The breakup is risky for both parties

Fox News has a firm place on the conservative media spectrum in the United States. It remains to be seen whether the niche channels touted by Trump can contest this.

Carlos Barria / Reuters

The once symbiotic relationship between President Donald Trump and Fox News has become complicated. Last weekend it was particularly clear how much. On Saturday, Trump once again scolded the broadcaster on Twitter who had acted as a spokesperson in recent years. You can hardly watch Fox News during the day, especially weekends, he wrote. He recommended his nearly 90 million followers switch to the small One America News Network or Newsmax channels instead.

Less than 24 hours later, however, the president had connected his phone to the much higher-rated Fox News station to give his first post-election interview. So the interview is the wrong name: moderator Maria Bartiromo acted more as a keyword. So he opened the conversation with a question about alleged election fraud and said, “The facts are on your side” – even though by that time some thirty complaints from the Trump camp had already been denied. For 45 minutes, the president was able to spread conspiracy theories on large-scale manipulation without objection, culminating in the observation that it was statistically impossible that he had lost the election.

However, the Fox News course is equally contradictory. On Sunday, presenter Eric Shawn said on his broadcast that the government, electoral authorities and experts believe Trump’s allegations are false. He turned on a critical journalist from the Axios portal and dismantled various passages of the interview with him.

Trump was rampant in Arizona

The episode shows how difficult it is for Fox News to deal with Trump’s election defeat. The station actually forms multiple transmitters at the same time. “If you tune in during a conspiracy class, you get conspiracy theories. If you tune in at any other time, you can actually see the news, ”the Washington Post media editor wrote this week.

Station stars like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs fuel allegations of election fraud on their prime time shows. They regularly bring witnesses who claim to have observed manipulations or legal representatives of the president. Dobbs also questioned Sidney Powell on Monday, from whom even Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani had distanced himself because his grotesque claims were exaggerated. At the end of the conversation, Dobbs commented that crimes had been committed against Trump and the American people. It was an attack on democracy and the president had to draw “drastic consequences, even dramatic ones”.

Meanwhile, Fox News calls Joe Biden “President-elect” on most other programs. The medium has long declared him the winner of the election, just fifteen minutes after CNN became the first major television station to do so.

Indeed, on election night, Fox News had been the first major means of assigning Biden to the state of Arizona, thus defeating Trump’s plan to quickly claim victory. According to media reports, the president would be furious and instructed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to intervene directly with Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, in vain.

Trump had already voiced negative comments about the station in the months leading up to the election, but his run forward with Arizona led to a rift. Since then, the president has complained and even blamed Fox News for the election result. In a tweet in mid-November, Trump wrote that he was sad to see Fox’s ratings plummet. The broadcaster forgot what made it a success. “You forgot the golden goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 and 2020 elections was Fox News! “

By the golden goose, Trump naturally meant himself, because the benefits of this close relationship were decidedly bilateral. Murdoch had positioned Fox News as a conservative voice when it was founded in 1996. In the intense campaign phase of September and October, the channel garnered record views of around 3.5 million viewers per day in prime time and was seen. more than any other national broadcaster. In doing so, he mostly broadcast Trump’s appearances in full, gave him and many other Republicans a chance to speak unfiltered, and even took part in the campaign against Biden’s son Hunter, launched by the Murdoch newspaper. “New York Post”.

But the station also benefited not just because Trump brought in high ratings. Fox figureheads have become confidants and advisors to the President with direct access to the Oval Office in recent years. Carlson or Hannity consulted Trump regularly before making any major decisions. Finally, the administration approved the sale of much of Fox’s entertainment division to the Disney group, despite antitrust concerns. Trump soon presented himself as a supporter of the billion dollar business.

A television station in an identity crisis?

The search for how to deal with the president has thrown Fox News into an identity crisis, said Greg Kelly, once the station’s prominent presenter and now the star of competitor Newsmax. After the election and during Trump’s publicity for the conservative niche channel, Kelly had over a million viewers for the first time, ten times more than in previous months. Other programs also increased significantly, and in November the site overtook Breitbart as the most used right-wing news portal for the first time. Newsmax has not yet declared Biden the winner of the election and spreads wild claims about the election or the corona virus every day. Sean Spicer, the former Trump government spokesman, also has a show on the channel. The smaller One America News Network reported that voting machines have canceled or moved about three million Trump votes in Biden – the president quoted him in an all-caps tweet.

While these stations are gaining viewers, Fox News ratings dropped by nearly a third during the day after the election. The broadcaster is likely to be nervous that rumors persist that Trump could enter the media industry himself after leaving office in order to keep the conversation going and promote a candidacy in 2024. According to Axios, the president has announced to friends that it will launch an online channel to compete with Fox News.

It would undoubtedly be a challenge for Murdoch’s broadcaster. Trump’s avid supporters and Fox viewers largely overlap, and the president also has ample opportunities for dissemination through his social media channels and voter databases. But Trump would also run a high risk. Fox News is the main conservative medium and has been the most watched news channel for nearly two decades. It is highly questionable whether a streaming portal can change the habits behind this success.