Last week, the ultraconservative news outlet, NewsMax, reached a $73 million settlement with the voting machine company, Dominion, in essence, admitting that they lied in their reporting about the use of their voting machines to “rig” or distort the 2020 presidential election. Not exactly shocking news, since five years later, there is no credible evidence to suggest any malfeasance regarding the 2020 election. To viewers of conservative media, such as Fox News, this might have shaken a fully embraced conspiracy theory. Except it didn’t, because those viewers haven’t seen it.
Many people have a hard time understanding why Trump enjoys so much support, given his outrageous statements and damaging public policy pursuits. Part of the answer is due to Fox News’ apparent censoring of stories that might be deemed negative to Trump. During the past five years, I’ve tracked dozens of examples of news stories that cast Donald Trump in a negative light, including statements by Trump himself, which would make a rational person cringe. Yet, Fox News has methodically censored these stories, only conveying rosy news that draws its top ratings.
The genesis for this project was a remarkable event in October of 2021. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell had recently died. Accolades for this great statesman poured in from around the globe…except from Donald Trump, who released a statement on Powell’s death. “Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!” The crassness of the message was a stretch even for Trump. I reviewed FoxNews.com to see how they would cover it. Nothing. It appears that producers felt that Trump’s statement was so personally humiliating that they chose to hide it from their viewers.
This incident led me to launch this ongoing project over the last few years. When a story ran in a mainstream media outlet that portrayed Trump in a negative light, I would search FoxNews.com for a few days to determine if the outlet ran the story.
Here is a smattering of examples of stories that Fox News viewers never saw.
Twisting Public Policy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that more than seven to 11 million Americans will lose health care coverage due to Medicaid cuts in Trump’s tax and spending bill, signed into law this year. However, Fox News didn’t cover any of the CBO estimates. Similarly, the bill’s cut to low-income Americans’ food assistance, which is estimated to drop two million people from government aid, was also not covered by Fox News.
Holiday Messages. Throughout the year, on holidays that are considered solemn to most Americans, Trump sullies the events with nastygrams, usually attacking perceived opponents. For Memorial Day 2024, he used the occasion to attack the judge who was overseeing the E. Jean Carroll defamation and battery case brought against him. He wrote: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION.’” Earlier this year, his Easter message was similarly vindictive. “Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country.”
Other Weird Stuff. And then there’s the category that just doesn’t fit anywhere. For example, during a 2024 campaign rally, Trump claimed that Kamala Harris and the Democrats “want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings.” Similarly, Trump was irate that during his inauguration, flags in Washington, D.C., would remain at half-staff in honor of the recent death of former President Jimmy Carter—an outburst Fox News chose to ignore.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood." In this case, the falsehood that Fox News is perpetrating on its viewers is that Trump is a rational politician, devoid of error and irrational rage. One must wonder whether his base would be so loyal if the real Donald Trump were portrayed in all his ugly glory.
Bradford Fitch is a former Capitol Hill staffer, former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, and author of “Citizens’ Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials.”
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