Fairleigh Dickinson University researchers conducted a study to pin down exactly what Fox News does to your brain. They asked 1,185 Americans ten basic current-events questions that every American should know. Questions like, which party controls the House? What are the three branches of government? What are economic sanctions against Iran supposed to do? Yada, yada, yada.
What the study revealed is nuts.
NPR (National Public Radio) listeners were the most accurately informed of any group tested. The Daily Show viewers outperformed people who consumed no news at all. And Fox News viewers? Someone who watched only Fox News was expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly… worse than people who watched no news at all, who averaged 1.22 correct answers.
Read that again. You are better informed watching nothing than you are watching Fox News.
And before you start hollering “fake news,” the university stood ten toes down by every word of it. When Fox News attacked the study’s methodology, Fairleigh Dickinson called the response “unfortunate” and “unfounded,” defending its valid scientific methodology and unequivocally standing behind its findings. But the claims go even further because there are multiple studies giving similar results.
Researchers publishing in Frontiers in Psychology found that people who relied on Fox News for information were more likely to believe misinformation, held less accurate knowledge about how disease spreads, and were more likely to hold prejudiced views toward people who don’t look like them. In contrast, people who regularly read the New York Times or listened to NPR were better informed and expressed lower levels of prejudice.
But, why? Why does Fox News make people demonstrably less informed, more conspiratorial, and more prejudiced? Is it incompetence?
No. It’s the business model.
Researchers found that Fox was the first cable network to figure out that outrage boosts viewership and they built their entire programming strategy around it once the Fairness Doctrine was axed.
The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC policy created in the late 40’s, requiring broadcast networks to present controversial issues in a balanced way. Reagan stopped enforcing it in 1987, clearing the path for the rise in right-wing talk radio and eventually Roger Ailes’ Fox News.
Today, Fox commands over 60% of the cable news audience, a dramatic jump from a more evenly split landscape a decade ago. Anger keeps people watching. Fear keeps people coming back. And prejudice, the quiet, simmering sense that people who don’t look like you are the source of all your problems, is the most reliable fuel they’ve got.
Fox understands the panic rippling through white America and exploits it for profit. The network presents a terrifying world to its viewers and then tells them, repeatedly, that it is the only entity in society standing up to the nefarious forces seeking to destroy their way of life.
That’s not journalism. That’s cult recruitment strategy 101.
What makes it even more calculated is that researchers studying Fox News headlines found that the network uses fear-based language at a significantly higher frequency than other outlets—not in explosive bursts, but in a steady, sustained drumbeat. This consistent low-level fear, rather than occasional panic, is what makes it so persuasive. They’re not screaming at you. They’re whispering the same terrifying story, every single night, until you stop being able to imagine the world any other way.
The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit ripped the curtain all the way back. Internal messages revealed that Fox’s highest-profile hosts knew Trump’s election fraud claims were lies and went on TV every single night and told you otherwise anyway.
The $787.5 million settlement Fox paid to Dominion wasn’t just a legal defeat, it was a confession in everything, but name. Fox’s executives had chosen propaganda over truth because telling the truth would have cost them ratings, and with it, profit.
This is the machine. It is not broken. It’s working exactly as designed by keeping you angry, keeping you afraid, keeping you watching, and keeping you dumb enough not to notice what’s being done to you.
Do yourself and this country a favor and turn the TV off.
Links:
https://www.fdu.edu/academics/centers-institutes/fdu-poll/ https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.560828/full
In other news, water is wet. Republicans are shit eaters or sewage chuggers, take your pick. Rupert Murdoch, in any sane world would have been driven out of business and boycotted by every corporation spending on advertising in the US. Unfortunately he developed Fox News concurrently with the social acceptance of woke tolerance. Now chronic unrepentant liars pay no penalty whatsoever, politically, economically, or socially. Most teenagers probably don't even know what the word boycott means. I miss the previous century and critical thinking.
I realize that I often quote the suit amount wrong. I have had, for whatever reason, $784 million programmed into my head.
Because, you know. When you're an oligarch... what the heck is another $3.5 million dollars? Chump change.
If you or any of your readers want to some something about this idiocy endemic, you can join the https://foxtakedown.com effort. 😀