An April 22, 2020 report in Vox by Zack Beauchamp looks at a study which compared Sean Hannity’s shows with those of Tucker Carlson and the effect on their audiences during February and early March.
A study by Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, David Yanagizawa-Drott from the Becker Friedman Institute used a number of tools to analyze differences between Covid 19 news coverage on FOX by Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, and then investigated whether those differences could be found to have affected their respective audiences differently.
To put it more plainly, which show led people to do dumber things? Here’s the abstract from the authors:
We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States – Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News – on viewers’ behavior and downstream health outcomes. Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February. We first validate these differences in content with independent coding of show transcripts. In line with the differences in content, we present novel survey evidence that Hannity’s viewers changed behavior in response to the virus later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior earlier. We then turn to the effects on the pandemic itself, examining health outcomes across counties. First, we document that greater viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. The relationship is stable across an expansive set of robustness tests. To better identify the effect of differential viewership of the two shows, we employ a novel instrumental variable strategy exploiting variation in when shows are broadcast in relation to local sunset times. These estimates also show that greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with a greater number of county-level cases and deaths. Furthermore, the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity’s shift in tone, the diverging trajectories on COVID-19 cases begin to revert. We provide additional evidence consistent with misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data. While our findings cannot yet speak to long-term effects, they indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for how a disease ultimately affects the population.
emphasis added
Shorter version: listening to the wrong people at the wrong time can get you and those around you killed.
The paper is still undergoing peer review; the Vox article discusses the methodology the researchers used and concludes that it seems pretty sound so far. There’s a link to the actual working paper (it’s being updated as more epidemiological data comes in), and this section from the introduction gives a good summary of why they undertook this research.
Efforts to contain a pandemic depend crucially on citizens holding accurate beliefs. Yet the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2020 was accompanied by the spread of news downplaying the extent of the threat and dismissing the importance of measures designed to contain the epidemic. In particular, Fox News, the most-watched cable network in the United States, has faced widespread criticism for spreading misinformation about the pandemic. (1) If true, this could be of particular concern, not only due to Fox’s large viewer base but also because its viewers are disproportionately elderly — a population among whom the coronavirus may be up to ten times more fatal than among the general population (Wu et al., 2020). Moreover, given the large externalities inherent in a pandemic, misinformation may have harmful effects far beyond those on viewers themselves by affecting disease transmission trajectories in the broader population.
In other words, Fox not only put its viewers at risk, the behavior of their viewers put the broader population at risk. Beauchamp at Vox excerpted this finding:
“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.”
The culpability of the misinformer in chief can not be discounted, but the role of Fox in this and so many other critical matters can no longer be dismissed.
NOTE: the study is still being reviewed and has yet to be accepted for publication. If the findings and conclusions of the authors are accepted, it shows watching Fox is literally hazardous to your health. As a public health measure, taking Fox off the air would be the 21st century equivalent to removing the pump handle.