I watch a little Fox News.
It is important to know what Republican partisans are watching.
Juliet Jeske watches a lot of Fox News.
She says she watches Fox so others won't need to. She presents what she knows in a Substack blog and a podcast.
Let me make two points, then show a bit of her work.
One. Viewers of Fox News learn almost nothing about Trump having done anything illegal. They hear that prosecutors are persecuting a completely innocent man, timing their indictments strategically to cover up real news stories, like new revelations from Hunter's laptop. Fox viewers don't hear that a jury awarded $5 million to a woman Trump sexually assaulted, which the judge termed "rape." Fox News viewers don't learn that Trump possessed and hid souvenir documents, some top secret, and was given multiple requests to return them, that he spurned those offers, and then hid them and lied to the government about hiding them, and blabbed about the secret documents to visitors to Mir-a-Lago. What they hear about the "document case" is that thug FBI agents invaded his home from out of nowhere, for no reason, and found golf shirts, and that he is being indicted for that out of malice and a weaponized justice system. Fox viewers do know something happened on January 6, probably instigated by Nancy Pelosi or the Democratic moles in the FBI, and that Democrats are somehow conspiring to claim Trump had anything improper to do with it.
They do know about Hunter Biden's laptop. Viewers learn that by rights it should have been the most important news of 2020, bigger than Covid, bigger than the election. Yet somehow Biden’s minions convinced Trump's government to treat the laptop as suspicious in origin, so the government intervened to keep the laptop story from getting the play it deserved. They know Hunter Biden is or was a drug addict and that he flagrantly used his relation to Joe Biden to get sweetheart jobs. They knew his laptop computer contained sex photos. They know that people accuse Biden family members of taking bribes and getting payoffs. They know that Republicans are on the hunt for the goods on the "Biden crime family" and that the shocking truth will be revealed sometime. They know that the economy under Biden is in a tailspin, bad and getting worse on every metric, and that everyone is miserable. They know that cities with Democratic mayors are hellholes of crime, carjackings, drugs, and murder, done often by people with dark skin. They know Trump secured the border but Biden ruined everything. They know that the U.S. is a weak laughingstock on the world stage, which allows Ukraine, Russia, and China to take advantage of us. They know that regular-looking patriotic people having breakfast in diners in Iowa and New Hampshire scorn Biden and love Trump. They know that Biden is physically weak and senile, incapable of dressing himself, much less serving as president.
Two. Almost nothing leaks in from outside this news bubble from "fake news" sources, either direct reports from the White House or other primary sources, or via reports from traditional media. Fox is a sealed container.
It is for that reason that this sixty second clip from Fox News is both amusing and instructive. A Fox & Friends host, the usually reliably on-message Steve Doocy, creates an excruciating moment for his co-hosts. He opened the door a crack to the outside. It was as if he was farting uncontrollably or in some other way embarrassing himself and the network. Watch: CLICK HERE
Downcast eyes. Stiff jaws. Blank faces. Endure this. Get through this.
I am grateful to Juliet Jeske for finding and sharing this moment from Fox. Hers is one of about fifteen sources of news that I both subscribe to and pay for. A few of those are on-line versions of printed journals, i.e. NYTimes, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New Yorker, the regional Oregonlive, and the local Rogue Valley Times. I also subscribe and pay for about a dozen independent journalists who write and have podcasts. They are entrepreneurs, able to carry out their work because people subscribe and pay them, usually voluntarily. Substack is a vehicle for letting them write, distribute, and get paid for their reports.
This blog is free and always will be. I prefer to keep the blog completely non-commercial. (I retired from being a financial advisor and did OK.) But some journalists can afford to do their work only if they get paid somehow. Instead of working for a newspaper or magazine, they are entrepreneurs on their own. They provide a service and I want them to succeed.
Thank you, I would have to take something for nausea before watching this, which I don’t. Trump supporter cult led by fox. How a major network can blatantly lie & remain like they do is beyond me.