And as Uhl explains, these relentless, partisan attacks are exactly what the station is designed to do.
Fox is “not actually a news network,” Uhl tells Daily Kos at Netroots Nation, the country’s largest progressive conference. “It's just a campaign operation. This is a right-wing propaganda operation… And now you see its ultimate manifestation: This revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration.”
Uhl would know: His work at Media Matters is directly relevant to this sort of misinformation. The progressive research center works hard to point out and stop the right-wing lies that flood our media. Because while Fox News is sometimes easily dismissed or brushed off, in other circles, it’s received as a given fact. The rise of misinformation on social media, like Facebook, is especially concerning. Just because people aren’t tuning in to Fox News for their nightly news doesn’t mean they aren’t coming across the same lies when they refresh the browser on their cellphone.
Question 1: You track the racist content regularly featured on Fox News, particularly by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. Why do you think Fox News executives continue to stand by these two despite public pressure and a loss of advertisers?
So Fox News stands by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, I think, for a couple reasons. First, they don't actually see problem with the rhetoric. I think a lot of them have just drank the Kool-Aid. They truly believe that people who come from Middle Eastern countries and Islamic majority countries actually are violent and and subhuman. We've seen it in Tucker Carlson's comments. Explicitly called people from Iraq and Afghanistan "semi-literate primitive monkeys." I don't think that actually bothers anybody at Fox. You don't see anybody standing up and saying, like, they object to this on a moral ground.
And I think second, if they do anything—if they punish Tucker or Laura—if they cancel their shows, it looks like they're giving in to what they call “The Mob.” And I think this is stubborn for a few reasons.
First, it doesn't recognize that maybe there is a critical mass in opposition to these viewpoints outside of this Fox bubble.
And second, they have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the investments of their shareholders. So by not acting on the concerns of the public and the viewership, they could actually risk a public backlash from their shareholders and a lawsuit.
So these are a few things to watch going forward. I'm not sure that like, Lachlan, who's now running Fox actually cares about this stuff. But it is something to be mindful of, that shareholders could take action against Fox.
Question 2: Are you surprised at the revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration and/or the enormous influence Fox News hosts are having on actual U.S. policies?
The influence that Fox has on U.S. policies is alarming and it should scare everybody. So you have a president who sits and watches Fox News almost all day. He DVRs shows that he misses and comes back and watches them later. And then he tweets about them.
And my colleague, Matt Gertz ,has tracked this feedback loop and it's deeply alarming. So you'll have Fox News hosts say things, everything from the banal like, 'Happy Birthday Lee Greenwood' was a segment on Fox & Friends. And about 10 to 15 minutes later, Trump tweeted out, "Happy Birthday Lee Greenwood." So, you know, pretty mundane, but then it also can get dangerous.
So one night, Tucker Carlson pushed this racist, white-supremacist conspiracy theory, this white genocide conspiracy theory, claiming that white farmers in South Africa were being slaughtered. And it was a racially motivated crime, he claimed. There's no proof of this whatsoever. Trump saw this segment and tweeted about it, and said he was going to direct the State Department to look into it. This caused a national crisis.
So we have moments like this where Trump sees things on Fox News...
Most recently a small city council decided to not say the Pledge of Allegiance before a city council meeting. And Fox framed this as the Pledge of Allegiance was banned. Trump saw this and then tweeted about it. So, this influence where there's no editorial standards at this network. And then you have the President of the United States just taking it in, without any cause or concern, and then tweeting about it, shaping public policy, shaping public perception, it’s deeply alarming.
And the revolving door just shows the influence this network has. And how it's not—it's not actually a news network. It's just a campaign operation. This is a right-wing propaganda operation. That was Roger Ailes' mission, he was a campaigner, and then he came into this network and created this propaganda wing for the Republican Party and now you see its ultimate manifestation: This revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration.
Question 3: What do you say to people who complain boycotts of conservative media amounts to censorship?
So, people who think that corporate pressure campaigns are tantamount to censorship don't quite understand what these campaigns are all about. So, you have a world in which these advertisers these huge corporations cozy up to networks like Fox. They advertise every single night on Tucker Carlson. And when you see their ad placement, right after a segment where Tucker Carlson claims that, or his guest claims that, Ilhan Omar would be a member of the KKK if she wasn't in congress, how else are you supposed to interpret why Starkist's ad is immediately following that segment? How else are you supposed to interpret My Pillow running multiple ads on these shows every single night, every single day?
I don't understand how people can look at this and think that there's some firewall between advertisers and these shows. And we have this world in which Citizens United allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. But then we are left, you and I are left, with little recourse to shape public agenda.
So we have corporate pressure campaigns. We can say 'Hey no, we support you, we do business with you but we don't want you advertising on this show because it looks to us like you support this rhetoric.'
So, companies need to be mindful of where they place their ads. They need to institute ethical ad guidelines. And they need to be mindful of how their ad placements and where those ads are placed, can shape their brand.
Bonus Question: If you could give advice to your teenage self, what would it be?
If I could give advice to my teenage self I would say, get involved in politics and organizing earlier. I waited a little bit too long, I think. And I think there was opportunities missed that could have been valuable learning experiences. And also, don't be stubborn! Listen more. When I was younger, I didn't do that.