Fox News is the Trump Era Conservative’s Oxygen. Why?

By Gabriela Vasquez

There are two types of Americans: those who watch Fox News, and those who view it as satire and the next topic for Saturday Night Live to mimic.

But how can this be true for a major news network? While biased and partisan news is expected of American TV culture, Fox News has created a new standard of loyalty among its viewers in a way that is almost dystopian.

While it’s easy to poke and prod at Fox News viewers, credit must be given to the network's audience captivity. Fox News Corporation has managed to create a culture of partisan news that challenges every other news channel, becoming the life-line for conservatives, especially after the 2020 presidential election.

This phenomenon did not happen by accident, however. Fox News’ loyalty is owed to genius business tactics. In spite of the current Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News Co., viewers remain faithful. Fox News has prioritized being a news network second to being a business first, and it’s working.

Praise Where Praise is Due

The network's segments have dominated the sphere of cable news both before and after the 2016 presidential election, reaching #1 ratings for primetime news segments with average yearly viewers consistently surpassing the 2.5 million viewer mark. In 2020, Fox News reached a peak for the segment “Hannity” hosted by Fox News correspondent Sean Hannity reaching an average of over 4.4 million views.

The TV channel has also managed to maintain the highest employee salaries for news correspondents compared to other TV hosts on other large, reputable news channels. With Fox hosts Sean Hannity receiving a yearly salary of $25 million, and Laura Ingraham receiving a yearly salary of $15 million for example, Fox News personalities are receiving the paychecks of celebrities. As the network profits, so do its employees that keep their audiences coming back for more.

In addition to paying its hosts a higher yearly salary compared to most cable news networks, Fox News has continued to rank as the highest grossing network, especially during election years, steadily increasing its gross income since 2012 and maintaining its reputation as the most successful news network.

Fox has clearly created and has managed to maintain a reputation among its audience. But how? Who are the people that give this network its repeated success in the large scope of the media?

Fox’s Monopoly

While Fox News receives views from members across all sides of the political ideology spectrum according to a study by John Gramlich for the Pew Research Center, data shows that Republicans statistically trust Fox News more than any other source, and tend to receive their news solely from this TV channel.

“Republicans really do coalesce around Fox News. It towers above all other media outlets among Republicans and among Independents who lean Republican, and the same sort of thing is just not at all apparent on the political left,” Gramlich said in an interview regarding his findings in 2020. “Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic are getting news from a much wider array of sources.”

While self-identifying Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents (Independents who tend to vote in favor of Democrats) tend to spread their trust among different news sources, Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents (Independents who tend to vote in favor of Republicans) tend to overwhelmingly place their trust in Fox News alone.

There must be a reason as to why Fox News has managed to cater to an overwhelmingly politically conservative audience.

And there is: political pandering and a strongly advertised sense of distrust for other news outlets.

“Fox news has been in the vanguard of this conservative media movement that has very much been trying to cultivate an audience by telling that audience that they can't trust anybody except overtly conservative outlets,” said Angie Holan, editor-in-chief at PolitiFact.

“There's nothing inherent about a Conservative outlook that makes you more susceptible to misinformation. But what does make you more susceptible to misinformation is the populist ideology… that highly emotional black and white thinking makes people very susceptible to misinformation,” said Holan.

While Fox News does report on events in the news cycle from a factual and non-partisan angle, the network’s views are mainly dependent on opinion segments that leave room for the spread of misleading information, according to Katie Sanders, managing editor for PolitiFact. In an interview on her findings on Fox News, Sanders said, “There are reporters at Fox who are breaking stories and reporting some of the facts, they just don't have the biggest platforms, or their reporting is compromised by way of reputation for leaders of the channel having such a different approach.”

Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro are some of the network’s leading reporters. They all have questionable ratings according to PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter, and are all currently under investigation and subpoenaed as Dominion Voting Systems’ live witness list for their upcoming trial.

Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News

To summarize the motive of this defamation lawsuit, Dominion Voting Systems, the technology company in charge of administering the hardware for gathering election results, is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion. Arguing that Fox News intentionally spread false information about the 2020 general election results, Dominion is seeking compensation for false claims being made about the company by way of misleading information being spread on live television.

While on a micro level, this is a lawsuit between large corporations about reputations to protect their individual business ventures. On a macro level, this investigation has opened up a broader conversation on the validity of Fox News, and whether or not it can be trusted as a news source, a concern that impacts all Americans given its audience loyalty that may potentially influence politics.

“It's really undeniable that the leading opinion hosts on fox news were, and have been, boosting conspiracies about the 2020 election results from the beginning, and that the channel has given those doubts about a legitimate election top billing that's obviously already proven in the court case," Sanders said. "We don't see that across the other mainstream networks. We see the opposite where they are challenging the former president’s statements."

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of Fox Corp., has testified that Fox hosts “endorsed” the conspiracy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, blaming Dominion Voting Systems for rigging the election.

Fox News did not reject the election at first, however, and even went so far as to call the election in favor of Joe Biden’s legitimate win. In response, Former President Donald Trump tweeted against the network for upholding the presidential election results, causing Fox viewers to turn to cable news channel Newsmax for their breaking news following the election.

This caused outrage among loyal Fox News viewers, and understandably, the channel’s ratings plummeted.

In the Dominion lawsuit, Fox employees acknowledged this sudden drop in viewers, and knew that Newsmax was on the rise.

Screenshot of Murdoch's Deposition

To regain their ratings, the lies began, and their audience returned.

This lawsuit has proven that Fox News owes its success to its hosts who know how to please their audience. The way a TV series might bring back a beloved character in later seasons to appease its viewers, Fox News also dictates its narrative in the news cycle. At the end of the day, it's all about views.

“As journalists we're often told ‘respect the audience,’” Holan said. “But in this case, you had an audience that didn't want to hear the truth.”