featured-image

Fox News will portray Kamala Harris as the “most dangerous, far-left” figure ever to stand for President as Rupert Murdoch’s network seeks to rebuild a fractured relationship with Donald Trump. Insiders said the Murdoch family, who fell out with Trump over Fox’s coverage on election night in 2020 , is keen to retain the millions of viewers and billions of advertising dollars that flow from the network’s support for the former president. But with Vice-President Harris pulling ahead in the polls, boosted by her choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential pick, Trump will seek to set aside his differences with the Murdochs and tap into Fox’s huge audience.

A source at Mr Murdoch’s company News Corp said: “They [Trump and the Murdochs] are like a bickering married couple, they can’t live with or without each other. “Fox News has to keep its MAGA Republican-supporting viewers happy or they will defect to further right rivals like the Newsmax channel.” The source said that Trump was “grumpy with Fox, always criticising its coverage”.



But they added: “He could win without it but it’s still the biggest thing going, many viewers are swing voters and ratings have soared as the race has tightened. “Fox will portray the Harris/Walz ticket as crazy, far-left and extreme to show they are delivering for Trump.” This week, Fox News viewers – whose numbers surged following the assassination attempt on Trump last month, to an average of 3.

5 million in primetime – were given an early taste of how the Democratic ticket will be covered on the network. After Ms Harris announced Governor Walz as her running mate, Fox host Sean Hannity used his show to describe her as “the single most radical, extreme and downright dangerous far-left politician ever coronated by the Democratic Party”. He added: “Now she just tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the single most radical far-left governor in the United States.

” However, Fox News insiders insist that the channel will not simply to be used as a propaganda vehicle for Trump, and that there is a line between voicing provocative conservative views and running outright falsehoods. (Jessica Tarlov, Hannity’s Democrat-supporting co-host, said it was nonsense to describe Governor Walz as a socialist). The relationship between Trump and Fox News is complicated.

When the New York mogul first announced his run for president in 2016, the Fox’s coverage was critical – but ratings soared. By the time Trump was in the White House, the network was his biggest cheerleader. The turning point came in 2020.

On election night, Trump (and many Fox executives, anchors and pundits) was furious after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, signalling defeat for the former president. According to journalist Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch personally approved making the call. After the election, Fox News hosts peddled Trump’s false claims about Dominion voting machines – a decision that eventually cost the network nearly $800m (£627m) in a defamation lawsuit (Fox News faces a further $2.

7bn ($2.1bn) suit from election company Smartmatic). But relations had broken down.

Following the 6 January Capitol riots, Murdoch urged his executives to make Trump a “non-person”. For his part, Trump said the 93 year-old should “get out of the news business” if he didn’t believe the 2020 election had been stolen, and claimed Fox bosses had “forgot the Golden Goose” which delivered bumper ratings. The rapprochement has been slow.

In January, Trump made his first live appearance on Fox News since 2022, and has proposed to debate vice president Harris on the network. But the relationship remains testy, with Trump slamming Fox for daring to cover Harris rallies and sharing “fake polls” about his chances of winning back the White House. At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July – attended by Rupert Murdoch – the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, said the party no longer needed to “bend the knee” to the Murdochs to win power.

Some Fox insiders dispute the suggestion that Trump is key to the network’s success. “Fox has been the number one cable news network since 2002, Trump didn’t bring all those ratings,” one said. “There’s a clear division between transparently opinion shows like Hannity and news programming.

” But the November poll is a big test for Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, 52, who took control of the Fox and News Corp businesses after his father stepped back last year. The News Corp insider said: “Lachlan is not as interested in being a political kingmaker. It’s about the bottom line and that means Fox News giving an audience that wants Republican red meat what it wants.

“If Trump wins, the Murdochs need to show they backed a winner. If he loses, the Murdochs would finally be released from Trump’s spell and Fox News will still thrive as the voice of opposition to President Harris.” Last month, it emerged that Rupert Murdoch was locked in a secret legal battle with three of his children to ensure that Lachlan is handed full control of the family’s media empire, in order to preserve its conservative editorial bent.

Claire Atkinson, who worked at the Murdoch-owned New York Post , and whose biography of the media mogul is published next year, said the presidential election would be “extraordinarily challening” for Fox. “Trump will be all over Fox News producers, anchors and Lachlan and Rupert to have them see things his way,” she told i . Ms Atkinson, who runs the Media Mix podcast, said she had “no doubt in my mind that they’ll get behind Trump,” but added: “The Fox News audience is made up of mostly Republican voters, but not all.

“I expect the opinion anchors in the evening to continue their highly critical coverage of Kamala’s presidential run hammering her handling of the border crisis among other topics. It’s what the audience comes for. But it’s a mistake to think that Democrat viewpoints are unrepresented.

” A Fox source said that Arnon Mishkin, the network’s polling expert who called Arizona for Biden in 2020 would take charge of its election desk again in November. “It put Fox in the crosshairs of the former President but we stuck by the call, rightly, when other channels rescinded their call,” the insider said. Of course, Fox News is not the only horse in the Murdochs’ media stable.

Sourced suggested that the family will use their print titles, which include the influential Wall Street Journal , to cover their bases in a tight contest, sources suggested. “The WSJ will push the economic recovery under Biden/Harris,” said one News Corp executive. “Fox is likely to go big for Trump, but not as big as last time and 2016.

But the newspapers will likely go ‘soft for Harris’ given Trump could threaten to limit the freedom of the press should he get in.” A Fox News spokesperson said: “Over the last several years, we’ve increased our investment in newsgathering while providing an innovative and thoughtful approach to programming, enabling our best-in-class broadcasters to stay ahead of an unprecedented and historic news cycle. “We’ve been ahead of every network on several stories that matter most to viewers across the country, and it’s the reason why we’ve become the destination for breaking news, attracting more democrats, independents and republicans than any other network.

” This week Lachlan Murdoch, the Fox and News Corp chairman, said: “The recent news cycle has been nothing short of extraordinary, and when news breaks, people turn to the news brand they trust. The strength of our news coverage is unmatched, and Fox News remains the clear first choice for viewers during the most pivotal moments.”.

Back to Entertainment Page