Fox Hosts Wanted To Hold Back Calls Of 2020 Results

The New York Times reports:

On Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, and Jay Wallace, the network’s president, convened a Zoom meeting for an extraordinary discussion with an unusual goal, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times: How to keep from angering the network’s conservative audience again by calling an election for a Democrat before the competition.

Maybe, the Fox executives mused, they should abandon the sophisticated new election-projecting system in which Fox had invested millions of dollars and revert to the slower, less accurate model. Or maybe they should base calls not solely on numbers but on how viewers might react. Or maybe they should delay calls, even if they were right, to keep the audience in suspense and boost viewership.

Read the full article. There’s so much more.

The one in which @foxnews “Non-Opinion Journalists” like @BretBaier propose holding back election — self-censoring news — calls because their audience might not like them.

Goddamned frauds. Every one. Deplatform them and bankrupt them. https://t.co/HLUjkkSmCk

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) March 4, 2023

New details of a Nov. 16, 2020, call between Fox executives and anchors fretting over the network’s Arizona call — even though it was right. “In a Trump environment, the game is just very, very different.”https://t.co/CC5W5hX6Rg

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) March 4, 2023

“Mr. Sammon, who had called every election correctly over 12 years at Fox and had just been offered a new three-year contract, was told that same day that his contract would not be renewed after all.”

Is this…cancel culture? https://t.co/VbqdLLxrxT

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) March 5, 2023

The two main anchors “suggested it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations, but that viewer reaction should be considered.” https://t.co/Y4f7hk3jW7

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 5, 2023