A new political science study published on April 3 revealed that Fox News viewers measurably changed their political beliefs and understanding of contemporary issues after just one month of switching their cable news diet to CNN. The study further discussed how partisan media can influence audience preferences and behavior via agenda setting and filtering news through a political lens — common Fox behaviors.
In the study’s abstract, authors David Broockman at the University of California, Berkeley and Joshua Kalla at Yale University explained their methodology and results, in which regular Fox viewers incentivized to watch CNN instead for a month showed major shifts in their understanding of issues routinely skewed by Fox’s disinformation machine. The study, which was conducted in September 2020 at the height of the presidential campaign between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, not only demonstrated how effective the Fox echo chamber is as a political tool in affecting viewers’ behavior, but also suggests that the partisan media ecosystem threatens our democracy itself:
As Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias noted, there were measurable changes in the Fox viewers’ beliefs as a result of the study, even though the viewers themselves “remained very right-wing” politically:
[Viewers who switched from Fox to CNN] were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long Covid, for example, and six points more likely to believe that many foreign countries did a better job than the U.S. of controlling the virus. They were seven points more likely to support voting by mail. And they were 10 points less likely to believe that supporters of then-candidate Joe Biden were happy when police officers get shot, 11 points less likely to say it’s more important for the president to focus on containing violent protesters than on the coronavirus, and 13 points less likely to agree that if Biden were elected, “we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”
These are meaningful differences, even if the group that switched to CNN remained very right-wing in their view of the American political landscape.
In his analysis of the report, Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump noted that these effects were only temporary and “receded as treated participants primarily returned to their prior viewership habits.” In short, Fox viewers changed their views when given a glimpse of reality outside their information bubble, but, as they returned to Fox, the network’s political programming took hold once again.
Indeed, public opinion surveys have repeatedly demonstrated Fox’s viewers are exposed to so much misinformation that they are less informed than people who don’t consume any news at all, and they are more likely to believe lies about important topics such as COVID-19 and vaccines than are other viewers who rely on mainstream news outlets. The study’s authors attribute this phenomenon “in part from a bias we call partisan coverage filtering, wherein partisan outlets selectively report information, leading viewers to learn a biased set of facts.” They explained (emphasis in original):
Media Matters has documented numerous examples of Fox engaging in both agenda setting and partisan coverage filtering to misinform its viewers on multiple topics, overwhelming them with lies and omissions that distort their understanding of objective reality.
- During the first month of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Fox's coverage stood out for airing commentary that was supportive of the invasion or disparaged American or European efforts to support Ukraine every single day. Media Matters identified at least 49 instances of Fox pushing pro-Kremlin talking points in its coverage of the war, including several instances that directly parroted Russian state media.
- In the span of just five days last week, Fox spent over 3 hours riling up its audience about Disney’s response to Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and the company’s efforts to be gender-inclusive, mentioning “Disney” more than 350 times and bizarrely accusing the company of trying to sexualize children.
- Fox as a whole, and prime-time host Tucker Carlson in particular, has repeatedly undermined efforts to vaccinate more Americans against COVID-19 in its coverage on a near-daily basis, which may be a contributing factor in the lower vaccination rates observed among Fox viewers.
- During a 12-week period in 2021, Fox flooded its airwaves with fearmongering about immigrants in over half of all its segments that discussed immigration and refugees, for a total of 693 segments implying that migrants are dangerous, falsely claiming they are an economic drain on the United States, or pushing racist conspiracy theories about migrant culture.
- Fox likewise inundated its viewers with lies about “critical race theory,” mentioning the college-level legal theory that isn’t taught in public schools over 1,900 times in a three-and-a-half-month period in 2021.
- Fox’s agenda setting and partisan filtering was also on display in 2019, as it dominated cable news coverage of the Green New Deal with misinformation to attack it. Over just five days that February, Fox aired 34 segments on the Green New Deal — more than triple the coverage of MSNBC and CNN combined during that time — and most of those segments either ignored climate change or mocked concerns over it.
- A 12-month study of cable news’ evening abortion coverage from March 2018 through February 2019 found that Fox News drove substantial mentions of abortion, airing 334 of the 526 total segments that year, or 63% of the coverage. Fox filled that void in accurate news coverage of abortion with misinformation; 85% of its abortion-related statements were false.
In the new study, authors Broockman and Kalla also argued that participants “concluded that Fox concealed negative information about President Trump,” a phenomenon Media Matters has documented many times:
- Throughout the Trump administration, Fox routinely denied its audience information about multiple Trump scandals. Fox downplayed or ignored stories about government spending at Trump’s properties and his commerce secretary’s threats of retaliation against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after Trump lied that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane.
- While CNN and MSNBC both devoted more than two hours of coverage in less than a day to reporting on a whistleblower complaint involving a phone conversation Trump had with a foreign leader, Fox devoted only 11 minutes of coverage to it. (That whistleblower complaint which Fox mostly ignored led to Trump’s first impeachment.)
- Regarding the pro-Trump January 6, 2021, insurrection, Fox devoted less than five minutes combined over the course of a day last month to three seperate breaking scandals about the disgraced former president and his advisers. In July 2021, during a congressional hearing on the insurrection, Fox likewise covered the testimony of officers discussing the attack for just five minutes.
- In contrast, Fox has saturated its airwaves with pro-insurrection voices, hosting members of Congress who voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory over 900 times throughout 2021.
Given these examples from Fox News, the study’s authors were correct when they argued that such partisan media coverage “may present a challenge for democratic accountability.” Media Matters has previously argued that Fox is a threat to American democracy, and this study is further proof of it.
