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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
/
Fox anchor tasked with interviewing Harris has a history of appeasing
network’s pro-Trump audience
By Brian Stelter, CNN
Updated:
8:38 AM EDT, Wed October 16, 2024
Source: CNN
Fox News anchor Bret Baier is all too keenly aware that Fox’s viewers
want him to affirm what they already feel.
This week, he is under pressure as he prepares for a high-stakes
interview with Vice President Kamala Harris – the Democratic nominee
for president’s first-ever formal interview on the right-wing cable
network.
Fox is effectively a television extension of Donald Trump’s campaign.
Hour after hour, conservative talking heads pummel Harris and promote
Trump with little regard for the facts. Analysts have described the
vice president’s appearance on Fox as a surprising visit to “enemy
territory.”
Baier has tried to position himself above that partisan fray as
“fair, balanced and unafraid,” as he says in his sign-off every
night.
But a review of Baier’s emails and comments during the 2020 election
aftermath suggests otherwise. And his recent social media activity
shows that he is supremely aware of the Fox base’s extreme disdain
for Harris and distrust of the media.
Baier, the anchor of Fox’s 6 p.m. “Special Report” newscast, is
also the network’s chief political anchor. Alongside Martha
MacCallum, Baier anchored Fox’s 2020 election coverage and announced
the network’s early but accurate projection that Arizona’s
electoral votes would be won by Joe Biden.
Networks ordinarily like to be first with pivotal projections. But
because the Arizona call presaged Trump’s defeat, Fox was scolded and
second-guessed by many of its own viewers, including the sitting
president.
A day and a half later, in a Thursday morning email to Fox executives,
Baier said the Arizona call was “hurting us,” adding, “this
situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep on
having to defend this on air. And ask questions about it. And it seems
we are holding on for pride.”
would be “better” off revoking the accurate Arizona call.
“The sooner we pull it — even if it gives us major egg — and we
put it back in his column, the better we are in my opinion,” he
wrote. The only problem: Arizona was never going to be in Trump’s
column.
Baier’s emails were publicized as a result of Dominion Voting
Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox after the 2020 election.
$787.5 million to settle the case.
In another email during the fractious period when votes were being
counted and the presidential election was up in the air, Baier
described being tired and “pissed.” When one of his
Trump-supporting friends commented that “it ain’t over,” Baier
replied, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None.”
But the Fox audience wanted to hear otherwise, and Baier sometimes
obliged. Fox’s top news official in Washington at the time, Bill
Sammon, commented in an early December email that “more than 20
minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast… we’re still
focused solely on supposed election fraud — a month after the
election. It’s remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do
bad things.”
Sammon was referring to Baier’s newscast, which indulged Trump’s
post-election lies like many other Fox shows.
It is also true that Baier reported on air that Trump lost the election
and Biden won. But Baier expressed a remarkable degree of sympathy for
the Trump base’s unsupported screams about a stolen election.
At a November 16, 2020 Zoom meeting that was recorded and later ,
Baier implied that the network needed to rethink how it made
projections in the future. The “statistics” are one thing, “but
there has to be, like, this other layer,” he said, suggesting that
the audience’s expectations and emotions should be factored in.
That’s certainly happening now, in the final stretch of the 2024
campaign, as Harris tries to win over the exact type of persuadable
voters who watch Baier’s “Special Report.”
Almost as soon as Baier announced his Wednesday sit-down with Harris,
some uber-skeptical commenters on Elon Musk’s X replied to him with
doubts and conspiracy theories about the interview.
“This interview will be as watered down as they come,” one user
wrote.
“No doubt she already has the list of questions,” another chimed
in.
“I don’t trust Fox and I trust Baier even less,” a third user
bemoaned.
The comments demonstrated an automatic distrust of news anchors, media
outlets and American institutions. That lack of trust is what shapes
right-wing culture in the Trump era. Even Fox is not immune.
Baier acknowledged the Trump base’s default settings by stating that
his interview with Harris will be “unedited” – in contrast to
some of the vice president’s other interviews. (Although editing is a
normal TV news practice, Trump and many of his allies have called the
practice into question in recent weeks.)
Baier said on his program Tuesday night that Wednesday’s interview
“will run unedited, uninterrupted, without commercial breaks for the
first half of Special Report.”
Still, the Harris interview will be pre-taped because her campaign
schedule doesn’t permit her to talk live with Baier at 6 p.m. ET.
And even this basic fact caused some Fox fans to send conspiratorial
messages to Baier.
One X user told Baier they believed that the interview will “be pre
recorded and the answers will be edited. Because Fox News is (like
others) FAKE NEWS!”
Baier tried to reassure the user, saying “it will be as-live —
not edited - run from beginning to end - no changes - period.”
The anchorman also responded to other users to assure them that
Harris doesn’t have access to his questions in advance, and “there
were no preconditions to get the interview.” He bent over backwards
to explain the basics of television news to an audience that
automatically assumed the worst about his craft.
To the X user who predicted the “taped” interview will be
“greatly cleaned up before it’s aired,” Baier responded:
“Thanks Dennis - the interview will run as-live - unedited -
uninterrupted - without commercials - not ‘cleaned up.’ All of it
will air from the first word to the last. Thanks for your confidence -
hope you tune in.”
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