'Fox News sucks!': Trump supporters decry channel as it declares Biden wins

Fox News

'Fox News sucks!': Trump supporters decry channel as it declares Biden wins

 

President’s backers have grown increasingly vocal about their anger at a network that has long allied with Trump

 

Lois Beckett

 @loisbeckett

Fri 6 Nov 2020 06.00 GMTLast modified on Fri 6 Nov 2020 06.02 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/05/fox-news-sucks-trump-supporters

 

Trump supporters across the United States increasingly say they no longer trust Fox News, the Rupert Murdoch-owned TV network that has acted as one of the president’s staunchest allies in past years.

 

As Fox News announced more state-level victories for Joe Biden on Wednesday, Trump supporters across the country grew more vocal in their frustration with the network. Some say they have shifted their allegiance to media outlets that lean even further right, such as One America News, which employs a prominent conspiracy theorist as one of its correspondents.

 

In Arizona, pro-Trump demonstrators who massed outside an election facility in Phoenix chanted: “Fox News sucks!” A man in Nevada screamed the same slogan repeatedly in the background of a live news feed there.

 

In Detroit, as Trump supporters chanted “Stop the count” outside a ballot-counting location, the news that Fox had just called Michigan for Biden had little effect on the demonstration.

 

“Fox, you can’t even trust them,” said Rob Phail, 51, from South Lyon, Michigan, who had been leading the “stop the count” chants. “They’re the worst chameleons of all. So you’re like, OK, who do you trust?”

 

Asked whom he would trust to confirm the actual results of the election, he said: “Trump.”

 

On Facebook, on a now-deleted group for Trump supporters that claimed Democrats were trying to steal the election, dozens of commenters described how “totally betrayed” they felt while watching Fox News on election night.

 

“When CNN appeared more pro-Trump, I was concerned,” one person wrote.

 

Others said they felt Fox was “turning on” the president and said that they believed several Fox reporters had gone “full lefty”.

 

On Twitter, some Trump supporters were starting to label Fox News as “fake news”.

 

Trump supporters’ frustration with Fox was building before the network’s election calls for Biden this week.

 

The rightwing network, owned by Rupert Murdoch and built up by the late Roger Ailes, was once so closely aligned with Trump that many observers said it functioned as “state media”. Reporters chronicled how political talking points aired by Fox News hosts were picked up by the president, and then were reinforced again on the news network.

 

Trump himself has turned up his criticism of the network, railing against its decisions and some of its anchors for months. His supporters appeared to have moved with him. During the first presidential debate in September, moderated by the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, many Trump supporters said they believed Wallace was biased against the president.

 

On election day, Fox made an early call that Joe Biden had won Arizona, a decision that reportedly infuriated the Trump administration and helped shift the broader public narrative of the election result towards a likely Biden victory.

 

Now, some Trump supporters say they have shifted their allegiance to smaller, even more vehemently pro-Trump media outlets, such as Newsmax or One America News. OAN has spread multiple conspiracy theories, including amplifying baseless claims about a 75-year-old protester shoved by the police during demonstrations over police brutality this summer.

 

As Trump has feuded with Fox, he has lavished more praise on OAN, tweeting last year that it “is doing incredible reporting”.