The tens of millions of eligible Americans who still refuse to travel down to their local drug store in order to obtain a free vaccine that could prevent their hospitalization and potential death from COVID-19 all claim to have reasons for their decision. Many of those reasons turn out to be echoes of some meme or other piece of disinformation they read on Facebook. Others seem to take their cues from cynical Republican politicians eager to score political points by portraying the vaccines as some type of unwarranted government intrusion into peoples’ lives. Whatever excuse is being parroted, however, it’s almost certainly been validated at one time or another by the Murdoch family’s Fox media empire, which has consistently sown doubt about the vaccines since they first became widely available.
Because there hasn’t been such a campaign of peddling lethal lies about a common-sense public health initiative in most Americans’ lifetimes (if ever in our history), and because the nation is so polarized politically, it’s understandable how Americans might be at a loss to appreciate just how pervasive Fox media’s propaganda effort has been. But if you can imagine, in, say, 1964, after the U.S. surgeon general reported a definitive link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, one of the three major news networks at the time embarking on a crusade not only to cast aspersions on those findings but also attempting to demonize and discredit the surgeon general himself—in effect, encouraging more people to smoke cigarettes as a form of protest—you might come close to what Fox News has done in instilling doubts about the COVID-19 vaccine.
A new analysis by Media Matters confirms that Fox News aired anti-COVID-19 vaccine content in its programming nearly every single day over a six month time frame. Their review of Fox programming revealed a deliberate, coordinated, and obviously intentional effort to indoctrinate and propagandize its viewership with contrived and manufactured doubts about the vaccines, an effort which went into overdrive immediately after the inauguration of President Biden.
As explained by Media Matters’ Tyler Monroe and Rob Savillo:
As the United States has struggled to fully vaccinate its population, Fox News has aired a continued stream of coverage that has undermined the vaccine effort. Fox pushed a claim undermining vaccines during 99% of the days in the past six months despite the effectiveness of the vaccines at stopping death and serious illness from COVID-19 and the higher rate of deaths and hospitalizations among the unvaccinated.
As noted above, during the six-month period prior to initiating the study (April 1, 2021-September 30, 2021), Fox News aired commentary or discussion calculated to undermine public confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines on every day, save two. On those two days the discussion of vaccines took a backseat to Fox’s hyper-critical coverage of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In preparing its analysis, Media Matters reviewed transcripts and original Fox programming, excising discussions involving two or more participants in which vaccines were discussed. They specifically excluded “passing mentions” of the vaccines (involving references by a single person), as well as brief references to the vaccines such as on the Fox News “crawler,” or teasers in which upcoming discussion about the vaccines were referenced. To evaluate how speakers undermined the vaccines, Media Matters adopted the following criteria:
We deemed claims to be undermining vaccines if they described the vaccines as: unnecessary or dangerous; coercive, representing government overreach, or violating personal freedom or choice; or cynical ploys for political or financial gain. We also considered claims that dismissed the efficacy of vaccines; highlighted individual experiences with vaccine hesitancy; politicized vaccine distribution or deployment speed; criticized continued adherence to health measures; or suggested that vaccination efforts are a violation of civil rights, liberties, and freedoms or are a form of control.
The purpose of this effort was to illustrate just how insidious and pervasive Fox’s propagandizing against vaccines has been. There was no attempt to equate the cumulative impact of such disinformation to the number of still-unvaccinated American adults otherwise eligible for the vaccine, or the number of Americans who have been hospitalized or have died from COVID-19 thanks to their reliance on Fox News. Nor is it possible to determine how many Fox-inspired memes, posts, or videos have been created and disseminated on social media for the purpose of undermining the vaccine effort. Other studies and polls conducted during the summer of 2021 demonstrated a clear link between vaccine refusal and Fox News viewership.
As Monroe and Savilo explain, it’s not difficult to understand why this is the case:
Throughout the pandemic, Fox News has consistently undermined public health efforts to protect people from COVID-19. Despite some highly publicized support for vaccination from select Fox hosts and a vaccine mandate for the network’s staffers, Fox’s coverage has continued to undermine public health officials, calling for “civil disobedience” to vaccine requirements, pushing unsubstantiated claims about deaths from vaccines, and pushing dangerous alternative medical treatments to the coronavirus.
The fact that Fox News’ own employees are required to be vaccinated or subject to testing as a condition of their employment fairly indicates that Fox’s campaign of disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines is not motivated by any pretense about its truth or accuracy. It’s clear that neither the network nor its hosts whose program content is carefully vetted by Fox executives believe that the vaccines are ineffective or otherwise harmful. Rather, the sole motivator for discouraging its viewers from getting vaccinated appears to be a cynical trade-off between Fox’s profits and the health and lives of its viewers. Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines is a huge business and taps into the wellspring that feeds the mentality of the typical Fox News viewer: the idea that external forces are conspiring against him or her, and that he/she is being victimized by those forces. The fact that Fox News operates in tandem and in furtherance of Republican Party orthodoxy also suggests that both the needs of the Republican Party and the needs of the Murdoch family are being served by this campaign of disinformation.
On that score, it’s reasonable to conclude that the combined efforts by Fox and the GOP to undermine, question, and discourage the vaccination effort in this country have directly resulted in thousands of unnecessary American deaths, and thousands of equally unnecessary hospitalizations. As the pandemic is now one predominantly affecting unvaccinated Americans, those deaths and illnesses are now occurring disproportionately to those same Republicans who placed their trust in both Fox News and the Republican Party.
Which makes perfect sense. If your primary source of information is Fox News, so much that you reflexively discount any other news source, you will absorb that skepticism on a daily basis until it effectively becomes your worldview. Fox News has structured its programming so that if you miss such propaganda on one day, you will certainly see it the next day, or the day after that. As the Media Matters study shows, the effort to discourage vaccine usage markedly increased after President Biden’s inauguration, reflecting a conscious decision on the part of the Murdoch family that the intentional sacrificing of potentially thousands of American lives would yield a net benefit—financial and political—to Fox and to the GOP.
It’s not clear, however, exactly what that benefit could possibly be. But maybe Fox will explain that to its viewers one day. For the sake of all those who died or were hospitalized thanks to this campaign of vaccine disinformation, and for all the devastated families left behind, you’d think that’s the very least they could do.