Benghazi attack and aftermath Fox News provided extensive coverage of the
2012 Benghazi attack, which host
Sean Hannity described in December 2012 as "the story that the mainstream media ignores" and "obviously, a cover-up. And we will get to the bottom of it." Programming analysis by media watchdog
Media Matters, which has declared a "War on Fox News", found that during the twenty months following the Benghazi attacks, FNC ran 1,098 segments on the issue, including: • 478 segments involving
Susan Rice's September 16, 2012, Sunday news show appearances, during which she was falsely accused of lying • 382 segments on
Special Report, the network's flagship news program • 281 segments alleging a "cover-up" by the Obama administration • 144 interviews of GOP members of Congress, but five interviews of Democratic members of Congress and Obama administration officials • 120 comparisons to
Iran-Contra,
Watergate, and the actions of the Nixon administration • 100 segments falsely suggesting the administration issued a "stand-down order" to prevent a rescue operation in Benghazi Over nearly four years after the Benghazi attack, there were
ten official investigations, including six by Republican-controlled House committees. None of the investigations found any evidence of scandal, cover-up or lying by Obama administration officials.
Uranium One From 2015 into 2018, Fox News broadcast extensive coverage of an alleged scandal surrounding the sale of
Uranium One to Russian interests, which host Sean Hannity characterized as "one of the biggest scandals in American history". According to Media Matters, the Fox News coverage extended throughout the programming day, with particular emphasis by Hannity. The network promoted an ultimately unfounded narrative asserting that, as Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton personally approved the Uranium One sale in exchange for $145 million in bribes paid to the
Clinton Foundation. Donald Trump repeated these allegations as a candidate and as president. No evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton had been found after four years of allegations, an FBI investigation, and the 2017 appointment of a Federal attorney to evaluate the investigation. In November 2017, Fox News host
Shepard Smith concisely debunked the alleged scandal, infuriating viewers who suggested he should work for CNN or MSNBC.
Pro-Republican and pro-Trump bias Fox News has been described as conservative media, and as providing
biased reporting in favor of conservative political positions, the Republican Party, and President Donald Trump. Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein described Fox News as an expanded part of the Republican Party. During the
2004 United States presidential election, Fox News was markedly more hostile in its coverage of Democratic presidential nominee
John Kerry, and distinguished itself among cable news outlets for heavy coverage of the
Swift Boat smear campaign against Kerry. During President Obama's first term in office, Fox News helped launch and amplify the
Tea Party movement, a conservative movement within the Republican Party that organized protests against Obama and his policies. In the 2004 documentary
Outfoxed, four people identified as former employees said that Fox News made them "slant the news in favor of conservatives". Fox News said that the film misrepresented the employment of these employees. During the
Republican primaries, Fox News was perceived as trying to prevent Trump from clinching the nomination. In Fox News' news reporting, the network dedicated far more coverage to Hillary Clinton-related stories, which critics argued was intended to deflect attention from the investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. In July 2018,
The Economist has described the network's coverage of Trump's presidency as "reliably fawning". From 2015 to 2017, the Fox News prime-time lineup changed from being skeptical and questioning of Trump to a "Trump safe space, with a dose of
Bannonist populism once considered on the fringe". At the start of 2018, Fox News mostly ignored high-profile scandals in the Trump administration which received ample coverage in other national media outlets, such as White House Staff Secretary
Rob Porter's resignation amid domestic abuse allegations, the downgrading of
Jared Kushner's security clearance, and the existence of a
non-disclosure agreement between Trump and the porn star
Stormy Daniels. In March 2019,
Jane Mayer reported in
The New Yorker that Fox News.com reporter
Diana Falzone had the story of the
Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal before the 2016 election, but that Fox News executive
Ken LaCorte told her: "Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert [Murdoch] wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go." The story was killed; LaCorte denied making the statement to Falzone, but conceded: "I was the person who made the call. I didn't run it upstairs to Roger Ailes or others. ... I didn't do it to protect Donald Trump." She added that "[Falzone] had put up a story that just wasn't anywhere close to being something I was comfortable publishing."
Nik Richie, who claimed to be one of the sources for the story, called LaCorte's account "complete bullshit", adding that "Fox News was culpable. I voted for Trump, and I like Fox, but they did their own '
catch and kill' on the story to protect him." A 2008 study found Fox News gave disproportionate attention to polls suggesting low approval for President
Bill Clinton. A 2009 study found Fox News was less likely to pick up stories that reflected well on Democrats, and more likely to pick up stories that reflected well on Republicans. A 2010 study comparing Fox News Channel's
Special Report With Brit Hume and NBC's
Nightly News coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2005 concluded "Fox News was much more sympathetic to the administration than NBC", suggesting "if scholars continue to find evidence of a partisan or ideological bias at FNC ... they should consider Fox as alternative, rather than mainstream, media". Research finds that Fox News increases Republican vote shares and makes Republican politicians more partisan. A 2007 study, using the introduction of Fox News into local markets (1996–2000) as an instrumental variable, found that in the
2000 presidential election "Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News", suggesting "Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure". A 2017 study, using channel positions as an instrumental variable, found "Fox News increases Republican vote shares by 0.3 points among viewers induced into watching 2.5 additional minutes per week by variation in position." Fox News publicly denies it is biased, with Murdoch and Ailes saying to have included Murdoch's statement that Fox has "given room to both sides, whereas only one side had it before". In June 2009, Fox News host
Chris Wallace said: "I think we are the counter-weight [to NBC News] ... they have a liberal agenda, and we tell the other side of the story." In 2004,
Robert Greenwald's documentary film ''Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism'' argued Fox News had a conservative bias and featured clips from Fox News and internal memos from editorial vice president
John Moody directing Fox News staff on how to report certain subjects. Fox News' most popular programs such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson do not make any claims to be accurate or fact-checked, and have little to no distinction between news and commentary. A leaked memo from Fox News vice president
Bill Sammon to news staff at the height of the
health care reform in the United States debate has been cited as an example of the pro-Republican bias of Fox News. His memo asked the staff to "use the term 'government-run health insurance,' or, when brevity is a concern, 'government option,' whenever possible". The memo was sent shortly after Republican pollster
Frank Luntz advised
Sean Hannity on his Fox show: "If you call it a public option, the American people are split. If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it." Surveys suggest Fox News is widely perceived to be ideological. A 2009 Pew survey found Fox News is viewed as the most ideological channel in America, with 47 percent of those surveyed said Fox News is "mostly conservative", 14 percent said "mostly liberal" and 24 percent said "neither". In comparison, MSNBC had 36 percent identify it as "mostly liberal", 11 percent as "mostly conservative" and 27 percent as "neither". CNN had 37 percent describe it as "mostly liberal", 11 percent as "mostly conservative" and 33 percent as "neither". A 2004
Pew Research Center survey found FNC was cited (unprompted) by 69 percent of national journalists as a conservative news organization. A
Rasmussen poll found 31 percent of Americans felt Fox News had a conservative bias, and 15 percent that it had a liberal bias. It found 36 percent believed Fox News delivers news with neither a conservative or liberal bias, compared with 37 percent who said
NPR delivers news with no conservative or liberal bias and 32 percent who said the same of CNN.
David Carr, media critic for
The New York Times, praised the
2012 United States presidential election results coverage on Fox News for the network's response to Republican adviser and Fox News contributor
Karl Rove challenging its call that
Barack Obama would win Ohio and the election. Fox's prediction was correct. Carr wrote: "Over many months, Fox lulled its conservative base with agitprop: that President Obama was a clear failure, that a majority of Americans saw Mitt Romney|[Mitt] Romney as a good alternative in hard times, and that polls showing otherwise were politically motivated and not to be believed. But on Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or a place for news? In this moment, at least, Fox chose news." A May 2017 study conducted by
Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy examined coverage of Trump's
first 100 days in office by several major mainstream media outlets including Fox. It found Trump received 80% negative coverage from the overall media, and received the least negative coverage on Fox – 52% negative and 48% positive. On March 14, 2017,
Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News commentator, claimed on
Fox & Friends that British intelligence agency
GCHQ had wiretapped Trump on behalf of Barack Obama during the
2016 United States presidential election. On March 16, 2017, White House spokesman
Sean Spicer repeated the claim. On March 17, 2017,
Shepard Smith, a Fox News anchor, admitted the network had no evidence that Trump was under surveillance. British officials said the White House was backing off the claim. In June 2018, Fox News executives instructed producers to head off inappropriate remarks made on the shows aired by the network by hosts and commentators. The instructions came after a number of Fox News hosts and guests made incendiary comments about
the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant children from their parents. On November 4, 2018, Trump's website, DonaldJTrump.com, announced in a press release that Fox News host Sean Hannity would make a "special guest appearance" with Trump at a midterm campaign rally the following night in
Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The following morning, Hannity tweeted "To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President." Hannity appeared at the president's lectern on stage at the rally, immediately mocking the "fake news" at the back of the auditorium, Fox News reporters among them. Several Fox News employees expressed outrage at Hannity's actions, with one stating that "a new line was crossed". Hannity later asserted that his action was not pre-planned, and Fox News stated it "does not condone any talent participating in campaign events". Fox News host
Jeanine Pirro also appeared on stage with Trump at the rally. The Trump press release was later removed from Trump's website. Fox News released a poll of registered voters, jointly conducted by two polling organizations, on June 16, 2019. The poll found some unfavorable results for Trump, including a record high 50% thought the Trump campaign had coordinated with the Russian government, and 50% thought he should be impeached – 43% saying he should also be removed from office – while 48% said they did not favor impeachment. The next morning on
Fox & Friends First, host
Heather Childers twice misrepresented the poll results, stating "a new Fox News poll shows most voters don't want impeachment" and "at least half of U.S. voters do not think President Trump should be impeached," while the on-screen display of the actual poll question was also incorrect. Later that morning on ''
America's Newsroom'', the on-screen display showed the correct poll question and results, but highlighted the 48% of respondents who opposed impeachment rather than the 50% who supported it (the latter being broken-out into two figures). As host
Bill Hemmer drew guest
Byron York's attention to the 48% opposed figure, they did not discuss the 50% support figure, while the on-screen
chyron read: "Fox News Poll: 43% Support Trump's Impeachment and Removal, 48% Oppose." Later that day, Trump tweeted: "@FoxNews Polls are always bad for me...Something weird going on at Fox." In April 2017, it became known that former Obama administration national security advisor
Susan Rice sought the
unmasking of Trump associates who were unidentified in intelligence reports, notably Trump's incoming national security advisor
Michael Flynn, during the
presidential transition. In May 2020, acting
Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist, declassified a list of Obama administration officials who had also requested unmasking of Trump associates, which was subsequently publicly released by Republican senators. That month, attorney general
Bill Barr appointed federal prosecutor
John Bash to examine the unmaskings. Fox News primetime hosts declared the unmaskings a "domestic spying operation" for which the Obama administration was "exposed" in the "biggest abuse of power" in American history. The Bash inquiry closed months later with no findings of substantive wrongdoing. However, certain Fox personalities have not had as much of a favorable reception from Trump: news anchors
Shepard Smith (who retired from Fox in 2019) and Chris Wallace have been criticized by Trump for allegedly being adversarial, alongside Fox analyst
Andrew Napolitano, who said Trump's actions in the
Trump–Ukraine scandal were "both criminal and impeachable behavior". Trump was also critical of the network hiring former
DNC chair
Donna Brazile, in 2019. The relationship between Trump and Fox News, as well as other
Rupert Murdoch-controlled outlets, soured following the
2020 United States presidential election, as Trump refused to concede that
Joe Biden had been elected
President-elect. This negative tonal shift led to increased viewership of Newsmax and One America News among Trump and his supporters due to their increased antipathy towards Fox; and as a result, Fox released promotional videos of their opinion hosts disputing the election results, promoting a Trump-affiliated
conspiracy theory about
voter fraud. By one measure, Newsmax saw a 497% spike in viewership, while Fox News saw a 38% decline. Writing for the
Poynter Institute for Media Studies in February 2021, senior media writer Tom Jones argued that the primary distinction between Fox News and MSNBC is not right bias vs. left bias, but rather that much of the content on Fox News, especially during its primetime programs, "is not based in truth". The
Tampa Bay Times reported in August 2021 that it had reviewed four months of emails indicating Fox News producers had coordinated with aides of Florida governor
Ron DeSantis to promote his political prospects by inviting him for frequent network appearances, exchanging talking points and, in one case, helping him to stage an exclusive news event. In February 2024, Alan Rosenblatt of
Johns Hopkins University said that Fox News "is an entertainment company that has a news division, not a news company", adding that it "not only does not provide that distinction, it goes out of its way to make it difficult to see the difference. They make their opinion programs look like news programs, and they incorporate enough opinion content on their news programs to further that deception." In early 2024, Fox News host Jesse Watters promoted a conspiracy theory involving
Taylor Swift,
Travis Kelce, and the Democratic Party in hopes of influencing voters ahead of the
U.S. presidential primary season.
Coverage of Russia investigation On October 30, 2017, when special counsel
Robert Mueller indicted
Paul Manafort and
Rick Gates, and revealed
George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty (all of whom were involved in the Trump 2016 campaign), this was the focus of most media's coverage, except Fox News'. Hosts and guests on Fox News called for Mueller to be fired. Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson focused their shows on unsubstantiated allegations that Clinton sold uranium to Russia in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation and on the Clinton campaign's role in funding the
Steele dossier. Hannity asserted: "The very thing they are accusing President Trump of doing, they did it themselves." Fox News dedicated extensive coverage to the uranium story, which Democrats said was an attempt to distract from Mueller's intensifying investigation. CNN described the coverage as "a tour de force in deflection and dismissal". When the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election intensified in October 2017, the focus of Fox News coverage turned "what they see as the scandal and wrongdoing of President Trump's political opponents. In reports like these, Bill and Hillary Clinton are prominent and recurring characters because they are considered the real conspirators working with the Russians to undermine American democracy." Paul Waldman of
The Washington Post described the coverage as "No puppet. You're the puppet", saying it was a "careful, coordinated, and comprehensive strategy" to distract from Mueller's investigation. German Lopes of
Vox said Fox News' coverage has reached "levels of self-parody" as it dedicated coverage to low-key stories, such as a controversial
Newsweek op-ed and hamburger emojis, while other networks had wall-to-wall coverage of Mueller's indictments. A
FiveThirtyEight analysis of Russia-related media coverage in cable news found most mentions of Russia on Fox News were spoken in close proximity to "uranium" and "dossier". On November 1, 2017,
Vox analyzed the transcripts of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, and found Fox News "was unable to talk about the Mueller investigation without bringing up Hillary Clinton", "talked significantly less about George Papadopoulos—the Trump campaign adviser whose plea deal with Mueller provides the most explicit evidence thus far that the campaign knew of the Russian government's efforts to help Trump—than its competitors", and "repeatedly called Mueller's credibility into question". In December 2017, Fox News escalated its attacks on the Mueller investigation, with hosts and guest commentators suggesting the investigation amounted to a
coup. Guest co-host Kevin Jackson referred to a right-wing conspiracy theory claiming Strzok's messages are evidence of a plot by FBI agents to assassinate Trump, a claim which the other Fox co-hosts quickly said is not supported by any credible evidence. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro called the Mueller investigation team a "criminal cabal" and said the team ought to be arrested. In August 2018, Fox News was criticized for giving more prominent coverage of a murder committed by an undocumented immigrant than the convictions of Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his long-term personal attorney,
Michael Cohen. At the same time, most other national mainstream media gave wall-to-wall coverage of the convictions. Fox News hosts Dana Perrino and Jason Chaffetz argued that voters care far more about the murder than the convictions of the President's former top aides, and hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity downplayed the convictions.
False claims about other media CNN's Jake Tapper In November 2017, following the
2017 New York City truck attack wherein a terrorist shouted "Allahu Akbar", Fox News distorted a statement by
Jake Tapper to make it appear as if Tapper had said "
Allahu Akbar" can be used under the most "beautiful circumstances". Fox News omitted that Tapper had said the use of "Allahu Akbar" in the terrorist attack was not one of these beautiful circumstances. A headline on FoxNews.com was preceded by a tag reading "OUTRAGEOUS". The Fox News Twitter account distorted the statement further, saying "Jake Tapper Says 'Allahu Akbar' Is 'Beautiful' Right After NYC Terror Attack" in a tweet that was later deleted. Tapper chastised Fox News for choosing to "deliberately lie" and said "there was a time when one could tell the difference between Fox and the nutjobs at
Infowars. It's getting tougher and tougher. Lies are lies." In 2009, Tapper had come to the defense of Fox News while he was a White House correspondent for ABC News, after the
Obama administration claimed that the network was not a legitimate news organization. Fox News guest host
Jason Chaffetz apologized to Tapper for misrepresenting his statement. After Fox News had deleted the tweet, Sean Hannity repeated the misrepresentation and called Tapper "liberal fake news CNN's fake Jake Tapper" and mocked his ratings. The report cited an inaccurate assertion by Gen.
Tony Thomas, the head of the
United States Special Operations Command, that a major newspaper had disclosed the intelligence. Fox News said it was
The New York Times, repeatedly running the chyron "NYT Foils U.S. Attempt To Take Out Al-Bahgdadi".
Climate change Fox News has often been described as a major platform for
climate change denial. A 2011 study by Lauren Feldman and
Anthony Leiserowitz found Fox News "takes a more dismissive tone toward climate change than CNN and MSNBC". A 2008 study found Fox News emphasized the scientific uncertainty of climate change more than CNN, was less likely to say climate change was real, and more likely to interview climate change skeptics. According to climate scientist
Michael E. Mann, Fox News "has constructed an alternative universe where the laws of physics no longer apply, where the
greenhouse effect is a myth, and where climate change is a hoax, the product of a massive conspiracy among scientists, who somehow have gotten the polar bears, glaciers, sea levels, superstorms, and megadroughts to play along." In 2011, the hosts of
Fox & Friends described climate change as "unproven science", a "disputed fact", and criticized the
Department of Education for working together with the children's network
Nickelodeon to teach children about climate change. In 2001, Sean Hannity described the
scientific consensus on climate change as "phony science from the left". In 2004, he falsely alleged that "scientists still can't agree on whether the global warming is scientific fact or fiction". Hannity frequently invites contrarian fringe scientists and critics of climate change to his shows. In 2019, a widely shared Fox News news report falsely claimed that new climate science research showed that the Earth might be heading to a new Ice Age; the author of the study that Fox News cited said that Fox News "utterly misrepresents our research" and the study did not in any way suggest that Earth was heading to an Ice Age. Fox News later corrected the story.
Shepard Smith drew attention for being one of few voices formerly on Fox News to forcefully state that climate change is real, that human activities are a primary contributor to it and that there is a
scientific consensus on the issue. His acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change drew criticism from Fox News viewers and conservatives. Smith left Fox News in October 2019. In a 2021 interview with
Christiane Amanpour on her
eponymous show on CNN, he stated that his presence on Fox had become "untenable" due to the "falsehoods" and "lies" intentionally spread on the network's opinion shows.
Murder of Seth Rich conspiracy On May 16, 2017, a day when other news organizations were extensively covering
Donald Trump's revelation of classified information to Russia, Fox News ran a lead story about a private investigator's uncorroborated claims about the
murder of Seth Rich, a
DNC staffer. The private investigator said he had uncovered evidence that Rich was in contact with WikiLeaks and law enforcement were covering it up. In reporting the investigator's claims, the Fox News report reignited right-wing conspiracy theories about the killing. Other news organizations quickly revealed the investigator was a Donald Trump supporter and had according to NBC News "developed a reputation for making outlandish claims, such as one appearance on Fox News in 2007 in which he warned that underground networks of pink pistol-toting lesbian gangs were raping young women." The family of Seth Rich, the Washington D.C. police department, the Washington D.C. mayor's office, the FBI, and law enforcement sources familiar with the case rebuked the investigator's claims. Over the course of the day, Fox News altered the contents of the story and the headline, but did not issue corrections. When CNN contacted the private investigator later that day, the investigator said he had no evidence that Rich had contacted WikiLeaks.
Nicole Hemmer, then assistant professor at the
Miller Center of Public Affairs, wrote that the promotion of the conspiracy theory demonstrated how Fox News was "remaking itself in the image of fringe media in the age of Trump, blurring the lines between real and fake news."
Max Boot of the
Council on Foreign Relations said while intent behind Fox News, as a counterweight to the liberal media was laudable, the culmination of those efforts have been to create an alternative news source that promotes hoaxes and myths, of which the promotion of the Seth Rich conspiracy is an example. Fox News was also criticized by conservative outlets, such as
The Weekly Standard,
National Review, and conservative columnists, such as
Jennifer Rubin,
Michael Gerson, and
John Podhoretz. Rich's parents, Joel and Mary Rich, sued Fox News for the emotional distress it had caused them by its false reporting. In 2020, Fox News settled with Rich family, making a payment that was not officially disclosed but which was reported to be in the seven figures. Although the settlement had been agreed to earlier in the year, Fox News arranged to delay the public announcement until after the 2020 presidential election.
Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville Fox News hosts and contributors defended Trump's remarks that "many sides" were to blame for violence at a gathering of hundreds of
white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia. Some criticized Trump. In a press conference on August 15, Trump used the term "alt-left" to describe counterprotesters at the
white supremacist rally, a term which had been used in Fox News' coverage of the white supremacist rally. According to
Dylan Byers of CNN, Fox News' coverage on the day of the press conference "was heavy with "
whataboutism". The average Fox viewer was likely left with the impression that the media's criticism of Trump and leftist protestors' toppling of some Confederate statues were far greater threats to America than white supremacism or the president's apparent defense of bigotry." Beck regularly described Soros as a "puppet-master" and used common
anti-Semitic tropes to describe Soros and his activities. Beck promoted the false and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Soros was a
Nazi collaborator as a 14-year-old in Nazi-occupied Hungary. Beck also characterized Soros's mother as a "wildly anti-Semitic" Nazi collaborator. Roger Ailes, then-head of Fox News, dismissed criticism levied at Beck by hundreds of rabbis, saying that they were "left-wing rabbis who basically don't think that anybody can ever use the word, Holocaust, on the air."
COVID-19 pandemic During the first few weeks of the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Fox News was considerably more likely than other mainstream news outlets to promote misinformation about COVID-19. The network promoted the narrative that the emergency response to the pandemic was politically motivated or otherwise unwarranted, with
Sean Hannity explicitly calling it a "hoax" (he later denied doing so) and other hosts downplaying it. This coverage was consistent with the messaging of Trump at the time. Only in mid March did the network change the tone of its coverage, after President Trump declared a national emergency. Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, two of Fox News's primetime hosts, promoted use of the drug
hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19, an
off-label usage which at the time was supported only by
anecdotal evidence, after it was touted by Trump as a possible cure. Fox News promoted a conspiracy theory that coronavirus death toll numbers were inflated with people who would have died anyway from preexisting conditions. This was disputed by White House coronavirus task force members
Anthony Fauci and
Deborah Birx, with Fauci describing conspiracy theories as "nothing but distractions" during public health crises. Later in the pandemic, Hannity, Ingraham and Carlson promoted the use of livestock
dewormer ivermectin as a possible COVID-19 treatment. Studies have linked trust in Fox News, as well as viewership of Fox News, with fewer preventive behaviors and more risky behaviors related to COVID-19. Once a COVID-19 vaccine became widely available, Fox News consistently questioned the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, celebrated evidence-free skepticism, and blasted attempts to promote vaccinations. More than 90% of Fox Corporation's full-time employees had been fully vaccinated by September 2021.
2020 election fraud allegations and lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic After Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Fox News host
Jeanine Pirro promoted baseless allegations on her program that voting machine company
Smartmatic and its competitor
Dominion Voting Systems had conspired to rig the election against Trump. Hosts
Lou Dobbs and
Maria Bartiromo also promoted the allegations on their programs on sister network Fox Business. In December 2020, Smartmatic sent a letter to Fox News demanding retractions and threatening legal action, specifying that retractions "must be published on multiple occasions" so as to "match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications." Days later, each of the three programs aired the same three-minute video segment consisting of an interview with an election technology expert who refuted the allegations promoted by the hosts, responding to questions from an unseen and unidentified man. None of the three hosts personally issued retractions. Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against the network, the three hosts, Powell and Trump attorney
Rudy Giuliani in February 2021. In an April 2021 court brief seeking dismissal of the suit, Fox attorney
Paul Clement argued that the network was simply "reporting allegations made by a sitting President and his lawyers." A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled in March 2022 that the suit could proceed, though he dismissed allegations against
Sidney Powell and Pirro, and some claims against Giuliani. The judge allowed allegations against Bartiromo and Dobbs to stand. The
New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division unanimously rejected a Fox News bid to dismiss the Smartmatic suit in February 2023. The court reinstated defamation allegations against Giuliani and Pirro. In December 2020, Dominion Voting Systems sent a similar letter demanding retractions to Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who had promoted the allegations on Fox programs. On March 26, 2021, Dominion filed a $1.6billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, alleging that Fox and some of its pundits spread conspiracy theories about Dominion, and allowed guests to make false statements about the company. On May 18, 2021, Fox News filed a motion to dismiss the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, asserting a
First Amendment right "to inform the public about newsworthy allegations of paramount public concern." The motion to dismiss was denied on December 16, 2021, by a Delaware Superior Court judge. In addition to Bartiromo, Dobbs, and Pirro, the suit also names primetime hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil sued Fox, Dobbs and Powell for $250 million in December 2021, alleging they had falsely implicated him in rigging Dominion and Smartmatic machines. Dobbs and Fox News reached a confidential settlement with Khalil in April 2023. Fox News was the only major network or cable news outlet to not carry the first televised
prime time hearing of the
January 6 committee live; its regular programming of
Tucker Carlson Tonight and
Hannity was aired without commercial breaks. During the weeks following the election, Carlson and Hannity often amplified Trump's election falsehoods on their programs; previously disclosed text messages between Hannity and White House press secretary
Kayleigh McEnany were presented during the hearing. Hannity told his audience, "Unlike this committee and their cheerleaders in the media mob, we will actually be telling you the truth," while Carlson said, "This is the only hour on an American news channel that won't be covering their propaganda live. They are lying and we are not going to help them do it." In June 2022, a Delaware Superior Court judge again declined to dismiss the Dominion suit against Fox News, and also allowed Dominion to sue the network's corporate parent, Fox Corporation. The judge ruled that Rupert and
Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with
actual malice because there was a reasonable inference they "either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion." He noted a report that Rupert Murdoch spoke with Trump a few days after the election and informed him that he had lost.
The New York Times reported in December 2022 that Dominion had acquired communications between Fox News executives and hosts, and between a Fox Corporation employee and the Trump White House, showing they knew that what the network was reporting was untrue. Dominion attorneys said hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, and Fox executives, attested to this in sworn depositions. In November 2020, Hannity hosted
Sidney Powell, who asserted Dominion machines had been rigged, but said in his deposition, "I did not believe it for one second." A February 2023 Dominion court filing showed Fox News primetime hosts messaging each other to insult and mock Trump advisers, indicating the hosts knew the allegations made by Powell and Giuliani were false. Rupert Murdoch messaged that Trump's voter fraud claims were "really crazy stuff," telling Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott that it was "terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear." As a January 2021 Georgia runoff election approached that would determine party control of the U.S. Senate, Murdoch told Scott, "Trump will concede eventually and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can." After the 2016 election, the network developed a cutting-edge system to call elections, which proved very successful during the 2018 midterm elections. The network was the first to call the 2020 Arizona race for Biden, angering many viewers. Washington managing editor
Bill Sammon supervised the network's Decision Desk that made the call.
Bret Baier and
Martha MacCallum, the network's main news anchors, suggested during a high-level conference call that relying solely on data to make the call was inadequate and that viewer reaction should also be considered; MacCallum said, "in a Trump environment, the game is just very, very different." Sammon stood by the 2020 call and was fired by the network after the January 2021 Georgia runoff. In 2023, Rupert Murdoch was deposed and testified that some Fox News commentators were endorsing
election fraud claims they knew were false. In February 2023, Fox's internal communications were released, showing that its presenters and senior executives privately doubted Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election. Chairman Rupert Murdoch once described Trump's voter fraud claims as "really crazy stuff", and also said that Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell's television appearances were "terrible stuff damaging everybody". One November 2020 communication showed Fox CEO Suzanne Scott criticizing fact-checking, stating that she cannot "keep defending these reporters who don't understand our viewers and how to handle stories ... The audience feels like we crapped on" them, and Fox was losing their audience's "trust and belief" in them. On April 18, 2023, Fox News reached a settlement with Dominion just before the trial started, concluding the lawsuit; Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million, and further stated: "We acknowledge the Court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false".
Compulsory reductions in meat consumption In April 2021, at least five Fox News and Fox Business personalities amplified a story published by the
Daily Mail, a British tabloid, that incorrectly linked a university study to President Joe Biden's climate change agenda, to falsely assert that Americans would be compelled to dramatically reduce their meat consumption to mitigate
greenhouse gas emissions caused by
flatulence. Fox News aired a graphic detailing the supposed compulsory reductions, falsely indicating the information came from the
Agriculture Department, which numerous Republican politicians and commentators tweeted. Fox News anchor
John Roberts reported to "say goodbye to your burgers if you want to sign up to the Biden climate agenda." Days later, Roberts acknowledged on air that the story was false.
Report that Biden administration was continuing to build the Mexico–United States border wall According to analysis by Media Matters, on May 12, 2021, Fox News reported on its website: "Biden resumes
border wall construction after promising to halt it". Correspondent Bill Melugin then appeared on
Special Report with Bret Baier to report "the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is actually going to be restarting border wall construction down in the Rio Grande Valley" after "a lot of blowback and pressure from local residents and local politicians." After the Corps of Engineers tweeted a clarification, Melugin deleted a tweet about the story and tweeted an "update" clarifying that a levee wall was being constructed to mitigate damage to flood control systems caused by uncompleted wall construction, and the website story headline was changed to "Biden administration to resume border wall levee construction as crisis worsens." Later on
Fox News Primetime, host
Brian Kilmeade briefly noted the levee but commented to former Trump advisor
Stephen Miller: "They're going to restart building the wall again, Stephen." Fox News host Sean Hannity later broadcast the original Melugin story without any mention of the levee.
Crime reporting Media Matters reported in September 2024 that during the Biden presidency Fox News had promoted a false "crime crisis" narrative, particularly directed toward undocumented migrants, which reflected Donald Trump's political rhetoric. The Fox News narrative consisted of reported violent crime anecdotes rather than FBI crime rate statistics showing violent crime had declined significantly since 2020. One Fox host,
Ainsley Earhardt, said that even if the FBI data were right, "we're all a little bit more scared than we used to be." Later that month, weeks before the 2024 presidential election, the FBI released crime data for 2023 showing that violent crime had declined 3% from 2022. The report was widely covered by mainstream news outlets that day, though the Fox News coverage was limited to a 28-second segment by evening anchor
Bret Baier. He reported "critics say the report is not accurate because it does not include big cities," echoing a false assertion made by
Elon Musk and other Trump supporters on social media. ==Controversies==