I watched Fox News every day for 44 months – here's what I learned

“Everything should calm down a little bit in seven months,” they said.

It was 9 February 2016, when I began my career as a critic of Fox News at Media Matters for America, a not-for-profit progressive research center dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the US media.

Most people, eventually including Donald Trump, assumed Hillary Clinton would be elected the 45th president of the United States that November. Most people were wrong about a lot of things.

Nearly four years later, the US political world revolves around the tweets of an erratic Fox News-watching grandpa who just so happens to run the most powerful country on Earth. Like any avid TV viewer, Trump has his favorite stories, and few rival the morning show Fox & Friends, where he spent years making frequent appearances before diving into politics.

Since July 2018, I’ve been one among a lucky few live-tweeting the show along with the president. And after consuming thousands of hours of Rupert Murdoch’s finest drivel, I’ve learned a few things about how America’s No 1 news network is dragging the United States into ruin.

At Fox News, opinion is king – not news

Fox & Friends’ main hosts – Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade – are a consistent train wreck of shameless hackery, even managing to turn a report about Trump’s $1bn in business losses into a glowing endorsement of his bold, wealthy brilliance.

Officially, Fox & Friends is an opinion show, but the ostensibly separate news side – which also lies daily – pops up a lot.

Ed Henry’s role in the news division is chief national correspondent, but in the opinion division he’s a co-host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends and occasional guest host of the main weekday show – on which he once led a segment asking whether climate change and “extreme weather” were the same thing (they are not).

Recently, the chief national correspondent reported that the CIA whistleblower had a political bias against Trump; Henry reported this not on one of Fox’s “news” shows, but with the pro-Trump propagandist Sean Hannity.

Later, while guest-hosting Fox & Friends, Henry discussed how “important” it was that his reporting on Hannity was helping Trump distract people from the impeachment inquiry.

Henry’s fellow correspondent Griff Jenkins also sometimes co-hosts Fox & Friends, where he gets to divulge exclusive reporting like his allegation that ethnic studies classes aren’t educational. Rather, he said, “they’re making social justice warriors out of children” – a blood-red culture-warrior attack absurd enough to prompt a chuckle from the guest.

Jenkins often does field reporting on immigration for Fox & Friends, a lowlight of which involved him literally hiding in the bushes along the US-Mexico border to help border patrol detain a migrant family.

After they were caught, a seemingly celebratory chyron read “Illegal admits to knowingly breaking the law”. Jenkins closed his report by discussing a wanted murderer and a known gang member who were caught trying to cross the border. Neither had anything to do with the family he helped arrest.

Fox & Friends’ combination of sloppy news coverage and fierce rightwing opinion is a microcosm of how much Fox values each side of the network.

Take, for example, the legitimate journalist and former chief news anchor Shepard Smith: after he had a dramatic on-air feud with the opinion kingpin Tucker Carlson, both Fox News’ CEO and its president reportedly threatened to take Smith off the air if he criticized Carlson again.

A few weeks later, Smith resigned from the network he had renewed his contract with last year. The sudden end of his 23-year Fox career shows what happens at that network when news and opinion irreconcilably collide. But on Fox & Friends, as with most of the rest of Fox, the “news” knows its place.

Fox News editorially taints other news media outlets

One of the ways Fox News corrodes politics is by influencing the larger conversation; in fact, you may be essentially consuming Fox propaganda without knowing it.

And as the network’s flagship morning show for over 20 years, Fox & Friends often sets the tone for how the network as a whole discusses any given issue. This line from the pastor and Fox contributor Robert Jeffress sums up a lot of Fox’s abortion coverage:

Jeffress’s unhinged comment highlighted a debate you may have heard of about so-called “post-birth” abortion, a procedure disproved by its very name. If the abortion happens after a child is born, then it’s not abortion; it’s murder, which is already very illegal everywhere.

Yet, as Vox’s Anna North recounted, the idea that there’s such a thing as “post-birth” abortion – and that there are people who want it to be – became such a potent meme that the president spoke against it and congressional Republicans made more than 70 attempts to protect abortion “survivors” with legislation.

This abject nonsense spiraled into a mainstream debate because of modest attempts to loosen restrictions on reproductive rights in New York and Virginia. The efforts spurred numerous attacks, including from Trump, who falsely claimed the governor of Virginia had said he “would execute a baby after birth”, and from Fox & Friends commentators, who rabidly declared that “infanticide” and “fourth trimester” abortion were actual progressive policy goals.

This example demonstrates a trend. My colleagues Sharon Kann and Julie Tulbert examined an entire year of evening news abortion coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News and found that Fox aired 94% of all three networks’ statements about abortion, and Fox was wrong 85% of the time.

This means that when CNN and MSNBC discuss abortion, they are often just responding to Fox News misinformation (while still managing to be wrong 67% and 40% of the time, respectively).

Fox News mainstreams white supremacy

Fox prime time has rightly earned a reputation as a cable TV haven for white supremacy, but, as with all things Fox News, Fox & Friends also plays a prominent role.

In October 2018, Fox News became a wailing siren on immigration, claiming that the US was under “invasion” by undocumented immigrants – specifically, a group of Central American migrants traveling (mostly walking) over 1,000 miles to the US-Mexico border.

In one week, Fox ran nearly eight hours of content on the then distant caravan. Fox & Friends started nearly every morning with anti-immigrant hysteria, eventually suggesting the US take military action to “protect our sovereignty” from families fleeing gang violence and endemic poverty.

The very day after that comment aired on Fox & Friends, a white supremacist murdered 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, because he blamed Jews for helping the “invaders” in the caravan.

Caravan hysteria eventually passed, but Fox News’ dangerous and false melodrama about an immigrant “invasion” continued.

Some months later, yet another mass shooter struck – this time murdering 20 in El Paso, to stop the “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. Kilmeade passionately defended using the dangerously hyperbolic term “invasion” just three days later.

Did Fox News inspire two white supremacist mass shootings? Probably not directly. Is it disturbing that America’s number one news network discusses immigration like bloodthirsty white supremacists? Yes.

Fox News ‘is about defending our viewers from the people who hate them’

A Fox News executive reportedly told Vanity Fair that the network’s “power comes from” its viewers, and it must defend them.

That sentiment neatly encapsulates how and why Fox inspires a strong sense of brand loyalty among its viewers – more so than other cable networks. On a number of issues, from recent (false) allegations of anti-conservative censorship on social media to the tried-and-true (and misleading) trope of “Dems are coming for your guns”, Fox News consistently tells viewers that there are hostile groups that want to revoke their rights, undermine their values, and cause them harm.

And having identified Trump, reverentially, as “our president”, Fox staff and guests alike say that any attack on Trump means Fox viewers could be next – a mutation of a longstanding culture of conservative victimhood, amplified bigly by the president himself.

Fox works hard to support these audience relationships, with its efforts spearheaded by its flagship morning show. Fox & Friends regularly airs live episodes with studio audiences, often including law enforcement officers, who receive regular effusive praise on Fox. These episodes provide lucky fans a chance to come to Manhattan, speak their minds, and have their opinions validated by their favorite TV stars.

Breakfast with Friends is a frequently recurring segment in which secondary hosts and correspondents travel to diners across the country, usually shadowing a Trump rally or election debate, to get the pulse of the people.

Strangely, when devoted Fox fans go on Fox to offer their opinions, they typically echo the conservative, pro-Trump line you can find from Fox mainstays. Breakfast with Friends has a similar goal to the live audience shows: offering Fox fans an opportunity to appear on TV and enjoy validation from their favorite personalities over sometimes-absurd amounts of breakfast food.

Fox News is now attempting to expand its footprint in viewers’ minds with the subscription streaming service Fox Nation. Fox Nation offers original documentaries on favorite rightwing media scandals, shares hot takes from opinionistas like Tomi Lahren and Diamond & Silk, and gives some on-air talent a chance to show another side of themselves to the Fox viewer.

For example, Kilmeade has an American history series that calls Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson a “hero”; the contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy has a show about motherhood; and Ainsley Earhardt hosts Ainsley’s Bible Study. The aim is to show Fox News superfans what their favorite “Fox News personalities do outside the newsroom”, drawing viewers tighter into the network’s destructive embrace.

Fox News poisons viewers’ minds

People who watch Fox News with an open mind can find themselves sucked into a destructive and alienating lifestyle. The writer Luke O’Neil collected several examples of families, his own included, divided by Fox News’ partisan garbage fire. O’Neil and his mother “have agreed to not talk about politics any more. The cognitive dissonance between this lovely woman finding something appealing in the most xenophobic pundits on TV is too hard for me to reconcile.”

Others told him about no longer visiting their home towns “because my family and friends all have broken Fox brain” or about not sending their children to see their grandparents because, thanks to Fox News, “their toxic anger and resentment is slowly becoming their entire identity”.

I can tell you from personal experience that when I say Fox poisons minds, I’m not being that hyperbolic. While watching Fox & Friends every morning, I struggle to unearth or at least assemble even shadows of fact-based arguments from the unhinged nonsense that is vital to the brand.

It can be so intense on Fox & Friends that I sometimes have what could be called propaganda hangovers – after finishing the show, I feel as though I’m trapped in a fog of disinformation, and my mental processes feel sluggish for a few more minutes.

My strongest bulwark against succumbing is strident opposition. Once you know you’re watching stupid bullshit, sometimes that stupid bullshit becomes must-see TV:

Fox News is ridiculous, stupid, and – when it doesn’t mean to be – hilarious. Most importantly, it’s an extremely influential stream of conservative misinformation. And the president’s favorite show, Fox & Friends, encapsulates the totality of the rotten network’s inherent conflicts and contradictions.

It shows how news and opinion is blurred – but opinion wins – and the lengths the network goes to ensure a devoted audience. Fox is a shameless counterfeit of a news organization, and Fox & Friends leads the fraud bright and early every morning.