Fox News anchors were concerned about the loss of viewers post-2020

Fox News’ post-election 2020 antics are finally coming back to bite them. The $1.6 billion lawsuit against the Dominion Voting Systems news network has escalated, bringing many damning public disclosures. For one thing, their own hosts didn’t believe some of the election fraud malarkeys they were spreading. Rupert Murdoch also thought it was nonsense. The problem, as a recent report shows, is that if they reported the news correctly, they were afraid of losing their audience.

The New York Times have delved into a recording of a Zoom call involving anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, among others, which took place almost two weeks after Election Day and changed a week after most outlets named it for Joe Biden . During the chat, they didn’t congratulate each other for calling Arizona exactly for Biden earlier than most places. Instead of telling the truth, the problem was.

“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona, our ratings would have been higher for those three or four days after Election Day,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said. “The mystery would still have been out there.”

Instead, MacCallum argued, they shouldn’t just report the facts. Instead, they should consider how viewers would react if they practiced sound journalism.

“In a Trump environment,” MacCallum said. “The game is just very, very different.”

Baier agreed. “We’re still being bombed,” he said, saying it’s “become really hurtful.” He suggested, like MacCallum, that they should consider things other than facts. “I know the stats and the numbers, but there has to be something like that other level” that would allow them to “think beyond the impact.”

MacCallum had his back. “There was obviously a tremendous amount of backlash, which I think is more than any of us expected. And so there’s this layer between stats and news judgment about timing, which I think is a factor,” she said, concerned about the “loud fraction of our viewers” who didn’t appreciate being told that Biden probably won Arizona what he did.

That brings things back to a German quote first published in Peter Baker’s 2022 book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. Two days after the election, as Biden’s lead was shrinking, Baier emailed Fox News President Jay Wallace and others to suggest they remember her Arizona nomination.

“It hurts us,” he wrote. “The sooner we pull it, even if it gives us a big egg. And put it back in his column. the better we are In my opinion.”

And so Fox News got into the electoral fraud speculation that may have ended up destroying them anyway.

(Above NYT)