Fox Information viewers assume the coronavirus risk is exaggerated, finds new ballot

It’s more and more clear that the coronavirus is turning into a partisan challenge.

President Trump, in opposition to the recommendation of public well being consultants, is pushing to finish social distancing measures by Easter. Democratic officers and governors, in the meantime, are insisting that these measures keep in place to stop disaster.

Fox Information has been one of many president’s finest allies in the course of the pandemic messaging battle, with most of its hosts spending the pandemic downplaying its severity and echoing Trump’s positions. “We’re scaring individuals unnecessarily,” host Sean Hannity stated in one early March monologue. “I see it once more as ‘let’s bludgeon Trump once more with this new hoax.’”

How a lot does Fox’s drumbeat of coronavirus misinformation matter for its largely Republican, largely older viewers? A brand new nationwide ballot from Survey 160 and Gradient Metrics sheds some disturbing gentle on this query — displaying that Fox viewers are a lot much less more likely to take the pandemic critically whilst in comparison with different Republicans.

The survey, fielded between March 13 and 16, requested a consultant pattern of registered voters two questions on their method to the pandemic: whether or not they, personally, have been staying house from work, and whether or not they thought the media was overstating the risk from the pandemic.

The next charts present the outcomes for Republicans, divided up by those that reported watching any Fox Information programming up to now 24 hours and people who didn’t. The gaps are placing:

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Survey 160 additionally performed the identical ballot amongst Republicans who lived in Washington state, an space hit by the coronavirus sooner than a lot of the nation, and located roughly related responses. This implies that the coronavirus’s uneven geographic unfold isn’t the explanation for the divide.

It’s necessary to notice that these outcomes don’t show that watching Fox Information is instantly inflicting its viewers to be extra skeptical. It might be that the Republicans who select to look at Fox Information are extra hardline partisans, and thus extra more likely to consider the road that’s politically handy for Trump. Or there might be elements aside from geography at play that the survey didn’t account for.

But it surely additionally might be that Fox hosts are persuading their viewers of some very unsafe issues; we simply don’t know both means.

The ballot was additionally performed throughout a interval (March 13 to 16) when Trump had simply declared a nationwide emergency over the coronavirus, and normally was projecting way more concern concerning the epidemic than he’s at present, and when Fox rapidly pivoted to embracing the president’s line.

On Hannity’s March 13 present, for instance, the host shifted from bashing dire warnings concerning the virus as Democratic hoaxes to praising the administration’s robust response to the disaster.

“Tonight, we’re witnessing what will probably be an enormous paradigm shift in the way forward for illness management and prevention,” he stated. “The federal authorities, state governments, personal companies, high hospitals all coming collectively, below the president’s management, to stem the tide of the coronavirus.”

Because of this if Fox Information actually is inflicting its viewers to be skeptical of the pandemic — and we now have good social scientific analysis suggesting Fox does affect its viewers’ political habits — then this might nicely be an underestimate of what number of Republicans are nonetheless prepared to go to work and ignore different social distancing measures.

On condition that Fox’s viewers skews disproportionately older, that ought to make the community’s executives assume twice concerning the lives endangered by their hosts’ cussed willingness to say what the president wants them to.

“Fox Information is reaching a uniquely weak viewers, each due to their age and due to that viewers’s attitudes [toward] the coronavirus outbreak,” Kevin Collins, the chief analysis officer of Survey 160, stated in a press launch. “With that energy comes a duty to make sure the general public well being message of social distancing and self-quarantining is heard clearly.”