All it took was one sentence from President Obama to send Fox News into a total panic. The president took down Fox with a short and sweet dose of reality that showed just how small the right-wing network really is.
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At Northwestern, the president said, “But I have laid out my ideas to create more jobs and grow more wages. A true opposition party should have the courage to lay out theirs. There’s a reason fewer Republicans are preaching doom on deficits – because they’re now manageable. There’s a reason fewer are running against Obamacare – because while good, affordable health care might still be a fanged threat to freedom on Fox News, it’s working pretty well in the real world. ”
It began with Gretchen Carlson expressing “surprise” that Obama would call them out:
Carlson asked Ed Henry, “Why? My question to you, Mr. Henry, is why would he do this?”
Greta Van Sustern threw a fit, and claimed that Obama should lead instead of blaming Fox News:
Van Sustern whined that Obama needs to be presidential, and stop acting cool by blaming Fox News in front of a bunch of students. She pointed to Fox’s viewer numbers and claimed that Fox is “hot.” The Five’s Greg Gutfeld complained, “He bashes FNC more than ISIS, and we don’t behead anybody.” Gutfeld played that tired moldy oldie from the right that Obama goes after Fox News because Fox is the only network that will challenge the president.
The real reason Fox News is playing defense is the underlying point of Obama’s remark. President Obama told the nation that Fox News doesn’t represent the real world. Obama popped the Fox News bubble. Fox is a big fish in a very small pond. The total number of daily cable news viewers is somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five million people. Fox News dominates the cable news audience, but in a country of more than three hundred million people, Fox News and their audience are nothing.
Fox News celebrated because they averaged 1.79 million primetime viewers in the last quarter. Nearly four times more people signed up for Obamacare than watch Fox News. Obama’s portrayal of Fox News as a right-wing fringe cult that is out of touch with the real world was an accurate statement. Fox News has an out sized influence on the country because the mainstream press tends to follow their lead.
Fox is outraged because Obama spoke the truth, and the truth hurts. Fox News and their viewers aren’t living in the real world, and that is reality that the conservative network will never face.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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