As I wrote earlier today, Fox News is seeing a drop in ratings from some of their hard news programming. Newsmax saw an audience of over 1 million people on Thursday night during the 7 o’clock hour while Martha MacCallum’s show only pulled in 2 million, falling behind CNN’s Erin Burnett.
While the PR people at Fox News keep pretending this is normal, that’s gaslighting of the highest order. Citing Tucker Carlson’s ratings do not change the point that parts of the network are imploding as audiences flee what they see is unfairness and bias.
Meanwhile, there seems to be no change in behavior in sight. Today, weekend anchor Leland Vittert blew up on a Trump campaign spokeswoman, repeatedly interrupting her and growing visibly angry at her answers.
Woah! Things just got VERY heated when Fox’s @LelandVittert interviewed the Trump campaign’s @ErinMPerrine on vote counting pic.twitter.com/VSXyrJJI1V
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) November 14, 2020
If you watch the video, what you’ll see is Vittert grow aggregated and loud while badgering his guest, repeatedly interrupting her and refusing to let her answer his question. When Perrine does finally answer after his third interruption, she says that the votes in question will be worked out in a court of law, which is a perfectly reasonable position. That set off Vittert further, with him turning his head and laughing sarcastically, apparently unable to control himself. He then begins to yell again, unable to grasp the idea that the sheer number of votes in question is irrelevant to whether they were legally cast or not.
Here’s a pro-tip for Vittert. You get to ask questions, but if you don’t like the answers, go be an opinion host and cry about it. Stepping on your guests and looking like you are about to explode is an awful look that can only be driving more people away from his network. Whether Vittert or any of the other anchors at Fox News like it or not, the Trump campaign has a legal right to see this through until the electors vote in December. If they believe votes were cast illegally, there is absolutely no reason for them to just shrug and concede. Perhaps they will lose these lawsuits, but there’s nothing harmful in trying. But Fox News is apparently really perturbed that Trump won’t just bow to Biden before the results have been certified.
So what’s driving this? I suppose it could be a desire for access to a possible Biden administration. That seems like a rather long shot given Biden wouldn’t even give their network at interview the entire campaign. Yet, we now see Fox News laying prostrate in hopes of gaining repentance I guess.
Look, Fox News can do what they want. I don’t desire to say bad things about the network. But this is getting ridiculous. If they want to keep spitting on their audience and mimicking CNN, they will simply lose to CNN. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity can only save them for so long.
(Please follow me on Twitter! @bonchieredstate)
