Fox News is promoting a vicious cycle of election sabotage in which they allow their Trumper personnel to spew dangerous falsehoods about Joe Biden’s win which, quite predictably, get amplified by sore loser Donald Trump.
From a Media Matters article titled, “The Trump-Fox feedback loop is powering an assault on democracy”:
President Donald Trump spent the weekend tweeting clips and quotes from Fox programs that were laced with misinformation and conspiracy theories about the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden as part of his effort to delegitimize the results.
Biden won the election by a convincing electoral vote margin and enjoys a large and growing popular vote lead. Trump’s campaign is now trying to win in the courts what they lost at the ballot box by alleging widespread voter fraud, fueled by the same viral misinformation circulating on social media platforms. Their legal case is comically weak, has virtually no chance of reversing the election even if it succeeds, and appears to be in no small part an attempt to soothe the president's bruised ego -- but could nonetheless do real damage to the American public’s faith in elections. And the upper echelons of the Republican Party and the right-wing propaganda apparatus are continuing to support him as he takes a hammer to the U.S. democratic system.
Author Matt Gertz provided some good examples of the feedback loop:
Really dangerous stuff happening here. https://t.co/PIG4I1JYAy
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 8, 2020
Left, Fox & Friends Sunday, 8:07 a.m.
Right, Trump, 9:17 a.m. pic.twitter.com/PlHgpC2tgp
The theory that Rupert Murdoch had put his foot down really isn't holding up too well. https://t.co/xYqH6UH8iS
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 9, 2020
On CNN’s Reliable Sources yesterday, senior media reporter Oliver Darcy asked, “where are the adults in the room?”
DARCY: And look, Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch, if [CEO] Suzanne Scott is not going to do it, maybe they should step in. But it is dangerous. You think Fox News has hit new lows -- new low after low, but then they drill down into the earth, they drill down into the ground and find a new low. And it is -- it is beyond reprehensible. I don't know how to describe it. But if you watch it, you understand that it is -- it is just dangerous, dangerous stuff.
You can watch Darcy sound the alarm below, from the November 8, 2020 Reliable Sources.
