Earlier today, The Atlantic staff writer Megan Garber penned an article arguing that Fox News is now attempting to keep Trump in office by peddling false claims of election fraud to its viewers:
The network that first helped bring Trump to political power is now working—despite a fair election that seems poised, as of this writing, to be won by his opponent—to keep him there.
She highlighted Sean Hannity’s Thursday night program, calling it “a dangerous new low.” Had her article stuck to Hannity and similar prime-time derangement peddlers, it would have come and gone as nothing more than yet another forgettable article saying what has already been said thousands of times before, but saying it yet again because Garber doesn’t make any money when people just hear the exact same opinions from their Facebook chucklehead friends.
But, Garber did go a bit further, and it just didn’t ring true to me:
In fact, if you watched only Fox to get election results, as so many Americans do, you could reasonably forget that America is currently living through a steadily worsening pandemic. Instead, on Fox this week, “fraud” has been a refrain. Political actors who have various vested interests in a second term of Trump have filled the network’s air with baseless claims of Democrats’ malfeasance and, consequently, the wide-scale failures of a free and fair election.
I wasn’t watching Fox News exclusively; I switched to CNN regularly to see their updates on the vote counts since I found their presentation of the data far more informative. But, I was defaulting to Fox News specifically to see how they covered the question of fraud.
An hour before Garber’s article was published, when I imagine she was putting the finishing touches on it, Fox’s Bret Baier was pushing back against a Trump surrogate who was complaining about fraud. Multiple times he noted that the Trump campaign had not produced evidence to back up their claims, and pointed out that several of the allegations going around social media have been debunked once looked into. And to her credit, deep at the bottom of her article Garber does acknowledge Baier’s efforts.
Right this moment as I’m writing this, Dana Perino is asking Eric Shawn (on the ground in Philadelphia) about the allegations that Republican poll watchers were not allowed in: “It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not true.”
So, in fact, if you watched only Fox to get election results, as so many Americans do, you could reasonably believe that the network was working to quell tempers and smooth the transition to the inevitable Biden presidency. “No evidence of fraud” has been the refrain. Fox personalities with all their political biases showed they also have a vested interest in the stability and sanity of the country and filled the air with decent professional journalism.
Both things are possible. If you tune in to the mid-day news reporting you’ll get one thing. If you tune in to the prime-time feces-throwing monkey-brigade, you’ll get something else.
The error in Garber’s rhetoric is running a synecdoche in reverse (and no, synecdoche is not a crucial Pennsylvania battleground despite how it sounds). She is using the whole (“Fox”) to refer only to the part (“Hannity”). And, Garber acts as if the nonsense from Hannity is the sole occupant of the viewer’s mind (“Fox’s viewers were misled,” “None of that was explained to Fox’s viewers”). I watched Fox, and I wasn’t mislead, and I never relied on Hannity to explain anything to me.
Her concession that Baier and others have pushed back comes 1000 words into a 1300 word article, and does not serve the rescue her central thesis: Fox News as a network (not just Hannity and a few others) is working to usurp the election through a false narrative of voter fraud.
Megan Garber: “On Fox this week, ‘fraud’ has been a refrain.”
Connell McShane (just now on Fox News): “No evidence of widespread voter fraud.”