Trump Loves ‘Fox & Friends.’ Here’s Why.

President Donald Trump is an avid viewer of Fox News and its morning program “Fox & Friends,” which is seen as offering more favorable coverage of the administration than other news outlets. His early morning tweets often reference coverage on the program.

The way each network covered the story – or avoided it – is a sign of how the media landscape has become ever more politicized in the Trump era. That is particularly true of Fox News.

.. Fox News aired 25 minutes of indictment coverage in the first hour after news of the charges broke around 8 a.m. – just as attention would have surged. CNN and MSNBC, in contrast, aired at least an hour of nearly uninterrupted and ad-free coverage.

.. In its morning coverage, Fox played down the indictment news in two ways. First, it cut away in the first few minutes to discuss a dossier, which was partly funded by the Democratic Party, that had leaked during the presidential campaign and included unverified allegations about Mr. Trump. They aired an interview that had already been shown half an hour earlier with the Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway in which she called for an investigation into the Hillary Clinton campaign.

.. Reporting on the indictment continued, with only the occasional ad break, for the next hour on CNN and MSNBC, while Fox reported on North Korea and allegations of sexual misconduct against the actor Kevin Spacey – news that had gained steam after Mr. Spacey issued a widely criticized apology the previous evening.

.. To right-leaning media observers, the coverage by the other networks might seem equally troubling: does the Manafort indictment deserve an hour or more of uninterrupted airtime?

Laura Ingraham Is Ready to Rev Up Fox News

Ms. Ingraham honed her craft in college at The Dartmouth Review, the undergraduate right-wing journal that earned national recognition (and some revulsion) for stunts that, in hindsight, presaged the antics of Breitbart reporters.

.. “All the way back to Dartmouth, I was part of the insurgency,” she said.

In an era before mainstream acceptance of homosexuality, Ms. Ingraham assigned a reporter to attend a meeting of the campus gay students’ alliance and published a transcript of the proceedings, naming names. Years later, she apologized, citing in part the experience of her gay brother and his partner, who had AIDS.

.. “Laura represents her own unique brand,” said Christopher Ruddy, who runs Newsmax, a Fox News competitor. “She comes out of the milieu of talk radio, where the economics of that business have driven a lot of hosts who were moderately conservative to be a little edgier.”

.. She had been encouraged to back Mr. Brat by a producer, Julia Hahn, who went on to write for Breitbart and now works in the White House.

.. Asked if she is bringing a Breitbart viewership to Fox News, Ms. Ingraham responded: “I wouldn’t call it a Breitbart audience. I would call it America.”

“I like Tom Wolfe’s description of the country,” she continued. “There’s America. The coasts are like the parentheses. In between is the country.”

Save the Phony Weinstein Outrage, Republicans

Trump is more consistent. He is a pig in public as well as behind closed doors. In 1992, New York Magazine reported that he said the best way to deal with women is to treat them like excrement, though he used a more vulgar term. He has followed his own advice. His first wife, Ivana Trump, accused him of raping her in a fit of rage. (She later denied that the events she’d recounted were rape “in a literal or criminal sense,” but stuck to the underlying story.)

.. He owned beauty pageants and, by his own admission, would barge into changing rooms to ogle the naked contestants. The makeup artist Jill Harth said that he tried to rape her. Multiple women have accused him of groping and sexual harassment.

.. Somehow, in the wake of the Weinstein revelations, the president’s supporters appear to believe they hold the moral high ground. Donald Trump Jr. — a man who once said that women who can’t handle workplace sexual harassment “should go maybe teach kindergarten” — has been tweeting about Weinstein incessantly.

.. For the past 11 months, many feminists have been reeling from the defeat of the first female major-party presidential candidate by a predatory misogynist. The confirmation that a hugely powerful man who is supposed to be on our side is just as bad as Trump is shattering.

.. Yes, Ailes had to leave Fox News after charges that he’d demanded sexual favors from women in exchange for professional opportunities. But in the aftermath, conservatives did not ostracize him. Instead, Trump defended Ailes and defamed his accusers, then brought him on as an adviser

 

Sorry, Harvey Weinsteins of America: The panty party is over

Ailes knew his audience of mostly white, middle-aged men and sold them what they apparently wanted — ample leg and hint of bosom topped off with bee-stung lips and baby-doll eyes. No matter how many advanced degrees the Fox News women have, Ailes set the stage for female objectification and created a prime-time bonanza that relied on implicit and complicit exploitation. As long as everyone was living large, nobody complained.

.. To say that these women, some barely in their 20s at the time, should have just said no and walked out is to misunderstand the power dynamic between a young, inexperienced woman and a powerful, physically imposing boss.