Roger Ailes came up with the idea for Fox News in the 70s, when he was working as an image consultant for then-president Richard Nixon. From the get-go, the idea was that a TV network would be a top-down propaganda outlet that would manipulate and control voters, especially more conservative ones. "People are lazy," read a document titled "A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News" that was presented to Nixon in 1970. "With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you." Even though the document was unsigned, it's widely believed to be the work of Ailes, who wanted a "pro-Administration" mouthpiece that could go around the traditional media.
The plan didn't get off the ground during the Nixon administration. It's arguable, and Ailes certainly believed, that if such a network had existed at the time, Nixon would have very well been able to survive Watergate. A Fox News would have been able to blast Republican voters with non-stop excuses that they could use to ignore the uncomfortable reality that their president was irredeemably corrupt. The proof of concept is evident: Donald Trump has survived multiple scandals that all make Watergate look like small stakes, largely because Fox is on hand to feed GOP voters all the rationalizations they need to stick by Trump's side.
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Ailes, who died in 2017, was able to make his right-wing "news" network a reality in 1996 when he used Rupert Murdoch's backing to found Fox News. A defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, which a judge delayed start of until Tuesday, has already revealed that Fox News does not work as Ailes imagined it would. It is not a top-down propaganda outlet exploiting the empty heads of its right-wing audience in order to exert mind control over them. On the contrary, pre-trial documents filed by Dominion show the opposite: Fox's content is determined largely by the audience. Fox viewers want their favorite network to affirm the various racist conspiracy theories that proliferate on right-wing social media, and Fox leadership, eager to keep viewers and ad dollars, has been all too willing to comply. Even when, as the documents show, they're well aware that the "news" they're reporting isn't true.
It's likely that the trial will result in even more embarrassing evidence of how much Fox has reshaped itself to appeal to its audience's ugliest desires.
Indeed, the relationship that Ailes imagined between the network, its viewers, and the GOP is turning out to be the inverse of what he imagined. He wanted Fox to be a place where Republican leadership handed out marching orders of what to think and how to act to a compliant audience. Instead, it's the audience who is using Fox News to set the priorities for the GOP. Ideas and demands burble up from the fever swamps of right-wing social media, where they're picked up by Fox News. After these foul notions get highlighted by fascist hype men like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, Republican leaders often scramble to turn the ever-more-radical views of the Fox audience into actual policy.
Dominion alleges that Fox, in its eagerness to validate Trump's false claim that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from him, repeatedly presented as fact conspiracy theories accusing Dominion machines of changing votes. For a few months, Dominion's court filings have revealed embarrassing internal communications from Fox leadership and its hosts, showing that they were deeply worried their viewers would abandon them if they didn't do more to elevate the Big Lie and its attendant conspiracy theories.
"Respecting this audience whether we agree or not is critical," host Sean Hannity wrote in one text, arguing that Fox needed to step up its game in airing these election conspiracy theories, even though he knew full well that Biden was the actual winner.
After all, Fox is a propaganda outlet, but it's also a profit-driven company. Making money means giving their audience what it wants. The audience wants lies. As Murdoch agreed during his deposition, "It is not red or blue, it is green."
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Despite this lawsuit, if you tune into Fox any night, you can see things haven't changed. What's put on air is dictated by the racist obsessions, culture war paranoia, and conspiracy theories that the MAGA base proliferates on social media. Republican leaders then bend towards what Fox News is pushing.
As an example, look at the case of Daniel Perry, who was recently — and correctly — found guilty of murder for killing a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020. This isn't an ambiguous case. The evidence showed Perry was telling friends ahead of time of his desire "to shoot some protesters." He deliberately drove to a protest for no other reason than to pick a fight with the protesters. His murder victim, Garrett Foster, was armed, but all evidence shows that Foster did not threaten Perry's life with the gun he was carrying. It's an open-and-shut murder.
But the scumbuckets of right-wing social media want it to be legal to kill leftists whenever they want. Carlson, always eager to amplify the nastiest rhetoric of social media, has taken up the cause, championing Perry as a hero and demanding his pardon. And the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, hopped to, pressuring the pardon board into offering a recommendation for Perry's release so that he can sign it.
It's likely that the relationship between Fox News and its viewers did, at one time, exist how Ailes imagined it, where Fox News tells people what to believe and they obediently listen. The advent of social media, however, shifted the locus of power away from the network to its viewers. On social media, there's no real check on how wild conspiracy theories can get or how far misinformation can spread. To compete with that, Fox News has to offer the same high-octane right-wing nuttery. It's likely that the trial will result in even more embarrassing evidence of how much Fox has reshaped itself to appeal to its audience's ugliest desires.
On Friday, Fox blitzed reporters with a statement that bragged that "the case has had no impact on our viewership and that FNC remains the most-watched network in cable." For once, it's reasonable to believe something Fox News is saying. After all, the network has gotten very good at keeping viewers by giving them exactly what they want.
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