DIn what has been called the most significant press freedom lawsuit in fifty years in the United States, Fox News is being sued for libel by Dominion Voting Systems. The company blames the 24-hour news channel for saying its voting machines were used in a plot to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2020 presidential election. It emerged that executives and presenters Fox News knew the claims about Dominion were false, but they backed them up anyway.
In his deposition, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the group that owns Fox News, acknowledged that some on-air stars had spread lies about voter fraud, but others had contradicted guests who made such claims or had clarified on the air that these were allegations without proof. This precision may be important in a defamation lawsuit, but it is not for the viewers: the presenters who have taken up the false accusations are among the most popular on the channel. The idea that the election was stolen continues to poison American political life, but did the Fox News coverage, yes or no, help to give it substance?
One could say that Fox News has no influence insofar as it is aimed at an audience of conservative Republican voters: when you reinforce people in their opinions, the effects are limited. Fox News was originally designed to be the television counterpart of conservative talk radio. On these airwaves, hosts like Rush Limbaugh have attracted a considerable audience by mixing political content and entertainment.
TVs in airports and waiting rooms
Political content seekers are hard to persuade: their psychological defences, known in political psychology as “motivated reasoning”, lead them to reject or refute anything they hear and do not disagree, or even forget that they even heard them. But since these audiences are not in search of political information, they are not on their guard and are much more receptive to argument.
It is difficult to understand what is entertaining in ultra-right shows, which play on the fear of migrants, visible or sexual minorities, but they are well produced, well paced, and they spend their time shooting their black beasts in ridicule. Their mainspring is not so much anger as the widening eyes of star presenter Tucker Carlson in disbelief at the ridicule of the Democrats.
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