How Fox News Stole Our Parents

Like many with a conservative parent, the author wonders how his late father would have reacted to the post-truth age of Fox News and Trump.

Father and son at odds. Photo by Fizkes/Getty Images.

With Fox’s massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems and the release of damning evidence that Fox’s biggest stars were well aware of the lies they were peddling, it feels like the right moment to explore the impact Fox has had on our national psyche.

For many older Americans, Fox has been a radicalizing force, leaving many younger folks feeling as if their parents have been stolen from them.

While it is premature to write Fox’s obituary, we must acknowledge that the post-truth era of right-wing, racist grievance we are currently living through can be traced directly to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox “News” Channel.

So, how did we get here, and importantly how can we get out of this spiral? These are the questions we’ll explore on today’s The Big Picture. 

— George Takei

My Fox News Loving Dad

While I didn’t grow up in an overtly political household, I think I was on some level always aware that we were Republicans. I mean, it was suburban Connecticut in the 1980s. It’s just what you were. 

I remember in 1984, Ronald Reagan came to town for his reelection campaign, and everyone in middle school ran downtown to see him speak. A celebrity in our midst. Everyone’s president.

But then came the 90s.

Suddenly, I was of voting age and the 1992 presidential election—the first I could vote in—was afoot. To my parents’ credit, I felt perfectly free to explore both fields of candidates. 

There was no indoctrination in my house. This was probably because my parents couldn’t even conceive of the notion that I or my brothers would end up anything but Republican. 

But for me, the more I watched and read, the more it became clear that, not only was I sympathetic to the Democratic side, but I was a Clinton guy—and would be for both of his victorious presidential elections.

My father in the meantime fell into what became commonly known as Clinton derangement syndrome. He would declare the Clintons criminals and claim they killed Vince Foster. 

That was the first clue my Dad and I were at odds politically. But that was only the beginning.

After the 2000 recount and then the 9/11 attacks under George W. Bush, I saw my father become radicalized in a way I hadn’t seen before. This time was different. This time he found common cause with a relatively new “news” network that he would watch incessantly. 

Suddenly his contempt for liberals was validated every night by Fox anchors and guests. He would sit for hours in front of the TV and spout off about bombing Iran. 

Sadly, we would lose my Dad to cancer just a few years later in 2009. It was after the 2008 election but before Barack Obama’s inauguration. 

And to be honest, in those ensuing years before he died, I wouldn’t say we lost my Dad to Fox exactly. He was present as a father and ultimately a grandfather, even as he struggled with a deadly disease. 

It perhaps helped that he started out a relatively moderate Republican. He was a pro-choice, non-religious hunter who eschewed the NRA. 

So he was always going to be a tougher nut for them to crack. 

But he was a veteran and a fiscal conservative for whom Fox clearly touched a nerve. This network turned him into what we affectionately called a “right-wing nutjob” who at times was unrecognizable from the man we grew up with as our loving, fair-minded father.

So for me, who saw firsthand the impact of their propaganda and lies on my smart, fun-loving, hilarious Dad, there was an extra dose of schadenfreude at the network finally being held accountable.

The Fallout of Fox’s Lies

Last week, Fox settled a massive defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, which alleged Fox aired lies claiming the 2020 election had been stolen and Dominion Voting Systems was to blame for the theft, even as Fox knew very well the claims were false. 

As Dominion argued in court papers:

"Fox knew the truth. It knew the allegations against Dominion were ‘outlandish’ and ‘crazy’ and ‘ludicrous’ and ‘nuts.’ Yet it used the power and influence of its platform to promote that false story."

We’ve already seen the very real consequences of the election lies spouted by Trump and his right-wing media allies at Fox in the form of the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol. The riot incited by the President bolstered by a media ecosystem amplifying the false big lie narrative, left several people dead and resulted in more than 1000 arrests of Trump supporters.

There were also direct reputational and market share consequences for Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, another tech company claiming in its own $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox that the election lies decimated its business.

And now there have been consequences for Fox itself in the form of a $787 million settlement to Dominion. That’s not likely to be the end of the cost Fox will bear for airing these lies, as Smartmatic’s suit is still to be resolved, not to mention the inevitable shareholder lawsuits against Rupert Murdoch and the Fox board for breach of fiduciary oversight duties.

But Fox’s impact on the American psyche goes well beyond merely amplifying election lies. The consequences of its trademark mix of fear-mongering, race-baiting and xenophobia are in the news every day.

One notable example from last week’s headlines: 

Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old Black boy who was out picking up his younger brothers, was shot once in the head and once in the arm by an 84-year-old “scared” White man after Yarl rang the wrong doorbell. Thanks to the amplification of outrage generated by the story, shooter Andrew Lester was arrested, charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

NBC News described the roots of this and other recent shootings as a “fundamental sickness in American life.”

Namely:

"…the toxic brew of paranoia, distrust and suspicion that poisons so many of our day-to-day interactions—and sometimes leads to bloodshed."

We now have a better sense of where that “toxic brew of paranoia” originated for Lester.

As one relative told The New York Times:

"He spent considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume."

Lester’s grandson Klint Ludwig elaborated in an interview with the Kansas City Star.

"I’ve gotten older and gained my own political views, and he’s become staunchly right-wing, further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line. I feel like it’s really further radicalized him in a lot of ways."

As Ludwig called what poisoned his grandfather:

"...a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia."

While Ludwig stopped short of calling his grandfather “racist,” he placed the blame squarely on his grandfather’s descent into right-wing politics, what he calls “stock Fox News conservative American stuff.”

Not to mention:

"And then the NRA pushing the ‘stand your ground’ stuff and that you have to defend your home. When I heard what happened, I was appalled and shocked that it transpired, but I didn’t disbelieve that it was true. The second I heard it, I was like, ‘Yeah, I could see him doing that'."

It is a tale recognized by all too many families. 

It even has a name:

Fox News Brain.

The Rage Contagion of Fox News Brain

Wikipedia defines Fox News Brain as:

"An addiction to anger and outrage brought about by overconsumption of sensationalist media."

The first instance of the phrase is credited to journalist Luke O’Neil, who in 2019 wrote about the impact Fox News had on people’s families in a New York Magazine article titled "What I’ve Learned From Collecting Stories Of People Whose Loved Ones Were Transformed By Fox News."

For O’Neil, it was a personal story, having written about his own loss of family members down the Fox rabbit hole on Substack. 

The piece struck a nerve, went viral, and inspired many others to deluge O’Neil with their own tales, which he summed up as follows:

"No matter where the stories came from they all featured a few familiar beats: A loved one seemed to have changed over time. Maybe that person was already somewhat conservative to start. Maybe they were apolitical. 

“But at one point or another, they sat down in front of Fox News, found some kind of deep, addictive comfort in the anger and paranoia, and became a different person—someone difficult, if not impossible, to spend time with. The fallout led to failed marriages and estranged parental relationships."

One particularly heartbreaking anecdote from a reader read:

"When I found my dad dead in his armchair, fucking Fox News was on the TV. It’s likely the last thing he saw. I hate what that channel and conservative talk radio did to my funny, compassionate dad. He spent the last years of his life increasingly angry, bigoted, and paranoid."

While O’Neil wrote these pieces through the prism of the Trump presidency, what he discovered is that this phenomenon predates Trump, although his rise was certainly dependent on it.

One common thread O’Neil found among many of the stories he collected was a switch that flipped around 2008 and the ensuing few years, during which something made “a lot of previously apolitical or moderate family members lose their minds.”

As O’Neil puts it:

"Gosh—what could it have possibly been?"

DailyKos user Haikukitty recounted a similar arc in an essay titled "Fox News – A Clear And Present Danger To America" about her parents’ descent down the Fox News rabbit hole.

"I generally NEVER discuss politics with them anymore, not since the 2008 election, if I can possibly avoid it, because they have become more and more strident and less and less anchored in reality."

And as for how Fox impacted her parents’ relationship with reality, she writes “their understanding of the issues of the day has declined steadily over the years as they have watched Fox's daily propaganda.” 

But since Obama had become President, she saw something else going on. 

"Obviously, this has been exacerbated by a more virulent racism than I was aware of, but the tone of Fox 'News' encourages and blesses latent racism and acts as a hothouse for it grow larger."

This connects back to O’Neil’s theory of the insidious power of Fox:

"Any salesperson or con artist will tell you that you can’t incept a thought in a mark’s mind out of nowhere. You have to find the hook that’s already there—fear, or desire—and exploit it. When it comes to exacerbating and honing the anxieties of aging Americans you can’t do much better (or worse) than race and immigration."

In O’Neil’s 2019 piece, he pegged the median age of Fox viewership at 68, and according to CNN, as of August 2018, their viewership was 94% White.

Or as Edwin Lyngar wrote in his 2014 Salon article titled "I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria":

"Old, white, wrinkled and angry, they are slipping from polite society in alarming numbers. We’re losing much of a generation… We’re losing people like my father to the despair of Fox News, and it’s all by design."

In 2016, Jen Senko went so far as to make a documentary called The Brainwashing of My Dad, which was funded via a Kickstarter campaign, largely from donations of other Americans dealing with this phenomenon in their families. 

As the film’s production notes summarize: 

"[Senko] looks at the rise of right-wing media through the lens of her WWII vet father who changed from a life-long, nonpolitical Democrat to an angry, right-wing fanatic after his discovery of talk radio on a lengthened commute to work."

Senko’s father Frank graduated to Fox News and became—as Jen related to Linda Rodriguez McRobbie in The Boston Globe—virtually unrecognizable.

“'He became a person we hated being around and we didn’t know. It was like that movie [Invasion of the Body Snatchers]: ‘What happened to Dad? It was a really horrible period of time for us . . . It was a nightmare, both my brothers blocked him, I blocked him'.

“Senko’s stomach clenched every time she thought of visiting. Her dad was angry all the time. And Senko knew exactly what was to blame: The steady drip-feed of outrage he listened to every day."

The Science Behind Fox News Brain

Perhaps it’s somewhat comforting to know that, as McRobbie notes, there are very human biological roots to this “rage contagion” phenomenon.

"When we feel outrage, we’re responding to a potent cocktail of neurochemical reactions, physiological sensations, and conditioned responses. It’s a survival mechanism linked to our deepest, oldest brain system, the limbic system.

"Any perceived threat—physical, metaphysical, ideological, or imagined—causes the amygdalae, the two almond-shaped bundles of neurons in the medial temporal lobe, to alert the brain to prepare for a fight (or flight).

"This signal causes the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, as well as the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, which kick-start our sympathetic nervous system, causing oxygen levels in the blood and glucose levels in the brain to rise. Our heart rate, blood sugar levels, and blood pressure go up—energizing us for a fight."

There’s even an evolutionary explanation.

"For humans, emotional contagion makes evolutionary sense: Our success as a species evolved out of our ability to function and cooperate in groups; rapid emotional communication would keep groups safe and cohesive. If there’s a danger—a herd of wildebeests heading straight for the camp, another tribe’s raiding party—it was crucial that panic and fear be communicated quickly."

Which for Senko, precisely explains her father’s descent.

"That would certainly describe Frank Senko’s transformation from mellow dad to raging talk show junkie. 'Anger is intoxicating,' his daughter observed when Frank went on daily anger benders. Those infusions of righteous anger—stoked by Rush Limbaugh and later, Fox News—gave him repeated hits of neurochemical stimulation, as well as a sense of purpose. In other words, the anger made him feel alive."

But in a 2019 Medium post commenting on O’Neil’s work, Devon Price offers a contrary opinion, suggesting we are giving Fox News too much power over our “stolen” or “lost” parents. Removing their own culpability…and ours to do something about it.

"But when we throw our hands up and say that our conservative family members have a 'brain parasite' that has 'ruined them' forever, we are giving into an appealing fiction. We are being just as self-servingly biased in our thinking as Fox News commentators are. We are choosing to believe a narrative that lets our loved ones, and ourselves, off the hook, that allows us to sit at the Thanksgiving table without uttering a challenging word.

"The truth is, our Republican and right-leaning relatives are active parties in their own transformations. They chose to drink from the well of misinformation and hate on a regular basis. They decided to shut out critical discussion. They carried their viewpoints to the polls. They made our world a worse place. And we have a responsibility to take them to task for it."

So what is the answer? 

It’s well-documented that simply throwing facts at people only makes them dig in more. And it’s understandable why one’s instinct would be to avoid the subject of politics altogether with the people you love if it is a point of conflict and contention.

Jen Senko’s story, though, did end with a light at the end of the tunnel. 

At least for Frank Senko’s family, in the end they got him back.

"After his radio broke, he stopped listening to the talk shows; he and Senko’s mother started eating lunch together again. He stopped watching Fox News when they got a new TV and his wife programmed the remote with all her channels. And while he spent a week in the hospital recovering from kidney stones, his family quietly unsubscribed him from the right-wing emails he’d been getting."

Said Senko:

“He became happy. And adorable. And we became friends again. And he and my mother got along really great. The last couple years of his life, he was himself again, and we had him back.”

Fox's Effect on the Rest of Us

Now to be fair, Fox helped radicalize me too, just in the other direction. I became a liberal online activist in the wake of the 2000 recount, 9/11, and Bush’s disastrous wars. 

And during the Bush years, in the spirit of open debate, I tried to engage my father in conversations on these topics as part of my political education. That went about as well as you’d expect.

It quickly became clear that there was no rebuttal to be had, only frustration and the occasional shouting match. Fox was not arming him with facts, just emotion. Pure rage. Which, much to my father’s dismay, served to only cement my own burgeoning progressive political ideology.

So one does wonder, if he had lived years longer, particularly into the Obama years, what rabbit hole Fox would have taken him down? How much more radicalized would he have become? 

Would he have been a Trumper? The question haunts us to this day, with my family holding decidedly different ideas of how my Dad would have reacted to the emergence of Trump’s MAGA movement.

Prior to researching this essay, I was leaning toward "No," that my Dad’s inherent decency and limited threshold for bullshit would have won the day and he would have seen right through Trump’s con job.

But reading about these other stories, particularly how the rise of Obama was such a trigger for otherwise decent folks, makes me wonder…if he could have had such hatred for the Clintons without Fox News, imagine how he would have reacted to the Obamas with Fox in his ear each night.

Now, to be fair to my Dad, toward the end of his life we would troll him sometimes and ask, “Hey, Dad, who killed Vince Foster?” His response would always be: “Vince Foster.” Even under the influence of Fox, reality had seeped in and at least some modicum of conspiracism had dissipated. 

But that was pre-Obama. It’s crystal clear that for older, White Americans infected with Fox Brain like my Dad, 2009 was a game changer, one he did not live to see. 

One thing I do know is if there is an alternate universe in which my Dad watches Hannity every night and hangs his Trump 2024 flag proudly, I’d be there in an instant for the chance at one more political shouting match.