The attorney for Anthony Antonio, an alleged Capitol insurrectionist, made headlines recently by claiming that Antonio had been brainwashed by Fox News into taking militant action.
Is that a stretch? Possibly, but there’s no question that Fox News and other right-wing propaganda mills masquerading as objective news organizations are misinforming their audiences and fueling the extremism that boiled over during the riot. Regardless of what happens with Antonio’s defense, Fox News’ toxic effects on the well-being of its viewers and on our nation’s democracy are worth spotlighting and discussing.
The relentless calls for radicalization spewing from Fox News certainly have the intention of brainwashing viewers: It is a primary goal of the network.
Antonio’s attorney, Joseph Hurley, claimed a steady diet of Fox News left his client believing the 2020 election had been stolen from President Donald Trump and that he needed to take action to restore democracy. According to Hurley, Antonio lost his job early in the pandemic and spent several months obsessively watching Fox News.
“He became hooked with what I call ‘Foxitis’ or ‘Foxmania’ and … started believing what was being fed to him,” Hurley told a Washington, D.C., court.
Antonio, who was living in Chicago, traveled to the Capitol and took part in the riot. A video shows him wearing a patch for the anti-government Three Percenters group and shouting threatening statements at officers (“You want war? We got war! 1776 all over again.”). He also is alleged to have poured water on an officer being dragged down stairs by insurrectionists, and throwing broken furniture around in the Capitol.
Antonio now says he takes responsibility for participating and regrets his actions.
“I shouldn’t have been there that day,” he told CNN. “I shouldn’t have been involved on those Capitol steps.”
Antonio also said he unplugged from Fox after the election and came to realize he’d been misled.
“As of right now, I acknowledge, I know that Joe Biden is our president,” he said. “That’s not a mystery; that’s a fact. But I felt like, maybe I believed that America was being robbed of a president. And I now know that that was a lie.”
Will Antonio’s defense — a new form of “The devil made me do it” — hold up in court? It seems unlikely, especially considering that several defendants connected to the insurrection have made a similar claim that they were compelled into action by Trump, and gained little traction.
While Antonio might be trying to duck direct responsibility, that doesn’t mean his claims are inaccurate. Historically, determined propagandists have coerced entire nations into hideous acts. Nazi Germany elevated propaganda to a core element of the government, as did Stalin’s Russia, North Korea and the Taliban. Propaganda isn’t a tool used to create a more just society, because justice relies on truth. Propaganda is directed at creating a more violent and divided society. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is spreading a virus of angry divisions in every country in which it operates. And Fox News is the champion of lies and divisions in the U.S.
So there is a kernel of truth to Antonio’s claim. He certainly wouldn’t be the only person who’s been duped by Fox News, Newsmax and the like, and been negatively affected by their false and hateful narratives.
For instance, several studies have shown that by spreading misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and endorsing conspiracy theories about it, extremist media exacerbated and intensified the crisis. The research stood to reason: Audiences became conditioned to underestimate the severity of the threat, take fewer precautions against the spread of the disease and resist vaccinations.
There also are numerous reports of people immersing themselves in extremist right-wing media echo chambers — and in offshoots like QAnon — to the point of becoming isolated from their entire families.
Fox News and others of its ilk are increasingly under pressure in the courts over their misinformation, most notably through Dominion’s multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits over false reporting that it abetted election fraud.
Efforts to hold these organizations accountable for their irresponsibility are entirely appropriate.
They’re feeding the American public lies — they’ve even admitted that nobody should take it at face value. Remember that in a defamation suit brought against commentator Tucker Carlson by a former Playboy model he accused of trying to extort Trump, an attorney successfully argued that Carlson’s remarks weren’t actionable because no reasonable viewer would believe them. This, despite Carlson prefacing those comments by saying “Remember the facts of the story; these are undisputed.”
To borrow an old public service announcement, it’s becoming increasingly clear that friends don’t let friends watch Fox News.
“Foxitis” may seem far-fetched, but Fox News certainly isn’t healthy for our country.