Fox News’ MAGA stars have spent Donald Trump’s second term lavishing praise on the president and his purported accomplishments, denouncing his opponents in vitriolic terms and telling their viewers which culture war enemies to hate. But any understanding of the goals of a political outlet like Fox is incomplete without considering the stories it doesn’t cover: a list that, as of late, includes the Iran war, the Trump family’s alleged corruption and the president’s unpopularity. This negative space in Fox’s coverage largely emphasizes its hosts’ choices, just as an artist’s use of the empty area around a subject is part of their work (though at times, the network’s executives seem to be calling the shots).
And while it’s hardly novel for Fox to dodge bad news for Republicans, the network’s hosts are going to remarkable lengths in Trump’s second term to avoid what should be important subjects.
When Fox ignores a story, it represents information that is not making its way to the president through his television.
Within Fox’s negative space are stories that the network’s stars seem loath to defend or even acknowledge to their viewers. That’s a high bar, considering that Fox hosts eagerly covered the various indictments of Trump for storing highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and fomenting an insurrection. Yet network stars like Sean Hannity won’t even try to explain, for example, why it is appropriate for a Russian oligarch to bankroll the president’s son’s wedding. These omissions speak to just how damning Fox talent may consider such narratives for the MAGA movement and Republican Party.
Fox’s negative space also has implications for the political and public policy arenas. Trump’s worldview is shaped by the Fox content he regularly consumes, and he has often taken action in response to what he sees from the trusted figures on his television. When Fox ignores a story, that represents information that is not making its way to the president through his television.
Consider, for instance, the war with Iran. In the run-up to the conflict, the network’s biggest hawks urged Trump to attack. Other voices went silent, rather than point out, say, that Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz.
When Trump launched the war, the network moved in lockstep to support it and praise him. As the conflict became increasingly unpopular and settled into a quagmire, the network’s on-air talent toggled between calls for risky escalations to finish the fight and declarations that the United States was already on the verge of victory. Skeptical statements that the war may have been a mistake were rare. Eventually, Fox largely stopped talking about the war. On five of the network’s most influential programs, mentions of Iran fell 78% from June to August.
In place of these news stories, the network increased its already frequent culture war programming.
Gone missing, as well, is coverage of conflicts of interest and the business dealings of the president and his family. Fox spent years drowning its audience with coverage of the foreign business interests of Hunter Biden. Its stars regularly — and baselessly — accused former President Joe Biden of profiting from his son’s dealings or rewarding Hunter Biden’s partners with favorable government action. After Trump returned to the White House, he and his sons saw their wealth soar thanks in part to sprawling international business deals and even contracts and other administration policies. Yet Fox’s interest in presidential ethics simply vanished.
Most recently, ProPublica’s bombshell report that a “lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands” to celebrate Donald Trump Jr.’s May wedding “was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.” (Trump Jr.’s wife, Bettina, confirmed the report but said, “Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda.” The president said his son had paid back Kremlev.) In the two days after its publication, the story received just three minutes of coverage on Fox — all from a single show, “Special Report.” That show’s host, Bret Baier, even noted that “in a Democratic administration, there would have been a lot of coverage of this.”
Nowhere, however, is the silence louder than Trump’s polling. With six weeks to go to the midterm elections, perhaps the most salient fact in American politics right now is that Trump is broadly unpopular. Poll aggregators show the president’s job approval below 40%, at or just above all-time lows. Those figures, analysts warn, could prove cataclysmic for Republican candidates and incumbents.
But Fox consistently hides the president’s unpopularity from its viewers, with hosts talking up Trump’s performance and dodging signs of dissent. The network’s most recent poll, published Wednesday, Sept. 16, found the president with a 39% job approval to 61% disapproval. Fox did not mentioned that headline figure once through noon on Friday, however, even as the network covered other numbers from the survey.
These are just three areas where Fox has avoided delivering bad news to its audience — including the president. We at Media Matters have observed the network also giving short shrift to rising inflation and gas and diesel prices; health crises like the summer’s outbreaks of measles and cyclospora; reports that the Trump administration denied disaster requests and canceled energy grants to states because they had voted for Democrats; Republican scandals like Rep. Max Miller’s alleged domestic abuse and Texas candidate Bo French’s bigotry; and the reality that most immigrants targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal record.
In place of these news stories, the network increased its already frequent culture war programming. In August, Fox’s evening shows mentioned “socialism” 730 times, the WNBA 238 times and Dr. Anthony Fauci 193 times. On Monday alone, Fox covered an essay by New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones in eight separate segments between the 7 a.m. hour and the 9 p.m. hour.
But though such segments may fill airtime, they don’t fill in viewers on how this MAGA administration is unfolding. Only by observing what Fox ignores do the contours of Trump’s second term — the dangerous incompetence, blatant corruption and cratering popularity — snap into focus.
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