President Donald Trump with Fox News' Laura Ingraham at the 2019 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA in Palm Beach, Florida on December 21, 2019 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
In 2021, following MAGA’s J6 storming of the US Capitol, media columnist Margaret Sullivan observed that such orchestrated violence could not have happened without Fox News. She wrote, “The mob that stormed and desecrated the Capitol … could not have existed in a country that hadn’t been radicalized by the likes of [Fox News hosts] Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and swayed by biased news coverage.”
Fox News didn’t deny that it platformed Trump’s stolen election claims after knowing them to be false, nor could it after Dominion Voting brought the receipts. In the run up to J6, Fox anchors laughed to each other that Trump’s and his supporters’ election claims were “ludicrous” and “totally off the rails”(Tucker Carlson); “Lunatics” (Sean Hannity); “Nuts” (Dana Perino); ; “Kooky” (Maria Bartiromo); “Mind Blowingly Nuts” (Fox VP); and that, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None” (Bret Baier).
And yet, to the American people, Fox hosts said the opposite, relentlessly, and kept at it until the manufactured outrage crescendoed in the J6 attack.
Fox is normalizing and selling Trump’s police state
In 2025, Fox is at it again, this time parroting Trump’s false claims about immigrants, crime, and ICE. As Trump’s masked agents commit widely documented atrocities in Democrat-run cities, Fox hosts call ICE protesters “domestic terrorists,” while platforming false claims that ICE officers have “federal immunity“ for their crimes.
Last week, when Kristi Noem claimed that “No American citizens have been arrested or detained” by ICE agents, Fox News and affiliates ran the entire segment with no fact checks and no clarification. It is well publicized and well known that more than 170 American citizens have, in fact, been tackled, arrested and detained illegally by Noem’s ICE agents. When Fox showed a masked, male agent slamming a 5-foot-tall woman onto the concrete, Fox’s Laura Ingraham ran the clip praising ICE’s excessive violence with, “good job.”
By ignoring (or encouraging) ICE brutality, while overstating threats against federal agents, Fox News is, once again, radicalizing viewers with falsehoods.
Fox is also normalizing a police state, grooming the public to welcome the specter of Trump’s secret police in their daily lives. As Trump gears up to invade and oppress citizens in every state with "quick reaction forces"trained to control "civil disturbances"that Trump himself will cause, Fox News will, yet again, be an accomplice to the criminal violence. Only this time, far more than 5 people are likely to die.
Fox has an outsize megaphone
Fox News is the most-watched news channel in the US. It has consistently led the charts in both total viewers and key demographics, over competitors like MSNBC, CNN, and broadcast networks such as ABC and NBC.
In 2020, Pew Researchers found that Fox News viewers are far less likely to diversify their news sources, compared to viewers of other outlets. As a result, a significant portion of the American public consumes unfiltered, un-factchecked Trump propaganda all day, every day. Small wonder we are a nation so dangerously divided. Small wonder that how people feel about ICE depends on where they get their news.
Trump and his rightwing echo chamber specialize in manipulating an uninformed public by fomenting and amplifying hatred. Hatred, of course, sells. But when charismatic leaders pair hatred with a manufactured fear of “other,” unspeakable atrocities follow.
Fox News couldn’t spread lies in the UK, so they left
Before it was repealed in 1987, US broadcast media operated under the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC rule that required stations to be both balanced and fair. Since its repeal, the U.S. has grown significantly more polarized, a trend supported by multiple studies and metrics.
Today, with Trump illegally threatening the US media Putin-style, American audiences are increasingly turning to British news sources like the BBC for accurate reporting. Independent analysis and media watchdogs agree: British public service broadcasters provide more accurate Trump coverage than Fox News. That accuracy is the by-product of strict impartiality rules enforced by Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator.
Several years ago, when Fox News tried to air in the UK, it could not meet that nation’s impartiality and accuracy standards. Fox found non-biased reporting so challenging that it ultimately chose to stop broadcasting in the UK altogether.
If the UK can require accuracy in the media, so can we
When media in the UK present partisan viewpoints, they are subject to England’s “due impartiality” and “due accuracy” rules, legal mandates that require broadcasters to present multiple viewpoints. The same rules require broadcasters to timely correct significant errors, prohibiting UK channels from serving up one-sided propaganda.
Under the UK’s Communications Act 2003, all broadcasters are also prohibited from airing ‘unjust or unfair treatment’ of individuals or organizations. On matters of major political controversy, the media must present a wide range of differing views on the same topic. Individuals and organizations facing reports of significant wrongdoing are given the opportunity to timely respond (a “right of reply”).
These are not onerous requirements; they are minimal, and, if shepherded by a bipartisan coalition in the US, could go a long way in reducing media bias on both sides. So far, attempts to introduce similar legislation in the US have failed, in part because there is no public outcry demanding it.
It is time to demand it. If we continue to allow propaganda to be sold as ‘news’ to unsuspecting viewers, ideological differences will deepen, legislative gridlock will continue, and political violence from Fox News’ homegrown radicals will continue to worsen and spread.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.