In recent weeks, much has been made about loyal Fox News viewers changing channels to upstart networks such as Newsmax and One America News Network. This started due to anger over the Fox News decision desk calling Arizona early on election night for Joe Biden. Reasonable criticism can be made about the timing of that decision and Fox’s refusal to rescind the call, even when Arizona’s outcome was unknown. But Biden did win Arizona. And calling a state does not change a single vote.
On a scale of unforgivable sins, correctly calling a state early ranks pretty low.
Weakening Fox News has been an urgent strategic goal for the Left for more than a decade. Before Fox News arrived, the Left controlled the flow of information through legacy media outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, the nightly newscasts on CBS, ABC, and NBC, and on the top-rated cable news network, CNN.
They decided what the news was. They shaped narratives. They attacked conservatives and promoted liberals and their causes. Fox News offered competition at a time when no one else could.
What has transpired over the past 20 years is one of the great success stories in the history of media.
Fox News has been the highest-ranked cable network for years. Its shows, from Fox & Friends to Special Report to its opinion programming in prime time, dominate cable news and reach millions of people daily.
This success brought relentless attacks.
Advertiser boycotts were launched. Fox News talent and management were targeted. Opponents had some successes, but Fox News survived and, in fact, thrived. A cottage industry has sprung to life in the past few years, led by the leftist group Media Matters, which has organized advertiser boycotts and tries to embarrass Fox News and lure away its audience every single day.
Why does the group do this? Because Fox News is effective. It is very profitable, it breaks news, it covers stories the legacy media ignores, and it can withstand withering criticism.
There is no recent story where this was more evident than the Hunter Biden controversy.
Before the election, much of the media ignored any revelations about foreign influence and the son of the Democratic presidential nominee, with Fox News as one of the few TV exceptions. Media Matters wrote on Nov. 2, “Fox News has spent 36 hours and 34 minutes, which included 596 segments, since October 14 relentlessly covering” the Hunter Biden email story.
Compare that to the legacy media.
Nonprofit media watchdog Newsbusters reported that “media channels ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN spent a total of 9 minutes covering the story in the 92 hours following the [New York Post] initial expose.”
In recent days, we have learned that the federal prosecutors in Delaware have been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018, before Joe Biden announced he would run for president. The Associated Press reported that this investigation involves “scrutinizing some of his Chinese business dealings and other transactions.”
Why did voters not know about this before the election? Liberals in the media did not want them to know.
The New York Post, owned by the Murdoch family, reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the contents of which have never been denied by the Biden campaign. The laptop story resulted in a widespread boycott of several social media companies, with tweets linking to the New York Post story being banned and its account being locked for several weeks.
Tucker Carlson’s groundbreaking interview of Biden family business associate and whistleblower Tony Bobulinski was the highest-rated hour on cable news in 2020, with 7.5 million viewers.
While Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly falsely claimed that Fox News never covered the Hunter Biden story, the record is clear. Fox News covered this story and many others legacy media outlets ignore. They have covered the Durham investigation. They have covered Russiagate. They have covered President Trump’s many successes, including border security, rebuilding the military, Middle East diplomacy, judicial confirmations, and the booming economy before the pandemic.
This is not to say that Fox News is perfect. No news outlet is above criticism.
But weakening Fox News does the Left’s dirty work for them, and some conservatives are falling for it. Meanwhile, Newsmax and OANN are minor players that hardly ever break news or offer significant television audiences.
As a conservative, I am all for competition. But I am not for unilateral disarmament.
Matt Mackowiak is the president of Potomac Strategy Group, LLC. He’s a Republican consultant, a Bush administration and Bush-Cheney reelection campaign veteran, and a former press secretary to two U.S. senators.
