supporters Swallow The Lies
The first thing every guerilla army does after seizing the palace is to take over the newspapers, radio or television station. In the case of the American right wing media, it has been a bloodless coup in support of trump.
The right wing media has provided its audience with a steady diet of misinformation that fueled Trump’s victory.
An example of the conspiracy was a false report in October by Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had diverted a million dollars intended for Hurricane Helene victims to pay for programs to house undocumented immigrants. The report was quickly debunked but the damage was done as millions of Fox viewers believed Ingraham’s original report. The report undoubtedly helped trump’s campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The right wing is largely setting the nation’s political agenda. Fox and other purveyors of the lies that convinced millions of Americans to bring trump back to power should be prosecuted for treason; the millions who voted for trump should not be condemned and denounced because they believed they had good reasons, even if they were all lies.
The average trumper believes that trump was robbed of the 2020 election, that trump handled the COVID-19 pandemic competently, that trump was a victim of a pervasive, evil deep state and that the Democrats were fanatic Marxists. The average loyal trumper was convinced that the trump years were the best ever for the U.S. economy, that unemployment was a record low and that taxes for the middle class were cut. Even though it was all a lie.
Blame belongs squarely on the multi-billion dollar, right wing disinformation industry that masquerades as beacons of news and commentary while taking advantage and abusing the trust given them by millions of angry, impressionable and highly uninformed Americans.
The disinformation is led by Fox News, and not far behind are Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media, the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, Epoch Times, Daily Wire, The Blaze, InfoWars, The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, and podcasts including The Dan Bongino Show, Ben Shapiro, the Joe Rogan Experience, The Charlie Kirk Show, The Tucker Carlson Show and Candace.
As many as two thirds of Americans watch Fox and the rest and view the lies and distortions of right wing reporting as “the news.” In red states, Fox is ubiquitous on the TV in the hotel lobby, the hospital waiting room, the spa or the neighborhood bar. On the radio, many turn to the iHeart, right-wing talk radio station. At home they watch news by an affiliate of the right wing owner, Sinclair and they read the op-ed page of their local paper and it’s columns by right wing pundits, Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro.
Ingraham’s lies were a case in point. She relied on a posting on X that said the Biden administration had used $941 million of FEMA funds in 2023 and 2024 to “house illegal immigrants.” She failed to report that FEMA runs a separate Shelter and Services Program that provides emergency housing for migrants that is funded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The FEMA website responded that “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs.”
FactCheck.org found that funds were not diverted from the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund to “house illegal immigrants” under the Biden administration.
The most dangerous threat to America is the avalanche of misinformation. The answer is to simply outlaw and prosecute its main sources.
The Fox news staff is populated by trump supporters who often report rumors that are found to be false, spin news to favor the conservative side or ignore news that may put trump in a bad light.
Typical were headlines leading up the election, that Biden says “MAGA Republicans’ threaten democracy as he and Dems crank up anti-Trump rhetoric ahead of midterms” and “White House defends slamming half of America as ‘semi-fascist,’ ‘terrorists’ despite Biden’s unity pledge.”
After the 2020 election, Fox News TV personalities reported false conspiracy theories regarding trump’s claims of election fraud, with headlines like, “Questions linger over the Left’s plot against Donald Trump.” Fox falsely reported that there were “No guns at the capitol riot,” that “Trump authorized the National Guard for the Capitol Riot,” the “FBI orchestrated insurrection,” the “U.S.A. funds Biolabs in Ukraine,” and many examples of reporting false information about COVID-19.
Media Matters documented numerous examples of Fox engaging in both agenda setting and partisan coverage to misinform its viewers, “overwhelming them with lies and omissions that distort their understanding of objective reality.”
During the first month of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Fox aired commentary supportive of the invasion. Media Matters identified at least 49 instances of Fox pushing pro-Kremlin talking points in its coverage of the war, including several instances that directly copied Russian state media.
Fox spent more than three hours disparaging Disney’s response to Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and the company’s efforts to be gender-inclusive. Fox mentioned “Disney” more than 350 times and accused the company of trying to sexualize children.
During a 12-week period in 2021, “Fox flooded its airwaves with fearmongering about immigrants in over half of all its segments that discussed immigration and refugees, for a total of 693 segments implying that migrants are dangerous, falsely claiming they are an economic drain on the United States, or pushing racist conspiracy theories about migrant culture.”
Media Matters reported that throughout the trump tenure and the recent campaign, Fox routinely failed to report information about multiple trump scandals. Fox downplayed or ignored stories about government spending at trump’s properties and his commerce secretary’s threats of retaliation against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after trump lied that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane.
Counterintuitively, many conservatives trust Fox News more than any other outlet. Around two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they trust Fox News for political and election news. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 40 percent of trump voters got their news from Fox. Another Pew survey found that nearly half of consistent conservatives (47 percent) name Fox as their main source for government and political news.
A Reuters Institute survey found that 35 percent of respondents trust Fox’s news coverage and 46 percent do not, ranking Fox at 11th in trust among the major U.S. news providers.
A 2024 YouGov survey commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that local television stations and newspapers were the most trusted. The 10 most credible broadcast news outlets were ABC News, BBC News, CBS News, New York Times, NBC/MSNBC News, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR News, USA Today and Washington Post.
The least trusted were Fox News, Yahoo News and HuffPost.
The substantial support for Fox hasn’t diminished despite the company’s own admission that it knowingly reported lies about the Dominion Voting Systems machines in the 2020 presidential election. Dominion sued for defamation and Fox settled for $787 million.
Media Matters reported that Americans favor and believe Fox for various powerful reasons. Some viewers believe that other media have a liberal bias and Fox aligns more closely with their own views. The network’s coverage can create an echo chamber, reinforcing viewers’ beliefs and making them less likely to seek out alternative viewpoints, Media Matters noted.
Fox has a pervasive impact on its viewers but a study showed that Fox News viewers measurably changed their political beliefs and understanding of issues after just one month of switching their cable news diet to CNN. The study was conducted in September 2020 by David Broockman at the University of California, Berkeley and Joshua Kalla at Yale University.
Regular Fox viewers agreed to turn off Fox and watch CNN instead for a month. The study concluded that Fox viewers changed their views when given a glimpse of reality outside their information source.
“The study demonstrated how effective the Fox echo chamber is as a political tool in affecting viewers’ behavior, but also suggests that the partisan media ecosystem threatens our democracy itself,” the study found. “Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views.”
Broockman and Kalla also concluded that, “The more that people watch their favorite network, the more its coverage ‘replenishes’ partisan beliefs and loyalties. How can a voter hold a politician accountable for an act of malfeasance if they do not know it occurred? Or, alternatively, how can voters reward a . . . politician for good performance if their chosen media network does not inform them of it?”
Media Matters reported that public opinion surveys have repeatedly demonstrated that “Fox’s viewers are exposed to so much misinformation that they are less informed than people who don’t consume any news at all, and they are more likely to believe lies about important topics such as COVID-19 and vaccines than are other viewers who rely on mainstream news outlets.”
A 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that people who trust Fox News Channel and other conservative media outlets are more likely to believe lies about COVID-19 and vaccines than those who primarily go elsewhere for news.
Kaiser polled people on whether they believed seven widely-circulated untruths about the virus, including that the government is exaggerating the number of deaths attributable to the coronavirus, hiding reports of deaths caused by vaccines or that the vaccines can cause infertility, contain a microchip or can change DNA.
Roughly half of Republicans said they believed what they heard about COVID-19 on Fox News. The highest percentage of unvaccinated people who said they trusted what media said on the topic was the 30 percent who cited Fox.
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s 2012 PublicMind survey found that Fox News and MSNBC negatively impacted people’s knowledge of current events. Researchers asked 1,185 random nationwide respondents what news sources they used in the past week and asked them questions about events in the U.S. and abroad.
The study found that someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer 1.04 domestic questions correctly compared to 1.22 for those who watched no news at all. Those watching only “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” answered 1.42 questions correctly and people who only listened to NPR or only watched Sunday morning political talk shows answered 1.51 questions correctly.
A recent poll by Reuters and the multinational marking research firm, Ipsos, charted how news sources affected voters. The main issues are vastly different depending on the news source. Viewers of Fox News or conservative media outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax cite immigration. For Cable News or National Newspaper consumers, it’s political extremism and threats to democracy.
Viewers are misinformed about reality.
“Notably, Americans who primarily get their news from Fox News and Conservative Media and social media/other are more likely to answer questions about inflation and crime incorrectly than Americans writ large,” the survey found. Ipsos polling also found that Cable News/National Newspaper consumers were less likely to answer questions about the level of border crossing correctly.
Media sources affect perceptions of daily costs. Consumers of Fox News or Conservative Media are the least likely to say they have seen grocery or gasoline costs go down. Americans who incorrectly answer questions about inflation, crime, and immigration are more likely to opt for trump, while Americans who answer the questions correctly prefer Harris.
Media like Fox News bolster the lies of right wing politicians. For example, Fox reported inaccurately when trump said his 2016 inauguration was the most attended and watched in history and recently that he won a “landslide” victory.
As of Saturday, Trump is winning the popular vote with a little more than 74.5 million votes, although millions of votes have yet to be counted. The final 2024 popular vote tally likely won’t be known until December. When he lost in 2020, Trump got a little more than 74 million votes, roughly the same as the recent election.
In terms of the Electoral College, Trump won 312 electoral votes. It was better than he or Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes in 2016 and 2020, respectively. It also was higher than both of George W. Bush’s electoral victories in 2000 and 2004. But it was far short of Barack Obama’s 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012. Bill Clinton ran away with the Electoral College vote, winning 370 electoral votes in 1992 and 379 in 1996.
Ronald Reagan scored a true landslide in 1984 when he captured 525 electoral votes and more than 58 percent of the popular vote. Richard Nixon in 1972 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 exceeded 60 percent in the popular vote for their reelection campaigns.
The right wing media have volunteered to be trump’s cheerleaders and to publicize his propaganda, not unlike the Nazis who primarily increased their membership through advertising the party legitimately with propaganda.
Fox and the rest exploit fears of uncertainty and instability, another tactic of the Nazis. The right wing media helped trump to rally his supporters over the alleged threats of undocumented immigrants. During the first weeks of 1933, the Nazi regime deployed the radio, press, and newsreels to stoke fears of a pending “Communist uprising.”
Billionaire Rupert Murdoch owns the Fox empire which has gradually expanded to include numerous conservative print and broadcast media, television stations and other media.
Executives of the Nazi Party-owned publishing house, Franz Eher, established a huge empire that drove out competition and purchased newspapers at below-market prices. Some independent newspapers, particularly conservative newspapers and non-political illustrated weeklies, accommodated to the regime through self-censorship or initiative in dealing with approved topics.
Nazi propaganda ministry officials expected editors and journalists, who had to register with the Reich Press Chamber to work in the field, to follow the mandates and instructions handed down by the ministry. The regime required editors to omit anything “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home.”