Fox keeps getting better — at lying

A news outlet known for its low standards now has no standards

I often criticize mainstream media for a slow learning curve in defending the truth against right-wing disinformation. But one major news outlet is doing an impressive job of fine-tuning its methods.

That’s Fox. 

Fox has gotten progressively more dishonest since it was founded in 1996. That’s not surprising. A 2016 neuroscience study found that “a gradual escalation of self-serving dishonesty” was common among liars.

But it’s not just that Fox is lying more often — it’s that Fox is getting better at lying. Here are five lessons the Fox disinformation squad has learned.

1. You can skew the news and not get sued

Fox paid a $787 million settlement last year over its dishonest reporting about the 2020 election. You’d think the people at Fox would stop lying after taking a hit like that. But they’re simply making their lies bulletproof.

One way to do that is to avoid lying about specific people or companies that can prove damages. After the 2020 election, Fox on-air personalities and guests made false accusations against Dominion Voting Systems, and Dominion sued. Fox has since learned to keep its crazy allegations more vague, accusing “the left” or “them” of nefarious acts. 

I suspect that Fox is also telling its staff to avoid putting things in writing. Using the discovery process, Dominion obtained reams of internal Fox communications showing that the network aired charges that it knew were false. Given that evidence, Fox felt it had no choice but to settle. When I was an editor at major newspapers, we told reporters to call us if they had a particularly sensitive issue rather than send an email. We didn’t want our emails showing up in court if we got sued. We did this even though we were trying to tell the truth. Fox, which was lying, should have known its communications were vulnerable.

You can bet Fox employees aren’t sending those kinds of communications anymore.

2. You don’t always have to lie — just hide the truth.

The Fox strategy has been brilliant: Suck in your audience and then tell them all the other networks are “fake news.” Build an impenetrable bubble. That way if you ignore important news, your audience might never hear about it. In recent months, as documented by the superb Media Matters website, Fox has shielded its viewers from these stories:

• Donald Trump disparaging the value of the Medal of Honor because its recipients are “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.” 

• Speeches by anti-Trump Republicans at the Democratic National Convention. 

• Louisiana Republicans banning abortion pills. 

There’s a reason why a study found that people who watch Fox are less informed than people who watch no news at all.

3. If you don’t like the facts, push the vibes instead.

It’s always interesting to watch Fox’s Maria Bartiromo react to positive economic news. Among my favorite reactions was when May 2022 unemployment fell to 3.6%. Bartiromo conceded that it was a “good number, solid job growth,” but noted that Elon Musk had a “super bad feeling about the economy.” 

The economic news is generally good, so Fox increasingly emphasizes polls showing public perceptions to the contrary. It’s a feedback loop — Fox says the economy is bad, so its viewers think the economy is bad, and those viewers contribute to polls saying the economy is bad — even though statistics show it’s good.

Wage growth has outpaced inflation for more than a year, but Fox focuses on inflation while ignoring the higher wages. It’s an effective propaganda approach because people see higher prices at the grocery store and don't immediately measure that against the larger raise they got a few months ago.

There’s a similar dynamic with crime. Fox hypes heinous urban crimes — especially if immigrants are involved — and dismisses the fact that big cities have seen major drops in violent crime in the last two years. As Fox host Brian Kilmeade said about crime last week, “Ask anybody in the streets of Philadelphia … if they think crime is going down. In New York City, you walk the streets here, I don’t care what the bar chart or the pie chart says, it’s not going down.”

This preference for vibes over facts isn’t exactly a new tactic for Fox, but it increasingly comes into play because of positive news on crime and the economy that Fox chooses to ignore.

4. People do watch reruns.

Part of getting better at lying means adopting new tactics but keeping the golden oldies that have worked in the past. Fox’s Jesse Watters recently brought up birtherism — yes, birtherism, the bogus claim from 2008 that Barack Obama was born in Kenya when he was actually born in Hawaii. 

And the same old sexism that dogged Hillary Clinton is being pushed by Watters, too: He has called Kamala Harris a “frightened woman” unfit to play with the world’s big boys. He also said, “She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.” He added that he didn’t mean that “in a sexual way.”

5. Lies don’t get punished anymore.

If the most prominent political criminal of our time — Trump — can stay out of jail and even run for president, Fox knows it can spread reckless rumors with impunity, as long as it doesn't defame anyone who can sue (see lesson No. 1).

An egregious example was Bartiromo’s post on Twitter/X on Aug. 18, in which she said an unnamed friend of a friend’s wife in Texas had seen “massive” lines of immigrants at the Department of Motor Vehicles getting licenses and being registered to vote by Democratic activists.

Without confirming the story, Bartiromo shared it on her Fox show in three separate segments, embellishing the tale to say the supposed immigrants were “massive lines of illegals.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram did actual journalism and contacted the Texas Department of Public Safety, which said Bartiromo’s report was “simply false” and “kind of racist.”

Contacted by a Zeteo News reporter, a Fox spokesperson defended Bartiromo by saying she was citing a source and never said she had confirmed the story. As if that’s a real defense.

Did Bartiromo get fired? Reprimanded? Forced to apologize? Nope, nope, and nope, as far as we can tell. The tweet is still up.

A news outlet known for its low standards now has no standards. And that makes it better at lying.