What Does The Fox Say?
A personal story on growing — and outgrowing — partisan bubbles.
I grew up on Fox News, or at least I felt like I did. Born in 1985, my childhood predates the network, but Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly were on the air by the time I became interested in politics.
I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car with my dad in the afternoons. At night, we'd tune into "Hannity and Colmes" and the "No Spin Zone" where I'd learn what I missed at school. Everyone I knew who followed politics watched Fox News. From families at church to my grandfather, when a story broke we heard about it on the Fair and Balanced™ network.
Cutting The Cord
My Fox News and AM Radio media diet changed when I enrolled in college. I didn't go to a liberal university either; I went to Indiana Wesleyan University. Located in the rustbelt of the Midwest, IWU is one of the largest evangelical colleges in the country. If anything, my college experience was more conservative than my life was growing up. To enroll, I had to sign a student contract that said I wouldn't watch R rated films, drink alcohol, or dance.
But college had something my home didn't: High-speed internet.
My family had a computer, but when we finally got the internet, it was through a dial-up modem. With two brothers and only a single phone line, I had a limited amount of time to use my PC, and I spent most of it playing games. When I moved into my dorm room, I also didn't have a TV. Our student center had TVs showing Fox News, but I didn't want to spend every evening there. Instead, I decided I'd try and find my news online.
The internet meant I could get my news from more than one source. If a topic interested me, finding a dozen other journalists writing about it was easy. More importantly, it was almost always possible to dig deeper into an issue. If an article mentioned a study, I could read the study itself. Between my computer and the campus library, I had access to more information than I could ever hope to consume.
In college, I made friends who shared my until-then weird interest in politics. During high school, most of my friends didn't pay attention to the news, or if they did, they also watched Fox News. IWU was and to my knowledge still is a Republican-dominant university; my social circle was not. I met people who were more progressive, conservative, or libertarian than I was. I began to read some of their favorite news sources in addition to my own.
After graduation, I moved to a rural county in my home state. I still didn't have cable, but my apartment had DSL. It was sometime during this first year that I stopped reading Fox News. It wasn't a controversial story that drove me away. I didn't wake up one morning and decide they were bad. The change was gradual, but by the time I moved to my second apartment I had stopped reading foxnews.com altogether.
The No Spin Zone
Recognizing you were in a bubble is always easier once you're on the outside. Until you leave, you can explain away the craziest things with "that's just how it is." When I tell people about the student contract IWU made me sign, they look at me like I am crazy. From the outside, saying you wouldn't dance, even during breaks, does sound crazy. But when I was attending school, all my friends signed the same paper. It was what felt normal.
When I watched Fox News, it felt a lot like that. Everyone I knew watched the same programs that I did. If you cared about politics, you watched Fox. Simple, right? Even when I could admit I was in a bubble, it felt like a subtle one. After all, you chose to watch the network. No one forced you to, at least not directly.
Growing up, it wasn't that other news sources weren't as "good" as Fox, it's that they were "liberal." Rush Limbaugh wrote off modern society as corrupted by "Feminazis." On TV, Bill O'Reilly kept me informed about the war the media waged on Christians and Christmas. Leaving the Fox News bubble meant getting news from people who hated you. It meant risking corruption by Feminazis.
It was smoke and mirrors, of course. Yes, some people hate all things Conservative and Christian. They're not running major news networks. But growing up, I didn't know this. Living in the bubble, my only exposure to different outlets came from:
The (rare) instances when more mainstream outlets would back up a story. "See, even Liberals hate this!"
The (much more common) controversial clips. These short interviews or stories would serve as proof the entire network has a Liberal bias.
That's how Fox News works. They don't only present an alternative view of reality, but they make any other point of view part of the problem. Other media organizations were agenda-driven groups out to push a subversive future. Fox News positioned itself as a beacon of sanity in the liberal whirlwind, a No Spin Zone.
Online Isolation
I credit the internet a lot with helping me see past the Fox News bubble. Not only was I introduced to new sources, but I could research things that interested me on my own. But in a lot of ways, the Internet feels like it contributes more to isolation more than it challenges it.
Think about your online habits. If you're like me, you visit the same sites every day. You listen to the same podcasts, watch the same news shows, and follow the same people on Twitter. Unless you make a conscious effort, it's easy to fall into the pattern of following only sites with which you agree..
Now, it's not only Fox News. The network has competition from a growing list of outlets that are far more "right-wing." If someone thinks the "mainstream media" is fake news, they have hundreds of sites from which to choose. These companies compete with each other for conservative viewers. To capture a partisan base, writers become increasingly partisan themselves.
This makes maintaining a diverse diet of news more difficult. In today's environment, writing to please partisan readers pays. Writing a thoughtful and nuanced article doesn't.
If all you're used to is your bubble, leaving it is a shock. Conservatives will find many sources far more progressive than they're used to. In their Fox News adjusted reality, some sites might seem downright communist. To be fair, some fringe news sources are openly communist. The same pressures that drive right-wing media exist on the left.
Partisan bubbles create a wealth of "affirming stereotypes" for opposing networks. When a conservative outlet wants to talk about how the MSM is socialist, they can find an example. When the MSM wants to call conservative media Nazi-sympathetic, those exist too. The context or consensus of the position made in the stereotype doesn't matter; the outrage does.
These clips all say the same thing: "Why leave, when the world outside is dark and full of terrors?"
Breaking The Habit
But the world isn’t dark. Yes, there’s a lot of negative stuff going on in the world, but it's not all terrible. The largest sign of bipartisan agreement in the news is that, ultimately, both sides lie to you. Progressive and Conservative media both tell you it’s much worse than it is.
I have family members that still watch Fox News. I’ll be the first to admit that I avoid discussing politics with them. I don’t know how to bring up a topic without it breaking down. Instead of discussing a disagreement, we'll both end up taking positions we don't believe. Even with family, it is too easy to let tribal impulses take over.
The reality we live in is not the one our media tells us exists. Saying this is easy, but it’s hard to check partisan impulses to find common ground. It’s still worth doing.
Growing up on Fox News and AM radio, it’s easy for me to highlight the impact conservative media had on my life. But tribal media isn’t partisan and I know the problem exists on the left as well. I know many progressives have assumptions of my family formed by their own skewed media diet. Their journey recognizing those assumptions is familiar to mine. I know because some of them are my friends.
I no longer consider myself a conservative. But, since the election, I’ve made an effort to follow more conservative voices than I used to. I know that there are conservatives doing the same thing. It’s messy and uncomfortable, but all of us who try feel we’re better off for it. We’ll still have heated discussion and we’ll always disagree, but we have more in common than we think. The goal isn't to change any minds but our own.
Leaving what's comfortable and familiar isn't easy because it means walking into the partisan unknown. I don't expect to convince someone else to leave the safety of their bubble. They are the ones who must choose to break their habits if they want to leave. But, I can show them that what's outside isn't as dark and terrifying as Fox News claims. That's a good place to start.
