Fox News and the marketing of lies

Donald Trump and his conservative backers have done more than anyone to popularise the term “fake news”, rebuffing criticism of him by opponents and “mainstream” media as deliberate falsehood. Yet what was long Trump’s biggest media cheerleader, Fox News, played a key role in perpetuating the most dangerous instance of fake news to date in a democracy: that the 2020 US election was “stolen” from Trump. Internal communications unearthed in a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine maker, suggest senior Fox figures were prepared to spread the lie not because they believed it, but for fear of losing viewers to rivals. Rather than let it go to trial, Fox settled the case this week for $787.5mn. Many of its viewers will probably barely notice.

Dominion presented the settlement as a victory for truth. It secured almost half of the $1.6bn damages it sought, one of the largest known US defamation payouts. Yet no public apology or retraction was required from Fox. It is regrettable that the settlement spared Fox News executives and presenters, and the Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch, from testifying in weeks of hearings that would have shone more light on to the affair.

The case serves nonetheless as a warning of the perils, even in an established democracy, of partisan journalism tipping over into propaganda. Fox pandered to its conservative viewership, but the alternative reality it created fed their tribalism and paranoia. When the Trump narrative parted ways with reality, viewers preferred hearing the lie. Fox continued to give them what they wanted.

This was not possible in the heyday of the American networks. In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission established the so-called fairness doctrine. In return for receiving broadcasting licences, radio and TV stations were required to devote time to issues of public importance and present opposing views. The FCC scrapped the doctrine during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1987, arguing it restricted the free-speech rights of broadcast journalists under the first amendment.

Free speech advocates say the advent of cable channels and the internet removes the need for requiring balance from any one outlet since Americans have easy access to a vast array of views. That underestimates consumers’ ability to live in a bubble of broadcast and online sources telling them what they want to hear, and switch sources if they are dissatisfied. Some commentators argue for reviving something akin to the fairness doctrine. But the US media landscape has been transformed from the days when news outlets relied on gaining access to scarce airwaves.

Many democracies impose minimum impartiality standards on broadcasters; some have powerful public service broadcasters such as the BBC (a frequent punchbag of critics from both right and left). The main restraint on US journalism has become defamation suits — though the bar for public-figure complainants of showing “actual malice”, that an outlet showed a reckless disregard for truth, is unusually high. That gives considerable protection to responsible journalism, but can be a shield for the less responsible kind.

In a fragmented media environment in which partisan news outlets are becoming more prominent, public authorities in other countries should take heed of developments in the US. As generative AI opens new ways to create “fake news”, consumers should be better educated on how to spot misinformation and seek out reputable sources. Advanced economies need to find ways to ensure free media, long an instrument of upholding democracy, do not become an instrument for subverting it.