“And it showed to me how much television — the perceptions of events, of television as entertainment, news as entertainment and treating it like a sport – had really damaged the capacity of Americans to be good citizens in a republic because they confused the TV show with the real thing.”
In some ways, Fox journalists were telling their viewers things they didn’t want to hear. “Part of the problem, of course, was that there were opinion hosts on Fox who, for months and months and months, had been repeating the baseless claim that Trump was going to win the election for sure,” Stirewalt said.
Stirewalt said he was iced from Fox’s airwaves soon after his explanations of why Fox projected Arizona’s election wins. Two months later, as Biden took office, Stirewalt was gone, along with roughly 15 colleagues…
“What happened in 2020 was abnormal — a furious, murderous kind of rage,” Stirewalt told NPR. He said he was taken aback by the vitriol that flowed toward Fox from Trump, his campaign officials, and core voters, many of whom made up Fox’s core audience, simply because of that Election Night call. It gave running room to smaller Fox competitors to its right, such as Newsmax and One America News.
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