In recent years, Facebook has been accused of giving pride of place to disinformation, propaganda and conspiracies.
On October 4, whistleblower Frances Haugen confirmed, on the show 60 minutes, that Mark Zuckerberg’s company is much more interested in profits than in the quality of the information circulating on its pages. These serious accusations are not unprecedented: the Fox News network received the same as soon as it went on the air 25 years ago, on October 7, 1996.
A quickly essential player
Created by Australian press magnate Rupert Murdoch and headed until 2016 by Roger Ailes, former political adviser to Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, Fox News had the slogan “Fair and Balanced”: the objective was not to be impartial, but to counterbalance what the Conservatives saw as the liberal bias of mainstream media, and more specifically of CNN.
Like Facebook, Fox News has grown rapidly and the channel has established itself as a major player on the media scene within a few years.
Since 2002, it has been the most popular news channel in the United States: between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., nearly 2.5 million people watch it, compared with 1.3 million for MSNBC (also created in 1996) and 822,000 for CNN. The Trump years, good for all the media, were more so for Fox News: on the one hand, because of the populist style of Trump and Fox News; on the other hand, thanks to the phenomenon of revolving doors between the administration and the media company, when advisers to the president were hired by the television channel and network hosts played the president’s advisers.
The culmination of conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s
While Facebook is often portrayed as a lax platform for users who follow conspiracy theories, Fox News has, for its part, been held responsible for the polarization of American society by being the mouthpiece of an uninhibited conservatism that wanted to change the rules of the political game in the United States. Incarnated by Newt Gingrich, Republican President of the House of Representatives between 1995 and 1999, this new conservatism opposed to any compromise with the Democrats found in Fox News a strategic and ideological ally. But the network also owes its success to three phenomena whose origins date back to the 1960s and which mobilized the conservative voices of which it is the spokesperson.
First, the conservative backlash to progressive movements, in particular the feminist movement and the fight for the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), or the movement for the recognition of homosexual rights. Then, the popularity of televangelists, supported by President Reagan, who have their social and political priorities – abortion, family – inscribed on Republican platforms. Finally, the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which until then protected the balanced representation of points of view in the media, thus giving the green light to the creation of exclusively conservative television and radio stations.
At the origin of major transformations
Fox News is the consequence of the conservative revival, but is also at the origin of great socio-political and media upheavals which have favored the right and the Republicans. First, Fox News has imposed a new way of presenting news by moving from field journalism to an approach based on opinion and commentary.
Today, this way of doing things is widely used, whether at CNN or at home, at RDI and LCN. In the United States, this helps to undermine public trust in the media, especially Republicans, who listen to Fox News more than any other medium (over 90% of Fox News viewers identify as Republicans): if it’s all a matter of opinion, so they’re all equal, and journalists are just one voice among many.
Second, Fox News impacts political priorities by turning anecdotal phenomena into political crises that often end up resulting in fruitless debates – the issue of wokes and some cancel culture is a good example – and which have the effect of dividing the population rather than informing it.
Fox News and Facebook at a crossroads?
Like Facebook, Fox News is both the cause and the consequence of the excesses of freedom of expression, individualism and rapid technological developments. The insurgency of January 6, 2021, as pro-Trump supporters stormed Congress to overturn the November 2020 presidential election result, is a spectacular and chilling illustration of the power of big networks that refuse to to sort out the true from the false, the fact of opinion, the reality of the phantasmagoria. Facebook, by the strength of its algorithms, however, risks doing even more damage than Fox News. In this regard, Frances Haugen’s revelations – and above all, Facebook’s reaction – are crucial and should be markers of change.
Closer than you think
Canadians often watch with bewilderment the strong polarization that exists in the United States, and even more so the media that feed it, as does Fox News. It must be said that there is no equivalent in Canada, in particular because of the Broadcasting Act, which stipulates that the Canadian media must foster “a market of ideas” and a “diversity of voices”, essential elements for a “healthy and dynamic” democratic life. The failure of Sun-TV News (2011-2015), founded and funded by people close to the right and wishing to counterbalance what they considered to be the liberal bias of the Canadian media, illustrates the difficulties of take the Fox News approach in a small television market like Canada.
For further
Consult the book Super Mad at Everything All the Time, by Alison Dagnes Listen to the podcast Today the story on televangelists and on ERA Watch the film Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes Watch the series Mrs. America, on FX