In the days following Obama’s re-election, Fox’s ratings dipped, so much in some spots that the network trailed MSNBC in the key 25-54 demographic, a focus of advertisers. As discussion continued over whether and how the network had lost the trust of its audience, executives at the news division ditched its most strident poll denier, political analyst Dick Morris, and sidelined Rove. But another network regular, Donald J. Trump, seemed to draw a different lesson from the failed election. The audience wanted to stay in the world that Fox first introduced.
In 2012, the seeds of Trump’s victory in 2016 and even the run-up to the January 6 crisis could be seen. The longtime television personality knew his audience, soon to become his foundation, better than any Fox host, and he did not hesitate to feed it: “More reports of voting machines shifting votes from Romney to Obama.” Trump tweeted before voting ended; then, “Let’s fight like hell to stop this gross and disgusting injustice,” and “We cannot let this happen, we must march on Washington and stop this travesty” and “This election is a total farce and travesty. We are not a democracy!”
Trump, with his blatant disregard for the facts, presented significant challenges to all news organizations. For Fox, the problem was even more complicated. Trump had a particularly tight grip on the core members of his audience. Would Fox follow them down the rabbit hole? When he got the 2016 Republican nomination, they had options. For the first time, there were other options for conservative TV news consumers: Newsmax, which Ruddy had brought to cable in 2014, and One America News Network, which made its debut in 2013. The new networks were “barely a blip” . a Fox executive would say with disdain. In the early summer of that year, Ailes came under scrutiny for serial sexual harassment and abuse on the network, which would lead to his expulsion; after the Murdochs ousted Ailes in July, he became an informal political adviser to Trump. Hannity was also acting as an informal adviser to Trump., crossing the line at once from Ailes. Quietly, that August, the network fell its defining slogan: “Fair and Balanced”.
Ratings skyrocketed and more hurdles disappeared. James Murdoch, then in a competition with his brother, Lachlan, to succeed Rupert at the top of the empire, argued that Fox should impose stricter journalistic standards and reduce its pro-Trump coverage to avoid branding problems for Fox’s movie business. Corporation and facilitate any expansion plans. Rupert chose Lachlan, who thought staying the current course was a no-brainer. Murdoch sold the studios to Disney, and James went off on his own. Fox News became an increasingly important earnings driver for the family business.
Fox’s opinion hosts were drawing ever closer to Trump’s inner circle, and his bosses seemed less willing than ever to push them back. In an especially shocking moment at a 2018 midterm election rally, Hannity stood next to Trump at his presidential lectern, pointed to reporters in the back of the room, including Fox’s Kristin Fisher, and called them ” fake news”. The reporters on the news side were furious. The network issued a lukewarm statement that it did not “forgive talent participation in political events.” During a lunch with Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace, executive editor of Fox News, the network’s top newscasters, including Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, urged bosses to take disciplinary action. But nothing seemed to come of it. Hannity continued to help Trump into the next campaign year, even as branded journalists were headed for the door. Carl Cameron, a senior political correspondent, had already left in August 2017, then saying network journalists were being drowned in “partisan misinformation” on the opinion side. Host Shepard Smith left in 2019 and would go on to cite similar complaints.