Fox News Poisoned our Political Discourse

Steven Beschloss has a much-needed post titled How Has Fox News Infected Your World? It's worth your time. I most likely saw part of a segment of Fox News for the first time as a grad student in the late 1990s. I tended to flip through the cable channels to see what was on, and there it was. I recall the channel's primary slogans of the time: "Fair and Balanced" and "We Report. You Decide." The thing was that what I experienced seemed no different from what I'd hear when I'd go through radio channels and catch various talk shows. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of vitriol about whatever the current outrage was, but nothing particularly constructive. 

I say this as someone who has historically tried to understand events from different media outlets, including ones with editorial slants that might differ from my own perspective. The Sunday morning talk shows on the legacy media channels were quite useful for bringing in guests with relevant expertise on a topic who probably had divergent ideas of how to approach that topic. Maybe no one ended up agreeing at the end of a half hour, but at least the conversation was civil, and educational. A good host could keep it that way.

As I moved on to a very rural part of the US and then deeper into the US South, I've certainly found it almost impossible to escape Fox News, as it often would blare in doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms, restaurants, etc. The most palpable thing for me was that the exposure to all the anger, disinformation, and gaslighting really darkened my mood. I remember going to a dermatologist to have some moles checked out, and by the time I was finally called back for my appointed visit, I was convinced I was going to die of cancer. That had nothing to do with the content on Fox at the time, and everything to do with the bleak, dark, dour presentation of what that station calls news. 

I was relieved when these clinics stopped offering Fox News in their waiting rooms, and the content was all baking shows or people trying to flip houses. At least that was much less likely to do harm or to lead to needless arguments. 

If I recall correctly, David Neiwert, on his blog Orcinus, used to write about pseudofascism, and how it was spreading in the US. One important vehicle was the spread of disinformation via prominent influencers. One concern I've had was one that the late Communication theorist George Gerbner had: that as people get exposed to the sort of view of the world as this dark dangerous place filled with "terrorists" and "America haters" would make viewers more prone to believe that was factual and that they'd be willing to trade their own rights for some false veneer of safety. I think history has borne that out. We gave up a lot during the early years of the "War on Terror", and we were told how necessary it was to keep objects as innocuous as water bottles and nail clippers off carry on luggage, among other indignities. That goes on to this day. 

Worse, we've seen whole groups of human beings dehumanized because of their partisan affiliation, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. In the process, we ended up in a social environment in which it is nearly impossible to speak to one another. It's impossible to have a discussion in person or online if neither of us can even agree on some basic facts on the ground, or have been groomed to dehumanize those who hold even mildly different perspectives as Other. 

In terms of personal experience, I think it is safe that I have lost my share of friends and friendly acquaintances over the years. Initial skepticism about mounting two full-scale wars starting in the early aughts in some cases was not met with, "I disagree with you, let's talk about it." Rather, I'd get called an "America Hater" and being a member of a Fifth Column. I'd get labelled an Islamist, which is rich, as I am not Muslim, but merely have Muslim friends and wish them to be treated as human beings who deserve dignity. The Obama era was another era where I probably lost some friends and friendly acquaintances as I refused to believe in the big lie about Obama's citizenship, or that cities I regularly visited were so crime-ridden I would be mugged, or to make as much of a stink about the Ebola epidemic as Fox News was pushing. And then came Trump. Needless to say, that's certainly culled a lot of friends and friendly acquaintances, as Fox practically elevated Trump to a sort of political cult leader for several years. I'm fairly liberal, so I would often be dismissed by those most in Trump's sway. I do feel for my more conservative friends who ended up having to re-register as independents simply because they could not in good conscience follow the party line of the GOP. 

We've also seen a rise in political violence. The example that still sticks the most with me is the insurgency that led to a near coup on January 6, 2021, as Congress was set to certify the electoral vote. Fox pushed the big lie so loudly that its true believers were more prone to either participate in Trump's attempted coup, or at least support it, or casually dismiss the deadly events of the day as a false flag op or as a minor protest. The way the channel has outraged and gaslit a substantial subsection of the population has led to nothing but heartache and violence. We have a lot of folks who are simply lost to us. In the meantime, I am grateful to my relatively conservative and libertarian friends who didn't fall for Fox's hype over the years, and with whom I can still respectfully disagree, while still sharing a deep concern about the future of our experiment with representative democracy.