On The Bulwark Podcast, Matt Gertz explains that Fox News isn’t in the “business of informing their viewers," instead telling audiences that “what they believe is correct”
“They are not in the business of informing their viewers. They are not in the business of teaching their viewers. They are in the business of telling their viewers what they believe is correct.”
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On The Bulwark Podcast, Matt Gertz explains how Fox News isn’t in the “business of informing their viewers,” but to tell their viewers “what they believe is correct”
CHARLIE SKYES (HOST): I wanted to just drill down a little bit on this. Why is this happening? And I have several different layers to this question. Why is Fox News doing this? Now when they are faced with a billion-dollar plus lawsuit for their lies about the election. The week after we had this incredible embarrassment of riches from the document dumped showing the text messages and the emails, the hypocrisy, the duplicity, the dishonesty. Why is Tucker Carlson doubling down on this? And why has Fox News letting him?
MATT GERTZ: So I think that these two things are not really inconsistent. If you look at these text messages, what they reveal is that people like Tucker Carlson are willing to spread things that they personally believe are untrue.
SYKES: Yeah.
GERTZ: Because they know that that is what their viewers want to hear. What I think is the key text message from all of these dumps is Tucker Carlson, telling Laura Ingraham, that he personally found the lies from Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani unbelievably offensive. But, quote, our viewers are good people and they believe it.
I think that is the key that unlocks Tucker Carlson’s show and a lot of the rest of Fox News. They are not in the business of informing their viewers. They are not in the business of teaching their viewers. They are in the business of telling their viewers what they believe is correct. And what Tucker Carlson’s viewers believe is correct in part because they’re inclined to believe this in the first place, in part because Tucker keeps telling them that, is that the January 6 attempted coup and insurrection was no big deal and that if anything, it is an attempt to attack them personally.
And so that is what he is serving up to them.