How Fox News Has Made Every Single Moment of the Last 25 Years Worse

Over at Fox News, they’re marking a very important milestone.

“It’s a big day for them,” says Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America. “They’re very, very proud of themselves. They’re very excited.”

Yes, it’s been 25 years since Fox News came on the air—25 years of “refracting the absolute most absurd and destructive and deadly disinformation and misinformation from the right wing fever swamps,” Carusone tells co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on the latest episode of The New Abnormal.

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And “everything is worse because of it,” Carusone adds—and the pandemic is just the biggest example. “There’s not a single moment, whether big or small—as big as the pandemic, as seemingly small as an appointment in the Department of Education—where Fox has not gotten in there and made it worse.”

Carusone offers a glimpse at what could ultimately rein in the network’s worst excesses—and it’s not just advertisers. “The cable companies are the ones that are really going to decide what Fox News is allowed to get away with,” he concludes.

Elsewhere in the conversation, he talks to Molly and Jesse about Facebook’s big moment in Congress this week, and what year was pivotal in making the social network the disinformation breeding ground it is today.

Also on the episode, Farah Stockman, member of the New York Times editorial board and author of American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears, discusses how she followed the lives of three factory workers after they lost their jobs.

“There is a huge link between health and mental health and jobs,” she says. “So these places that lose jobs, you see depression go up, you see anxiety, you see unrest, and you see people in Republican-leaning places go to the right to the crazy right. That is an impact of the loss of jobs.”

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Finally, Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson offers her reaction to a federal judge’s pause on the Texas abortion ban.

“Judge Pitman was so clear, right?” she tells Molly. “Like, this was a scheme to deny the constitutional rights of Texans. And I thought his language was powerful. I thought his ability to really distill the impact to patients on the ground for the past 37 days was incredibly compelling.”

Planned Parenthood is prepared for the respite in Texas to be brief, she says, but is still grateful for the breather. And as for whether Roe v. Wade will be struck down, she says she’ll be looking ahead to a key case in December.

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