SALON

Wednesday, Nov 7, 2012 9:05 PM UTC

Fox discovers constant lying isn’t consistently effective electoral strategy

After the humiliation of election night, Roger Ailes may finally realize that it's bad for business -- and the GOP

By

Topics: Fox News, Media, 2012 Elections,

Fox discovers constant lying isn't consistently effective electoral strategy

On big news nights, when the sort of people who don’t watch Fox News every night are more likely to turn it on, the channel nearly always puts its best face forward. The real crazies aren’t invited. The idiots and most grotesque race-baiters and conspiracy theorists and worst hacks wait patiently until the next morning, when Fox & Friends resumes as scheduled with its usual audience of credulous and furious old white people.

So last night we got Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, Brit Hume and Chris Wallace hosting a roster of oddly reasonable pundits and analysts, from Juan Williams to Karl Rove and Joe Trippi.

Of course all of those people are horrible and mendacious in their own special ways. But they’re not Sean Hannity. That’s the point. Dick Morris wasn’t invited. Donald Trump didn’t call in. Michael Barone was on hand, but of the people who got the election disastrously, hilariously wrong last night, he’s probably the least clownish. Bill O’Reilly performed the night’s most explicitly racial outburst, but O’Reilly has wholly reinvented himself for the Obama era as a Fox moderate. He’s now the guy who says the president’s not so bad, not even that extreme, just a bit too liberal for his taste.

This suggests that Fox knows it has a misinformation problem.

Fox knows that the sort of people who clog its airwaves on normal, regularly scheduled programming days — and especially prime time — are liars, phonies, wackos and con men. It knows it’s constantly lying to its audience. In the Bush era this was fine for morale. In the first years of Obama’s term it was good for midterm election turnout. But it’s apparent that it’s clearly bad for the movement in the long term. Counting midterms, the parallel conservative media has now utterly failed to grasp the reality of the American electorate in three of the last four national elections. (And for the record, their counterparts on the left did not spend 2010 furiously pretending that everything would turn out great for the Democratic Party.)

Roger Ailes is as paranoid, hysterical and deluded as Jack Welch, but he does grasp that this is unsustainable. He fired Glenn Beck and replaced him with a dumb panel show because he knew Beck was going too far to be useful. “The Nightly Apocalyptic Death Cult Report” is decent for ratings and great for buzz but it doesn’t help Republicans win elections, or at least doesn’t help them remain able to win many elections in the long term.

Karl Rove is an overrated strategist and professional liar, but he is not actually a fool and his goal is to help Republicans win elections, which is why he spent the primaries on Fox being the lonely voice of reason arguing that all of these candidates are awful. But while Rove complained, Fox repeatedly invited on Newt and The Donald. (Similarly, after Rove attempted to create a long-term majority for the GOP by trying very hard to pass immigration reform, the crazies allowed the nativists to seize power of the movement. In 2010, Fox Business hired Lou Dobbs.)

And Fox viewers and talk radio listeners and readers of nearly every single conservative media organ with a significant audience were repeatedly told, over the last month, that Romney was going to win this thing easily and all the polls were lies. They were also told that Barack Obama was a historic failure, and that this election was turning out exactly like 1980, when the sainted Ronald Reagan slew the dragon Jimmy Carter despite trailing in the (biased liberal) polls. The Drudge reader knew Obama was on the ropes, getting desperate, and certain to lose. (No one has yet told Mark Halperin, but decent humans can take solace in the fact that this was the second presidential election in a row in which Drudge did not matter a whit.)

There will be no reckoning. Conor Friedersdorf does his best to shame the conservative media in the Atlantic today but I promise you no one’s getting fired. Dick Morris isn’t going anywhere, no matter how unsatisfying his fake mea culpa is.

But Roger Ailes will likely subtly retool his channel to be more like it was on election night and less like it was in the years leading up to it. The question is whether the other cretins in charge of the conservative media, from the Internet to talk radio, do the same or continue peddling comforting lies that have apparently lost their efficacy.

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

You Might Also Like

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Serena William in an emotional moment during the final women's French Open match against Russia's Maria Sharapova. Williams won 6-4, 6-4, while Rafael Nadal defeated fellow Spaniard David Ferrer 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 in the men's finals on Sunday.
    AP/David Vincent

  • Ongoing anti-government protests at Taksim Square. Five people have died and thousands have been injured since the protests began on May 31. On Friday, Turkey's government agreed to suspend redevelopment plans for Gezi Park, which initially sparked the protests, until a court rules on its legality.
    AP/Vadim Ghirda

  • Billy Porter is all heart and "sole" at a performance of the Cyndi Lauper-scored "Kinky Boots," which won the Tony Award for Best musical on Sunday night.
    AP/The O+M Company, Matthew Murphy

  • A chemical plant explosion and fire in Louisiana on Thursday morning killed a 29-year-old and injured 73 more. The cause of the fire is still undetermined.
    AP/Gerald Herbert

  • So much for pie-throwing loyalty. Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch and third wife Wendy Deng announced they are filing for divorce on Thursday after 14 years of marriage. The pair are pictured at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles this year.
    AP/Matt Sayles

  • Ariel Castro, accused of holding three women captive in his house for roughly a decade, walks into a Cleveland courtroom on Wednesday. Castro, 52, pleaded not guilty to hundreds of charges that include rape and kidnapping.
    AP/Tony Dejak

  • Supporters of Iranian presidential candidate, Hasan Rowhani, campaigned with banners on the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in anticipation of the Iranian presidential elections on Friday.
    AP/Ebrahim Noroozi

  • People watch from the side of the road as a flame-fighting plane passes over the Black Forest area north of Colorado Springs. A raging fire which has been burning since midweek has destroyed more than 360 homes and killed two.
    AP/Brennan Linsley

  • A restaurant in Dunabogdany, Hungary, is roof-deep in floodwaters spilling from the River Danube. Heavy rainfalls this week continued to flood major rivers and lakes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland the Czech Republic and Hungary.
    AP/MTI, Balazs Mohai

  • A gas mask-sporting demonstrator walks past Portuguese graffiti on a bank which reads "Fascist government." Thousands took to the streets São Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday to violently protest a 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares, while similar protests took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and Porte Alegre in southern Brazil.
    AP/Brennan Linsley

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 105 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves": Growing up primate

Recommendations