There is a persistent chicken-and-egg question in American politics and the media: Do Republicans who watch Fox News hold more extreme views because they watch Fox News, or do they watch Fox News because they hold more extreme positions?
The question of causality is certainly difficult to answer here, but it is not difficult at all to prove the connection. For example, in October 2020, we looked at polls showing that Republicans who follow Fox News were most likely to view then-President Donald Trump's administration favorably.
Recently, The Washington Post and our partners at the Schar School conducted a nationwide survey to test, among other things, what false beliefs Americans held. We presented several topics, including those focused on the 2020 election, Russian interference in the 2016 election, and climate change, and asked respondents to provide an accurate opinion on each topic. Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) and those who said Fox News was one of their main sources of political news were much more likely than respondents overall to hold incorrect opinions about the topics presented.
The intersection of these groups, namely Republicans who watched Fox News, were more likely to hold false beliefs.
So what is it? Is Fox News reinforcing false beliefs or (as host Laura Ingraham once argued) simply not telling its audience what they didn't want to hear?
Well, on Monday night we got something of an answer when primetime host Jesse Watters offered a dishonest attack on President Biden and his administration.
Watters began by saying that “the entire Biden administration is a mirage.” Why? Because “we pay more for everything, but they tell us that inflation has gone down.”
In fact, the inflation rate has decreased compared to 2021 and 2022, but prices remain higher (as there is no deflation).
“They tell us the economy is great,” Watters continued, “but the jobs are going to migrants.”
The size of the economy is certainly subjective, although unemployment is low and consumer confidence is up. Saying “jobs are going to migrants” is a good sign that the economy is doing well – it's a way for Fox News and Republicans to stunt job growth by misleadingly presenting employment data.
Watters continued: “Biden is flying migrants directly to our airport so they can tell us the border crossings are closed.”
Again: No – this is just right-wing bubble rhetoric.
But eventually Watters got to the point he wanted to make.
“Now they say there is no crime wave,” he said. “But do you feel safe?”
What followed (after Watters warned viewers about the footage they were about to see) was a montage of violent incidents caught on tape – three incidents, to be exact.
“So if there is crime everywhere,” Watters concluded, “then why do they say crime is down?”
This is so stupid it annoys me to even have to think about it. It's stupid to show three crimes and then say there are crimes “everywhere.” It's also stupid to say that because there is something “everywhere” there can't be less of it. When the moon obscured the sun a few hours before Watters' show, there was still sunlight everywhere. So why would anyone say the moon blocked it?
However, the answer to the question is that people say crime has gone down because the best measures of crime suggest that crime has gone down. These measures are deeply imperfect, it is true – and as I have written. For example, I wrote about this before the 2022 midterm elections, when Fox News insisted, without evidence, that crime was increasing. Watters called me a liar. Then the FBI finally released its slow and incomplete crime data, and we saw that the Fox hype was actually unfounded.
Part of my argument in 2022 was that there was no consistent evidence that crime was increasing, just as there was no evidence that crime was decreasing. The FBI publishes annual crime ratings aggregated by local police departments. However, these are patchy, especially as the FBI has changed what it records. It's also lagging, making it difficult to assess national crime patterns in real time – and very easy to cherry-pick incidents or numbers to stoke fear.
That brings us back to Watters in 2024.
“Why should we believe the FBI? Well, it turns out we shouldn’t do that,” he said Monday. “The Washington Examiner investigated and found that the FBI was manipulating the books.” He claimed that the Biden administration was conducting an “Enron-style accounting” of crime.
The Examiner article he references notes deficiencies in the FBI's data – something Watters probably should have been aware of, as it has been the subject of debate for nearly two years. But it also makes a point that has been made countless times in recent months and that Watters tried to use as a pitfall.
“In fact, murders have increased 23 percent in 70 cities since 2019,” Watters announced triumphantly.
Yes man. Seriously. The point is that murders have been declining since 2021, according to the best national metrics.
This is just a basic Dunning-Kruger situation. Watters, who has been mining crime data for years, learns a little about it and comes to the conclusion that the entire system is rotten. He doesn't know enough yet to know how little he knows. Of course, he has no evidence to the contrary, apart from the videos of these three incidents, which are supposed to show that there is crime “everywhere”.
Watters then interviewed Paul Mauro, a former New York Police Department inspector. He agreed with Watters: The system is lazy. There you go, confirmation.
However, we leave you with an excerpt from the conversation between Mauro and Watters that brings us back to our original question: Does Fox News promote misinformation, or are those who embrace misinformation drawn to Fox News?
“Do you think the media knows what they're doing?” Watters asked Mauro, suggesting that the news media was trying to cover up a hidden reality.
“Yes. Of course,” Mauro replied. “There are enough counter-reports that they know that if we actually look at what's happened since Joe Biden took office, we're not going to have the great storyline that we want here.” Take So let’s just do what we know works for us and move on.”
“With them, everything is an act,” agreed Watters.
With who, Jesse? And for what purpose?
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