Today’s it’s popular and fun to blame Fox News for much of the conservatism on display in the U.S. these days — judging by social media posts, conversations, and opinion pieces masquerading as “news” stories. The most recent example of the latter is The Guardian’s ‘Fox News Brain’: Meet The Families Torn Apart By Toxic Cable News (April 12, 2019).

The piece isn’t marked “editorial” or “opinion” and shows up on the news pages under “US Politics” and “Life And Style”. Yet its subtitle is: “Fox News built a wall between Luke O’Neil and his mother, and he’s just one of many families split by its viral ideology”, and the entire thing is written in the first person — not good form for news writing and a great indicator that you’re reading opinion. To his credit, writer Luke O’Neil admits that Fox News “didn’t invent” the conservative views it promotes, but that doesn’t seem to matter as the rest goes on to blame Fox for older parents turning conservative: “I lost an uncle to Fox brain”, for example.

A few other examples I’ve noticed in years past:

• Study: Watching Fox News Actually Makes You Stupid (Rolling Stone, 2012)
• Fox News And Talk Radio Brainwashed My Dad (Salon, 2013)
• New Study Finds That Fox News Is Brainwashing Viewers (Politics USA, 2015)

I’m certain that specific people can point to specific friends or relatives who became more conservative, more toxic in their viewpoints, after watching Fox News. But among the population as a whole? I’m not convinced.

An Anecdote, History, And A Thought Experiment

First, an anecdote. I know quite a few conservatives. (And to be specific here, I’m not using “conservative” as a synonym for “Republican”, because it’s not. I’m using the word in its most general dictionary definition: “A person who is averse to change and holds traditional values.”) All of the conservatives I know were that way before Fox News was even invented. A few of them might have been influenced by talk radio in the 1990s or conservative newspaper columns even earlier. But from my observation, most of them seemed to have absorbed their political viewpoints from parents and other senior family members — and from their churches.

Next, a bit of history. The U.S. has always had a large proportion of conservatives. Surely the percentage shifts a little from year to year; sometimes conservatism waxes and wanes. And conservatives as a group have almost always shifted their stances from one generation to the next. But the movement itself never was in danger of drying up and blowing away. Even as our baby nation was still being formed, there were plenty of Americans who preferred a monarchy (the conservative view) over the democratic republic we became. And at each stage of progress since then, conservatives held their ground valiantly — and sometimes violently. When progressives wanted more rights for African-Americans, conservatives fought tooth and nail. When progressives dared to say women should get to vote, conservatives showed up in great numbers to oppose them. When it came time for civil rights advances in the 1960s, we know how strenuously conservatives opposed that.

Thirdly, a simple thought experiment. Think of any topic on which viewpoints are divided into mostly “conservative” and “progressive” positions. I like women’s rights for this example, but you could choose others, like protections and rights for persons identifying as LGBTQ+, or taxing the wealthy at increasingly greater rates than the poor or middle class. Then check to see if the U.S. as a whole has begun to lean more conservative on that topic since the founding of Fox News, or if the U.S. as a whole has begun to lean more progressive on that topic since the founding of Fox News. At least for the majority of topics that came to my mind, it appears U.S. viewpoints have shifted to the progressive side of the scale in the 23 years since Fox first went on the air.

Thus, I’m convinced Fox News isn’t to blame for conservative viewpoints. Not only does history shows conservatives have always held some degree of power — and a significant place in the public mind, but conservative viewpoints are actually losing ground since Fox News’s inception. Fox News was an effect, not a cause of virulent conservatism in the U.S. The TV channel’s founders noted there wasn’t a newsy channel that catered to conservatives, and they knew conservatives existed in large enough numbers. So they created the channel that conservatives were already looking for.

Two Questions Arise

So, if the purveyors of misinformation at Fox News — and other conservative media — aren’t to blame for conservative views, then new questions get raised. (1) Why is it so common to blame Fox? (2) What actually is the cause of harmful conservative views?

If Fox Isn’t To Blame, Then Why Blame Fox?

This question, I think, has multiple answers. For one, we like easy cause-effect lines of thought, especially for effects we see as negative. An example from my childhood: kids today are lazy; kids today watch a lot of TV; therefore TV is the cause of laziness. It’s absurd when we look back at that train of thought today, but serious people, experts even, were saying that a lot in the 1980s. (Ironically, many of them were saying it on TV.) So today, when we come across a conservative viewpoint, and we know Fox News pushes that exact viewpoint, it’s just too easy to blame the TV channel.

Secondly, somewhat related to the first factor, we see and hear others saying exactly that, so it works its way into our brains and we end up repeating it.

And finally, I think many of us don’t understand where conservatism actually comes from — and that brings us to the second question mentioned above.

What Is The Actual Cause Of Conservative Views?

If not Fox News, there whence cometh this tide of conservatism?

It’s easy to forget, and certainly many people never realized, that conservative is the default position. The status quo, business as usual, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, tradition, the way we’ve always done it, sometimes the old ways are better. Truly, by definition, being conservative is the starting point; it’s what we’re doing when we’re not progressing — which is most of the time.

Take the Equal Rights Amendment, something progressives have been pushing for a hundred years and which conservatives have resisted. Notice that it is not, currently, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is what I mean by “conservative is the default position”. Where we are now on the ERA is the conservative position. For another example: progressives have long pushed for more equitable funding in education (funds distributed equally per capita across school districts), while conservatives have fought to maintain the status quo whereby wealthier (usually white) students receive the bulk of education funding. The current state of education funding has not yet gone in the direction progressives wanted; therefore the conservative position is what exists — with some exceptions. There are many more examples.

It takes more effort, more work, more planning, more thought, more... almost everything to be progressive, because on every single issue conservatives won first. By nature of the definition, “averse to change... traditional values.” If we do nothing, if we accept things as they are, if we expend no energy, then conservatism wins, because the conservative viewpoint is exactly that: what we’ve always had is good enough.

However, things do change — have changed and are changing — always through the tireless efforts of progressive activists, increasingly modern thinking, and improving ideas of equality. We didn’t end up with a monarchy. Slavery ended. Non-whites got the right to vote. Women were enfranchised. Progressive taxation was implemented. Education was publicly funded. Science was publicly funded. Infrastructure was publicly funded. Today, an openly gay man who’s married to another gay man is currently running for president. All of this despite the ongoing opposition of conservatives.

Conclusion

It’s inaccurate to lay all the blame on Fox News for the “toxic” views associated with conservatism; those views have always existed and held sway in some quarters. Regularly claiming that “Fox News stole my Dad” attributes more power to the TV channel than it deserves. It’s smarter, and more beneficial in the long run, to lay the blame where it truly belongs: in the fact that conservatism is the original state of things, the default position.