Tucker Carlson’s departure and Fox News’ expensive legal woes show the problem with faking ‘authenticity’
For decades, Fox News thrived because the people behind it understood what their audience wanted and were more than willing to deliver: television news – or what Fox called news – from a populist perspective.
Fox is consistently the most-watched cable news channel, far ahead of competitors like MSNBC and CNN. That’s in large part due to people like Tucker Carlson, whose show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has been one of the highest-rated in cable news. But on April 24, Fox announced that Carlson is leaving the network, and while no explanation was provided, it’s safe to say it wasn’t a lack of viewers.
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Carlson’s departure came on the heels of Fox News’ US$787.5 million settlement of the lawsuit lodged by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Dominion had cited claims made on Carlson’s program as well as on other shows as evidence of defamation, and Carlson was expected to testify if the case had gone to trial. The settlement reveals Fox’s biggest strength and weakness: the network’s incredible understanding of what its audience wants and its unrelenting willingness to deliver exactly that.
More real than elites
I’m a journalism scholar who studies the relationship between the news industry and the public, and I’ve long been interested in understanding Fox’s appeal. As media scholar Reece Peck observes in his book about the network, Fox’s success is less about politics than it is about style. Fox’s star broadcasters like Carlson found enormous success by embracing an authenticity-as-a-form-of-populism approach.
They presented themselves as more “real” than the “out-of-touch elites” at other news organizations. Journalists have traditionally attempted to earn audience trust and loyalty by emphasizing their professionalism and objectivity, while people like Carlson earn it by emphasizing an us-against-them anti-elitism where expertise is more often a criticism than a compliment.
As Peck notes, Fox broadcasters present themselves as “ordinary Americans … challenging the cultural elitism of the news industry.” So the allure of Fox is not just in its political slant, but in its just-like-you presentation that establishes anchors like Carlson as allies in the fight against the buttoned-up establishment figures they regularly disparage.
In short, NPR plays smooth jazz between segments, while Fox plays country.
‘Authenticity’ became a trap
This anti-establishment, working-class persona embraced by many of Fox’s broadcasters has always been a performance.
Back in 2000, Bill O’Reilly, whom the network would eventually pay tens of millions of dollars a year, called his show the “only show from a working-class point of view.”
More recently, Sean Hannity, who is a friend of former President Donald Trump’s and makes about $30 million a year, slammed “overpaid” media elites. Peck observes that this posturing is purposeful: It emphasizes “Fox’s moral purity, a purity that is established in terms of a distance from the corrupting force of political and media power centers.”
However, the Dominion lawsuit revealed that, after decades of using this distinctly populist – and often misleading – brand of performative authenticity to earn the loyalty of millions of people, Fox became trapped by it.
