Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Sep 13, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Here's my review of the Fox News Primary over the first 8 months of the year. Tom Cotton is working hardest to put himself in front of the Fox audience, but Ron DeSantis is better at making the network part of his wins and he rules in primetime: mediamatters.org/fox-news/cotto… Image
DeSantis quite literally owes his governorship to a Fox News-focused strategy, so it will be worth watching this going forward. He is very adept at using the network for best results. ImageImage
By contrast, Cotton's aides are clearly putting him on Fox every chance he gets, he vastly outpaces the field (113 vs Pompeo's 55, and the latter is on the Fox payroll), but he's not a fav of Hannity or Carlson and basically just gives his take on news of the day.
Also worth mentioning that Sean Hannity's show is an ongoing cattle call for the GOP field, he's done 90 of the groups' 498 interviews over the first eight months of the year.
Why does this matter?

Fox hosts have spent the year undermining the COVID-19 vacciner campaign; drifting toward a paranoid, fascistic, apocalyptic politics; and institutionalizing former President Donald Trump’s lie that the election was stolen.
To try to appeal to those powerful forces in the GOP, would-be presidential hopefuls will need to adopt extreme rhetoric and policies. And during a pandemic, that comes at enormous costs.

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More from @MattGertz

Oct 30
Not going to bother to find out what he said in order to express regrets to Puerto Ricans that it happened, fascinating stuff!
Takeaway from the truck stunt is Trump won’t say anything bad about the supporter who spoke at his rally and called PR garbage, and indeed doesn’t seem able to even denounce the comment.
He’s just giving those influential Puerto Ricans who have been expressing outrage about the comments all week new material to post about, insane self-own.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 30
Trumpy billionaires are hoping to ride a wave of grievance into power, then use it to cut their own taxes and demolish their competitors. Image
In exchange for his support, Trump is offering Elon Musk the power to, in Musk's own telling, destroy Tesla's domestic competitors. Image
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The result would reverse the domestic manufacturing renaissance spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, eliminating good jobs in Republican parts of the country. Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 25
It is depressing but somehow not surprising that 11 days before an election that the NY Times’ publisher and top editor warn could destroy the U.S. free press, the paper is spending time taking down good-faith critics (me) who argue its content doesn’t meet that moment. Image
Let’s go through this from top to bottom. semafor.com/article/10/24/…
The Semafor write-up doesn’t include the relevant Times data and its characterization of our findings is much broader than what we actually wrote.

Here’s the study, let me explain what we actually did and reported. mediamatters.org/new-york-times…
Read 10 tweets
Oct 16
Fox's women voters town hall is very obviously packed with Donald Trump supporters, opens with a standing cheering ovation for him.
The first question at the Fox town hall went to a Lisa who looks a lot like Lisa Cauley, president of the Fulton County Republican Women -- even the necklace matches. fultonrepublicanwomen.com/team/lisa-caul…Image
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This is a Trump campaign event with an audience of his supporters and a moderator who is doing everything possible to help him out, which makes sense since Fox News is a Republican propaganda outlet.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 10
The blue bars are articles mentioning Hillary Clinton's email server in the week after the Oct. 2016 Comey letter.

The red bars are articles mentioning Trump's Jan. 6 indictment the week after Jack Smith's latest filing was unsealed earlier this month. Image
Major papers are giving Trump’s Jan. 6 indictment dramatically less attention than they did Clinton’s server mediamatters.org/new-york-times…
We found the papers ran 26 combined articles mentioning Trump’s indictment in the week after the unsealing of Smith’s filing. But those same papers published 100 combined articles — nearly 4 times as many — that mentioned Clinton’s server in the week after Comey's letter. Image
Read 6 tweets
Sep 19
How things are going right now on the websites of the largest news outlets in North Carolina after CNN broke its story about Mark Robinson's "dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum" -- a thread.
Raleigh's The News & Observer. Image
The Charlotte Observer Image
Read 13 tweets

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