ABSTRACT
Fox News’s famous slogan, ‘Fair & Balanced’, had already been previewed in the weeks leading up to the network’s launch on October 7, 1996. Certainty by the mid-1990s, the technological and economic pieces were in place for a conservative-leaning Fox News to emerge. This chapter explains how Fox’s populist mode of address has changed the political logic of the US public sphere and its journalistic standards of truth. In contrast, Fox’s populist representational strategy is designed to find and perhaps even manufacture ‘common ground’. While many liberals view Fox’s style as hokey, melodramatic, or just plain dumb, from a political communication standpoint, Fox’s populist analytical mode can be shrewdly effective. Fox News, and Sean Hannity in particular, would have to pay a steep reputational price for the misinformation they spread in the critical early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. Hence, Fox News pundits tend to devote more interpretive energy to performing their concern (or outrage) as opposed to their expertise.
