Fox News and others lied about the 2020 election being stolen. Is cable news broken?

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: In the run-up to the Capitol attacks of January 6, 2021, several networks started promoting a narrative that diverged from reality: that Donald J. Trump was the rightful president-elect and the election had in fact been 'stolen' from him. None of it was true, but night after night, Fox News hosts entertained this alternate version of events which was cited by several rioters as their motivation. Is cable news broken? Author and media journalist Brian Stelter joined The Excerpt to talk about his latest book “Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy."

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to the excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, November 15th, 2023, and this is a special episode of the excerpt. In the run-up to the Capitol attacks of January 6th, 2021. Several networks started promoting a narrative that was at odds with the political reality. The biggest among them was Fox News. The host claimed the election had been stolen. Their guests said that Trump was actually the legitimate and rightful winner. And then there was Tucker Carlson, who night after night accused dominion voting systems of rigging the election in favor of Joe Biden. None of it was true. Yet media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, swore that he would never knowingly deceive his audience. So how did it happen? And more importantly, how can we preserve the integrity of our elections while still making room for divergent political perspectives? Here to help me dig into this is author and media journalist Brian Stelter, his latest book, Network of Lies, The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and The Battle for American Democracy is on bookshelves now. Brian, thanks for joining us.

Brian Stelter:

Great to be here. Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

The Dominion versus Fox lawsuit forced the network to release thousands of potentially revealing even embarrassing emails and texts between hosts and producers. And you dug into those court documents. What were the biggest nuggets that you found?

Brian Stelter:

Yeah, I felt like this big lie litigation was and is really important. There are still many cases underway against networks like Newsmax and figures like Rudy Giuliani, who pushed the election lies in 2020. In fact, these lawsuits, they're probably going to keep going past the 2024 election. But because Dominion and Fox settled in April, we know there is at least a blueprint for these cases. Dominion gained almost $800 million from Fox as a result of the lawsuit. But before the settlement happened, dominion provided so many of those internal emails and text messages through the pretrial filings that they put out in court. So these documents, they're really important because they provide an on the record expose of what was going on inside Fox. After Joe Biden was named President-elect, it was Fox and all the other major networks that called the election that projected the election for Biden.

It was very clear that Trump had lost, but because stars like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity panicked, they freaked out. The audience also freaked out. Fox's audience did not want to hear the truth. And so what you see in these emails and text messages is a tug of war between what is true and what these hosts and executives want to be true. And ultimately, the lies oftentimes won out. Lies oftentimes were the prevailing narrative on Fox. There was a remarkable message from Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox News Media saying, the fact checking of Trump on air has to stop. It's bad for business. And that was the sad truth back then. It was bad for business for Fox to tell the truth that Trump had lost.

Dana Taylor:

Did any of the content that you got your hands on prove definitively that Tucker Carlson knew that claims that the election was stolen were lies?

Brian Stelter:

The Tucker case is complicated, because on the one hand, he is privately saying to his colleagues in emails and text messages that he hates the fraud claims. And he clearly doesn't believe, at least some of them, because he mocks Sidney Powell, who was the Trump aligned lawyer who was pushing Dominion smears on Fox's airwaves. So that's happening on one side. On the other side, he feels the need to be, how I would describe it as lie adjacent. He feels the need to at least seem open-minded, amenable to the possibility that Trump was actually the winner. And he's continued that to this day, by the way, hinting and suggesting that there was something nefarious happening without actually having any proof. That is what's helped Trump's reelection bid.

Dana Taylor:

Well, Brian, I thought it was interesting that you described Tucker as being out of touch, living in a bubble he had and still has a huge following. So who was he out of touch with and how small was the bubble?

Brian Stelter:

The way that I describe it in The Network of Lies, Tucker Carlson's world kind of shrank during the Trump years. As he became a bigger and bigger star. As he became more and more extreme in his rhetoric, more radicalized on the air, he also became unglued, and he shut himself off. He moved out of Washington, DC, for example, and retreated to his compound in Florida and his home in Maine on an island, literally on an island. He was not going into the office anymore. He was not seeing his colleagues in person very often. He was not seen the head of the network in person. So I think it closed him off a little bit from the outside world and even from the Fox world. And certainly I had several sources who are close to Tucker, still are close to Tucker, who said to me, this period changed him.

The Trump era, and then Covid, really changed him. I've known him 20 years. Those are not the ideas of Tucker from 10 years ago. That's a newer person that's emerged, and he's not hearing countervailing points of view or inconvenient facts. And by the way, this is about much more than Carlson. This is about tens of millions of people in the United States who have totally walled themselves off from hearing countervailing facts and opinions. They only want to hear what they already believe to be true. And in that environment, a lot of ugly things can happen and have happened.

Dana Taylor:

Well, you mentioned sources, and I know that some of the sources for your book worked or still work at Fox News. Why were they willing to speak with you and what were some of the most surprising things that they were willing to share with you?

Brian Stelter:

Yeah, I've had sources inside Fox for years because of my job covering cable news, covering television news, and sources are motivated to leak for all sorts of reasons. I would say the most common reason is that they're frustrated by management or what they consider mismanagement, or they're frustrated by the content that's airing on the network. And this is not unique to Fox, but it's much more intense, much more exacerbated at Fox, because you have this battle, this push and pull between a news operation that might lean to the right, might be conservative, but is trying to report the news versus a propaganda operation, an opinion operation, that feels very far from reality oftentimes. And is pushing extremist narratives that can be very hurtful. So you have this back and forth a tug of war between the news side and the propaganda side. So some of these sources leak because they're engaging in that battle.

Dana Taylor:

Brian, as you know, the fairness doctrine, which was repealed in 1987, required broadcasters to provide fair and balanced coverage. It was even Fox's slogan at one point, which they dropped in 2017. Do you think the major cable news networks and their viewers would benefit from some version of the fairness doctrine being reinstated?

Brian Stelter:

In some ways, the public would benefit, but I don't think it's even possible to contemplate, because back then in the 70s and the 80s, the media existed and relied on scarcity. There were only a few networks. It was hard to be a publisher. It costs a lot of money to publish. We now live in a media environment of abundance, where the cost of publishing is zero, where all of us are members of the media. All of us are creating content, just posting a picture on Instagram or posting an update on Facebook. So we've moved from a world of scarcity to abundance. And in a word of abundance, there's no way to even have a fairness doctrine. There's no way to regulate or manage the sheer volume of content that is being published at any given time. Now, you could say there are still public airwaves. That's true. The broadcast networks do still have to abide by certain FCC rules, but the broadcasters have become less and less relevant, less and less important in this overwhelming digital age.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so Rupert Murdoch, he's a conservative news media titan, and his perspective on political issues like it or not, is a protected right in this country, yelling, fire in a crowded theater on the other hand, when you clearly don't believe there's a fire, and people might get killed in the ensuing panic is not protected. Where's the line between valid political perspective and legal culpability for incitement? And in your opinion, should Fox be held accountable in any way for the January 6th attacks on the Capitol?

Brian Stelter:

I think the attacks could not have happened were it not for the media environment that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch have fostered, which is different than saying it's their fault. It's too simplistic and elemental to try to boil it down to who to blame. But we should be able to look around and recognize that the coup attempt could not have happened without the help of Fox, without the help of these hosts. Why? Because they softened the ground for the riot. They led millions of people to believe in the lies. And some of those people who were later arrested and convicted for entering the Capitol and for violating laws, they admitted they were there because of Fox. One of the lawyers for one of the rioters called it Fox-itis, that these viewers were hooked on Fox. And by the way, not just Fox, Newsmax, other channels, they were hooked on this right ring rhetoric.

They really, truly believed the election had been stolen from Trump, and they were motivated to fly across the country to go to DC to try to put a stop to it. So we know from their own accounts, the oral histories, the rioters in their own words, that Fox was a factor. But it was just one of many, many factors. And certainly Fox having to pay almost $800 million was a pretty expensive form of accountability. There's a great book out called Liar in a Crowded Theater by a professor named Jeff Kosseff, and he basically says the idea of the fire in a crowded theater, you can't stop people from shouting necessarily, but you can help train everybody else to know whether to believe them, whether to believe that they're trustworthy or whether they think they're a liar, give people credibility signals and trust information, so they can decide whether that person standing up and shouting is reliable or not.

Dana Taylor:

Well, do you think that the focus on our partisan divides has led to an erosion of trust in what we call the mainstream media?

Brian Stelter:

There's definitely been a dramatic erosion. It's been damaging to the newspaper industry, to the journalism profession. And it's going to continue, I think, for quite some time, because there is a large activist base, mostly on the right, that is determined to tear down the institution of the news media and also other institutions. Now, when I say that, I'm not trying to let the news media off the hook, certainly mistakes in reporting misrepresentations, incomplete stories, stories that are slanted in one direction or another, missing out on marginalized communities, not covering your world, your community, the way it should be covered, not covering my community the way it should be covered. All of those media failures, all of those media missteps, they do contribute to a decline in trust. But I think what is so much more significant, and what is the more revealing part, is that there's been a 30, 40, 50 year campaign by some Republican politicians to tear down the media, to say, the media is the enemy.

But I think the average American, red or blue, or purple, or orange, or whatever it is, the average American still wants to know what is true and real in the world. They rely on USA today and CBS and ABC and CNN to help figure that out. That doesn't mean we should automatically blindly trust any source, but I always like to point out that when something really bad happens in the world, something really great happens in the world, people still do turn on the TV, they go to the website, they check the app. When a tornado or hurricane's coming, you still do trust your local TV meteorologist when he tells you to take cover.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. And then finally, Brian, people who go out and buy your book are likely to be people who don't need to be convinced of Fox News role in the stolen election narrative. So what do you say to people listening right now who are regular Fox News viewers?

Brian Stelter:

I say the same thing that I tell my kids, and the same thing that my mom taught me growing up, which is that you've got to eat a balanced diet. That you've got to have information or food from a variety of sources that you need to have a nutritious meal, which means seeking out in-depth information and primary sources and not just a talk show host who makes you feel good or a YouTube commentator who makes you angry in all the best ways. You have to have a balanced diet. And I think that's especially true for right-wing consumers of information, because a lot of the shows that are out there that are most popular, like Sean Hannity, for example, on Fox, they are presented as newscasts, but they are not. They have graphics that look like newscasts. The anchor sits behind a desk and gets a newscast, but it's not a newscast.

The producers did not spend all day gathering information from around the world and testing different sources for reliability and double-checking and triple checking. They didn't are just there to try to whip you into a frenzy to make you either feel really good or feel really angry, but to keep you watching, whatever the cost. They knew what they were doing. They were trying to keep the audience hooked, almost like a drug pedaler by hyping up these lies of election fraud. So what do you do if you're a Fox viewer and that's the environment you're in? You should diversify your media diet. And I say that not just in the direction of a Fox fan, but also in the direction of somebody who only relies on a Facebook feed in whatever garbage you're seeing when you're scrolling by. I recently moved from the city out to the suburbs.

I live out on a farm now, in New Jersey, and the best expense that I have now, the thing that I'm happiest to pay for is the $200 a year subscription to my local print newspaper. I know that makes me sound old, makes me sound cheesy, but that subscription helps my life, informs my life so much more powerfully than a Netflix subscription or a Hulu subscription. I get so much more value out of that newspaper subscription. And it's such a difference from listening to a talk radio host in New Jersey all day, because that's mostly going to be anger, venom, rage, resentment, whatever it's going to be. I think as a society and all of us individually, we have to see the difference and know the difference between news and something that smells like news, but it's not, or tastes like news, but it's not. News versus talk. News versus outrage. News versus info porn.

And we have to err on the side of the news. We have to at least know what we're getting, number one. And then, number two, focus more on the news coverage of what is true versus the chatter about what we might want to be true or might hope is true. And so that's what I say to the Fox fans in my life. I'm not saying never watch. I'm not saying it's the worst thing, but I'm saying it's incomplete. It's incomplete. You're not getting the full story. So you should seek out other sources for the fuller story.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for joining us, Brian.

Brian Stelter:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

The book is called Network of Lies, The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and The Battle for American Democracy. Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.