What role does Fox News play in the recent wave of anti-Muslim attitudes in this country? Fox has a long history of race baiting. This Bill O’Reilly segment, called “The Muslim Invasion,” predates both the Paris and San Bernadino attacks.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has released an analysis by Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel of survey data collected by the American National Election Studies (ANES) in 2012. A national sample of respondents was asked, “How well does the word ‘violent’ describe most Muslims?” The chart below shows the averages for white Democrats and Republicans who do or do not watch Fox News regularly, while statistically controlling for age, income, education, religiosity and geographical region.
The lower the dot, the more violent Muslims are perceived as being. While you might have guessed that Republicans are more likely to see most Muslims as violent than Democrats, watching Fox News is actually a stronger indicator of bias against Muslims than party affiliation. In fact, if they watch Fox News regularly, Democrats don’t differ significantly from Republicans in their tendency to describe Muslims as violent.
The ANES survey also found Fox News viewing to be a significant predictor of responses to five of ten items measuring prejudice against African-Americans. For example, one item read, “If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.” Researchers found strong effects of both party affiliation and Fox viewership.
Regular Fox viewers (and Republicans) were also more likely to:
- Agree that blacks should be able to overcome prejudice without any special favors, just as “Irish, Italian, Jewish and other minorites” have done.
- Disagree that generations of slavery and discrimination have made it more difficult for blacks to get ahead.
- Disagree that over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
- Agree that blacks have too much political influence in this country.
All of these items were intended to measure modern or symbolic racism, sometimes also called racial resentment, which refers to racism revealed in subtle, indirect ways which allow the respondent to deny being prejudiced. Fox viewers did not differ from non-Fox viewers on indicators of old-fashioned racism, such as labeling blacks as “lazy” or “unintelligent.”
To complete the trifecta, studies also find that Fox viewers are more likely to hold anti-Latino and anti-immigrant attitudes.
These are correlational studies, since people decide for themselves whether to watch Fox News. Correlation does not imply causation. Does watching Fox News lead to greater prejudice, do people who were already prejudiced prefer Fox News, or is some third variable causing some people to both be more prejudiced and to watch Fox News? (Note, however, that some of the more likely third variables, such as age, education and region, are statistically controlled in the ANES analysis.)
Two arguments can be offered in support of the claim that Fox News is causally responsible for at least some of these differences in prejudice.
- The mass media are more likely to directly influence attitudes toward current events than to change long-standing beliefs. The “try” question above is probably a long-standing belief. But a 2010 study found that Fox News viewers were also 31% more likely to believe that President Obama was not born in the United States, a view that was heavily promoted by Fox at the time. Fox viewership was also associated with false rumors about the “Ground Zero mosque” in 2010.
- Two studies examined the effects of the spread of Fox News into new television markets. They both measured conservatism generally, rather than racial attitudes, but conservatism and prejudice are strongly related. In one study, the introduction of Fox into the area significantly increased the Republican vote share between 1996 and 2000, compared to other locations. Another study found that Congressional representatives—both Democrats and Republicans—became more conservative in their voting patterns following the startup of Fox News in their districts.
Both of these studies are quasi-experiments. They are not true experiments because Fox News does not randomly choose locations in which to broadcast. However, in order to explain away these data, you would have to assume not that Fox chooses more conservative locations, but rather that Fox happens to choose locations that are on the verge of a conservative shift. This is unlikely, though not impossible.
I cringe whenever I walk into a public building and find Fox News playing in the lobby or waiting room, especially when it’s a location, such as an airport or hospital, that is subsidized by government funds.
You may also be interested in reading:
White People Don’t Riot: A Manual of Style For Ambitious Young Journalists