Election 2020 Blog
Over the past week, I decided to turn to some sources of media that I don’t typically look at: Fox News and other right wing media. I watched in the evening just prior to the election in order to see just exactly how they would frame the events that were to come. I caught part of the a talking panel, as well as a part of Tucker Carlson’s show, where he mostly gives his own opinions and takes on current events. It became very clear to me, that for many, the media doesn’t just help people form people’s opinions, it simply gives them all of their opinions.
During the talk show, which is mostly what I watched, there was a lot of bias that was going on. The main thing that I noticed was the extreme amount of gatekeeping and inflammatory language that occurred. Whenever the “far left” was mentioned, it was always put in very extreme terms. They claimed that people like Bernie and AOC were going to “commandeer the election and undermine our American values.” They frequently made these claims which were meant to scare potential voters. They also made claims like these without backing it up with anything. They withheld any information about the platform that the “far left” they were attacking sat on. Fox knows that its viewers agree with them without question, so they don’t really have to back up any of their claims when it comes to their opinion based shows.
The other segment that I saw was Tucker Carlson’s show. He framed things as being very bleak for the average American at today’s day in age. He spoke of a town in rural America, ravaged by the opioid crisis and ignored by the “coastal elites”. He did this to show how little the democrats apparently cared about most Americans. He said something in particular that struck me, “They love Donald Trump, because no one else loved them.” I think this is interesting because it so strongly appeals to emotion and the feeling that politicians are corrupt and greedy. This is part of the “Drain the swamp” mentality Trump ran on in 2016. Finally, all the photos he used showed Trump surrounded by huge crowds and being a huge and commanding figure. Along with the photo, Tucker claimed 60k people attended the rally. However, only 10k people actually attended the rally and the photos were from very specific angles to make it look like many more people. I think this was very deceptive. All in all, Tuckers segment seemed like he was just telling people what to think without backing anything up.
Fox News discovered something very unique a few years back; people love to hear what they already think, and if they make people double down on that thinking, they won’t go anywhere else for news. By spewing a constant rhetoric of hate and divisiveness, Fox is able to make people funnel into the “Fox News way of thinking”. This is very dangerous because it makes people shut off from other sources of news and discourse. I know from personal experience, as my family in Texas watches Fox news and I see them on this path of thinking regularly. All in all, I think that viewers of this stretch of TV would be upset if Joe Biden won and very happy if he doesn’t. If Biden ends up winning, they will think it was rigged and that the establishment is against them. If Trump wins, they will think justice is served once more.
