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The GOP Knows Their Voters Will Not Blame Them for Lying – So They Continue [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-22
Fox News, the mouthpiece of the Republican Party, repeated the President’s lies about election fraud after the 2020 election for months. They claimed that the election was “stolen” by Democrats. The Biden administration was therefore illegitimate for the next four years, and Republicans were sad victims. The righteous and indignant Right was “robbed.”
Internally, Fox employees and executives knew they were lying about election fraud but could not go against corporate policy which required them support the President no matter how dishonest his claims about the election were.
Lying on Fox paid very well, and no one wanted to lose their job. So, the lie machine just continued and got bigger and more powerful leading up the January 6th Capital riot.
An NBC news article noted, “Fox News zeroed in on [voter] fraud claims as a way to boost ratings and appease their conservative viewers.” Lying was good for business.
Under oath, Murdock admitted that they did not believe in the lie they were telling their viewers repeatedly. Fox communications showed that from, “Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch on down to Fox News reporters — [all] were aware that the election fraud claims didn’t have basis in fact.”
In the same article, “Sean Hannity said in a court filing about Sidney Powell’s claims of a stolen election “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second." But Hannity continued to have her on his show so she could broadcast lies about election fraud which he did not wish to debunk or question.
In a Mediamatters.org article on the Dominion Voting Systems case, it states that, “Fox News executives and hosts acknowledge that the conspiracy theories and election fraud misinformation on their channel were dangerous and reckless.”
But free speech and the First Amendment means that big media corporations including Fox can lie as much as they want as long as someone does not sue them for defamation. This required a plaintive to prove the difficult case of malice by Fox which is a high bar.
The attack on Dominion Voting Systems was Fox’s downfall. All the lying came out in discovery when Fox’s management was questioned under oath. Their defense was that their viewers recognized their claims were only (unproven) allegations and were “newsworthy” even if false. Being newsworthy apparently means that they can repeat lies as often as they want as long as they are quoting or reporting on a statement by a celebrity or someone in authority.
The Fox defense crashed and burned in court as they finally settled prior to trial and paid Dominion Voting Systems $787M for defamation. An actual trial would have dragged out for months and shown Fox’s corruption to the public slowly and (for them and their bottom line) painfully.
Fox had the perfect chance to prove its innocence, but they knew themselves to be guilty and they knew that they would lose in both court and in the court of public opinion.
They folded like a house of cards in the wind.
What price did they pay beyond the monetary settlement? Apparently, they paid almost nothing.
This whole drama seemed to prove that lying is inherent in their corporate philosophy and is part of their business model since good lies drive ratings.
There are claims that Fox lost all credibility after its internal antics were exposed in discovery and the $787M was paid to Dominion. But there is little evidence that this is true.
Tucker Carlson was fired after the Dominion debacle - a small consolation.
But did Fox and by direct connection, the Republican brand, really suffer from all the lies?
A Nextv.com article claims that 10% of viewers are “watching the network less” after the Dominion case. The same article stated that the “Maru Group said that 21% of respondents [to a pole] now trust the network less, while 16% disclosed that they had a less favorable view of Fox News on-air hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.”
A Variety.com article claimed that, “More than a fifth of Fox News Channel viewers are less trusting of the cable network in the wake of publicly disclosed text messages and emails from Fox executives…”
But most of these people continue to watch the network and support the GOP even as they say that they have less trust. This seems to indicate they do not care if they are systematically and repeatedly lied to and misinformed as long as they feel comfortable, entertained, and secure while watching.
Mediaite.com reports in April 2023 following revelations about Fox’s lying (April 18th was the settlement date between Fox and Dominion) that Fox is the most trusted news network at 41% trust. Unbelievably, the CNN, ABC, CBS, PBS, and NBC networks all only had a “trust” level in the low 20’s by comparison.
Shockingly, I can find little data or evidence that previously loyal viewers are boycotting Fox in the future and unfortunately cable companies still force you pay for Fox whether you watch it or not.
One might ask how comfortable and entertaining lies have become preferable to the truth when covering such an important topic as receiving accurate information in a presidential election.
One depressing theory is that the ethical character of voters has degenerated, and the importance of honesty and truth no longer matters to close to half of the voting public.
A nation is a like lifeboat in a storm that its people must work to keep afloat. Without a commitment to truth, we are blind and are unable to bail out the water that is rushing into the boat
Given the acceptance of the current wave of dishonesty in our political discourse, we are all sinking fast.
I repeat a question once asked by the disgraced Bill Cosby in a comedy routine. Here, the Biblical Noah does not want to cooperate with God to build the ark. In the routine, God tries to motivate Noah as ominous thunder sounds in the background by asking him, “How long can you tread water?”
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