Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Since 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip. That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before. There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled…

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NPR reports: Last Oct. 18, Rolling Stone served up a foreboding scoop: The FBI had raided the home of a renowned journalist at the top of his game months earlier, and he had disappeared from public view. It should have been a coup. Instead, acrimony inside the newsroom over how that scoop was edited led to accusations that the magazine’s brash leader pulled punches in overseeing coverage of someone he knew. The reporter who wrote the story, enraged, accepted a position at…

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Brian Stelter writes: Last month Fox News producers in New York, Washington, and other bureaus were summoned for mandatory training sessions. The topic: libel law. With Fox facing down two defamation lawsuits that could cost the company billions of dollars, management decided to set up lengthy meetings about legal concepts like “actual malice.” That’s what Dominion Voting Systems and another voting technology company, Smartmatic, are trying to prove: that Fox aired lies about their firms while the people involved knew…

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Eric Lutz writes: You know what happened on January 6, 2021. You probably watched it on television that day, when Donald Trump agitated a mob of angry, armed supporters to storm the Capitol. They battled officers, busted through windows, and roved through the halls of Congress, some of them chanting the names of Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. You saw terrified lawmakers, some of whom had helped fan the flames of the insurrection and would later side with it, seeking…

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The Washington Post reports: As a reporter and an anchor for Fox News watched Donald Trump supporters gather at a rally in Washington, D.C., after his election defeat in November 2020, they both had some questions. Many in the crowd, said correspondent Rich Edson, “are picking up on the president’s unfounded claim that there was widespread electoral interference and that the election was stolen — no proof of that.” “What do these folks want?” wondered weekend anchor Leland Vittert. “Is…

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Politico reports: The thunderclap of stories showing Fox News’ role in pushing 2020 election fraud conspiracies and aiding Donald Trump’s campaign has intensified calls among Democrats to black out the network. The revelations, made public as part of a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, showed that some network hosts and executives endorsed lies about Trump’s loss, hosted conspiracy theorists whom they thought were unhinged, and overtly prioritized the company’s profit over truth. A related deposition…

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Brian Stelter writes: The basic story of Fox News and the 2020 election is well understood. Fox’s relatively small news operation covered the vote count accurately; this coverage infuriated President Donald Trump, the MAGA base, and Fox’s opinion stars; some viewers temporarily flipped to further-right outlets, such as Newsmax; and Fox panicked. But thanks to Dominion Voting Systems, which is pursuing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, we now know that the network’s sense of crisis was even more…

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The New York Times reports: Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air. The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers,…

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Molly Jong-Fast writes: Trumpism without Donald Trump has long been a fantasy of the GOP donor class. Plenty of things about the Trump presidency generally delighted Republicans, like the tax breaks for the wealthy, the desire to shrink the government and drown it in a bathtub. Hell, they may have even enjoyed the cruelty. But the sloppiness, the endless unforced errors—like attacking mail-in-voting and helping Republicans lose Georgia Senate seats in consecutive elections—well, no one likes that. So now Ron…

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