Fox News faces its worst scandal and the loss of conservative audience

Fox News, the channel most followed by Republican voters, is facing a serious economic, legal and credibility crisis. The causes: a defamation lawsuit from the Dominion Voting Systems company that can make them lose $1.6 billion; documents that reveal the spread of the electoral fraud hoax, in 2020, to get an audience knowing its falsehoodand the confirmation that the chain opted to serve political interests to the detriment of journalistic ethics.

Just as the electoral campaign for the 2024 presidential elections begins, with the candidates already officially running and facing the primaries of their respective parties in a few months, Fox News loses steam even before its conservative audience, which which is a serious problem on the most watched cable news channel in the United States.

republican bases

Although Fox News has been regarded as a bastion of Republican politics by its large Republican fan base, and despite having faced previous crises, in its 26 years of existence he had not experienced the social, political and media pressure that there is now for him to give explanations to both the audience and his own workers.

And it is that the revelations that have come to light in recent days, based on statements by executives and star presenters of the chain, show how they themselves say they do not believe the accusations of electoral fraud issued by Donald Trump, after Biden’s victory in 2020. Despite this, and due to fear of a drop in viewers, they decided to go ahead with the conspiracy theories.

Fraud

One of the commenters Sean Hannitypointed out in said statements that he never believed in the fraud allegations “not for a second” and the founder of the chain, rupert murdoch, said the 2020 presidential election was fair and that “nobody stole the election.” All this has come to light during the investigation carried out after the lawsuit by Dominion, the company that became the target of the accusations by Trump and Fox. The reports repeatedly disclosed that the company that manufactures the voting machines was to blame. that Donald Trump lost the elections and that she was involved in a fraud attempt to do so.

Fox defends itself by saying that if it reported the issue in this way, it was because it was relevant enough, it was newsworthy, and it was necessary to highlight the point of view of the magnate and his entourage. However, it does not clarify why they passed off as information the opinion of those who supported the ex-president, something in which neither chain executives like Murdoch nor star journalists like Carlson Tucker, they believed. And even more so, why were those colleagues who tried to duly report all this pressured?

support withdrawal

The scandal is being such that even Republican figures from the Senate and the Capitol Police have criticized Fox News after Tucker recently commented on videos of what happened on January 6, 2020, minimizing what happened. “They do not show an insurrection or a riot in progress”, but “a mostly peaceful chaos”, were some of the journalist’s words that have provoked outrage from the conservative party and the progressive side as a whole.

Also Democrats like the leader of the majority of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, demonstrated last Tuesday harshly against Tucker in his attempt to “rewrite the history of the worst attack on our Constitution since the civil war.” In the plenary session of the upper house, Schumer pointed out that the journalist “was lying to his audience” in an attempt to “dive deep into the waters of conspiracy and choose from thousands of hours of security footage.”

The assault on the Capitol, provoked by Trump’s harangues, occurred despite the fact that investigations by several judges, in different battleground states where the tycoon’s defeat was in question, did not find any type of widespread fraud to support the accusations. Nor was any evidence discovered that the vote was rigged, which is why dozens of courts rejected the accusations of electoral theft made by the former president.