Fox News is America's most watched cable news network. But at least with respect to its prime-time commentary programs, Fox News is not "news" at all, but a right-wing propaganda machine that has helped to fracture American politics by undermining the shared sense of empirical reality necessary for a healthy democracy.
Fox News is both a mouthpiece for President Trump and a mechanism for implanting ideas and voices in Trump's head. Trump then repeats these ideas and parrots the voices, sometimes word for word, believing they are his own.
Donald Trump has now told more than 10,000 public lies since 2016. Communications scholars and other social scientists have shown that
Fox News lies to its audience so often that a person who watches
no TV news at all would know more about factual current events than a regular Fox viewer.
Fox News traffics in white racial resentment,
white identity politics, overt racism, white victimology, nativism, xenophobia and misogyny, as well as bigotry and fear-mongering against Muslims and other out-groups.
Donald Trump does the same things.
Donald Trump is an authoritarian with no respect for the rule of law and democracy.
He has used scripted violence and stochastic terrorism to target his political enemies, with the most recent example being his attacks on the four nonwhite Democratic congresswomen he recently told to leave America unless they are willing to comply with his racially authoritarian regime.
Other researchers have shown how Tucker Carlson's show, and Fox News in general, mainstream white-supremacist talking points found online and elsewhere. Have you found this to be true?
Absolutely. Tucker Carlson has built his career over the last decade on the inherent authority which comes with being on television. He can use his platform to mainstream white nationalist or white supremacist talking points and ideas that his audience otherwise would not be privy to. Tucker Carlson has managed to pervert the privilege with comes with being on television into an opportunity to mainstream white nationalism.
What Tucker is doing is not abstract. Mainstreaming these talking points puts vulnerable communities under direct threat of physical and material harm. The FBI has documented a rise in hate crimes since Trump's campaign and through to the third year of his presidency. There have been massacres targeting Muslims, black people and Jewish people in churches, mosques and synagogues. There is a real life-and-death consequence from the unfettered white nationalism on Fox News, the No. 1 cable news network in the country.
https://www.salon.com/2019/07/18/me...ve-mainstreamed-unfettered-white-nationalism/