Another day on Planet Fox

When you ask people what they think about a policy practice -- say, blowing away random speedboats in the Caribbean on grounds that they're delivering something called "narcoterrorism" to America's doorsteps -- you're also asking them what they know about the practice. And that's cause for another look at the agenda-setting effect of the Fair 'n' Balanced homepage.

Two things must ye always remember about media agenda-setting. First, agenda-setting is not a practice itself but an outcome of practice: that is, of doing "news" at speed on a pile of information with limited space and time. Second, if you're only looking for attitude change as an outcome variable, you're probably looking in the wrong place. Agenda-setting is about political learning: the transfer of salience from what "the media" think is news to what the public thinks is news. (As our friends in PoliSci have noted in their flavor of agenda-building, this is complicated by the fact that our political structure assumes an active and informed public, whereas the public almost always has something better to do.)

With that in mind, what is the Fox audience learning from Saturday morning's top story about recent developments in the War On Speedboats?

As scrutiny mounts on the Trump administration's use of force in its targeting of suspected cartel members in the Caribbean, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were asked whether they believe U.S. citizen victims or drug traffickers are more important.

Republicans, such as Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., said the answer is easy.

"I can't speak for anybody else, but my top concern is American citizens, their lives, their health. So, for me, it's an easy choice. Kill drug dealers, save Americans," said Sheehy.

But that's not why we're writing the story, is it?

Democrats, however, had less black and white opinions on the strikes.

"Look, I fully support doing whatever we can within the legal means to make sure that we're stopping drug trafficking," said Rep. Johnny Olszewski, D-Md., adding, "We should absolutely be concerned about the victims of drug trafficking and people who have lost their lives to drug violence."

... Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., pushed back on the question, asking, "Is this going to do anything to truly help them?"

"Cocaine's still flowing, the demand is still there," Smith said, adding, "You see a drug dealer on the street, that's a bad person. That person is selling drugs. Let's say they're selling actual fentanyl, not the cocaine that we're hitting here. Would you support allowing anyone to execute that person who wants to on the spot?"

... Meanwhile, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., answered, "We have to do our best to disrupt drug distribution. Also, we have to invest in drug health care and drug education, et cetera. We have to do all the things. The real question is, how do you do it right?"

Pressed on whether the government should be prioritizing drug victims above the traffickers, Reed responded, "I've commented and thank you for asking," before walking away.

It sounds like the Fox reporter is getting off lightly here. No one tells him "quiet, piggy" or asks if he's a stupid person. But while there's clearly a transfer of political knowledge going on, it's not the same sort that a Fox reader might pick up at, say, the Drudge Report (linking to CNN's report from Friday, which put things in rather a different light).

In the same way that Fox users were more likely than, say, NPR or Times users to know stuff about the second US-Iraq war that wasn't true, Fox users also tend to not know stuff -- about an improving economy, for example -- that is true. That doesn't mean the issues aren't covered; it means they're covered for different reasons and take the form of different stories.

The arrest of the man accused of planting pipe bombs at Democratic and Republican sites before the Trumpist attack on the Capitol in 2021 was the lead story from Thursday noon-ish through Friday morning. He stayed among the top 10 stories through Friday: the FBI accused the Biden administration of sitting on the evidence, CNN's Jake Tapper mistakenly called him a white guy, his family was noisy at his first court appearance, and -- critically -- Fox could run a the mug shot (as one commenter put it: "he's not white. He's black").

By Saturday, with both CNN and the AP having reported that the suspect was a Trumpling who thought the 2020 election had been stolen, the story* was gone from the top of the page -- but not from Fox altogether, as evidenced by the Greg Gutfeld clip that Trump posted on his social media platform Saturday.

Agenda-setting and framing are both reciprocating engines: political actors learn about issues (and voter attitudes) from the media, and media learn from their audiences (which include political actors). As surely as Trump hears from Fox, Fox hears from Trump in return. After a suspect was arrested in the killing of Charlie  Kirk, the FBI's original over-hasty claim of an arrest was "Patel's blunder" at the top of the page on Sept. 13 -- but "Caught in 33 hours" (with a subhead praising "FBI chief's bold evidence strategy") after Fox interviewed Trump that afternoon. And the great man himself is hardly shy about sharing his opinions of Fox programming, particularly when it's true

It'd be wrong, not to mention churlish, to suggest that the Fox audience isn't taking in any actionable information with its daily diet. It is. Indeed, that audience can find its way around Planet Fox quite well. The rest of us can only hope to pick up a stray clue here and there -- say, to the permission structure for reporting on those potentially taboo developments, as in the Saturday evening** top story about Secretary Hegseth's escapades:

* And, ahem, the photo
** As of this writing, fallen from No. 1 to No. 28.

Who's gonna read the second paragraph?

How does the media agenda go together at the Fox News homepage these days? Let's enjoy a current example, with some trivia from the past three years thrown in for context and fun.

Methodological details below, but broadly: This is a set of screen captures of the top stories at the foxnews.com homepage from 2022 through mid-2025, with the goal of approximating -- roughly -- what you might see if Fox was a multi-edition big-city tabloid and you were passing several newsstands a day and buying the late stocks edition at the subway stop. Of course Fox isn't a real tabloid, but you're not a straphanger in 1964 either, and as Walter Burns put it, who's gonna read the second paragraph anyway? With that out of the way, on to your top 10 from 1:29 p.m. Eastern US on Saturday.

How often does social media erupt? Often enough that you don't want to buy property downwind from it. "Social media erupts" in 40 unique headlines (including one "quickly erupts") across the data set. Social media also explodes (14 times), is set ablaze or lit on fire (11), goes nuts, goes wild, has thoughts, is stunned, has field days, has shivers sent down its spine, is sent into frenzies, and so forth.* That's not counting the transitives (or the 18 times that Twitter erupted or exploded before the Musk purchase.)

As noted earlier, social media doesn't erupt by itself. It usually gets a hand from a cadre of favorite influencers: in this case, Paul Szypula (@bubblebathgirl), who provides the outrage and the headline. In a convenience sample for 2024-25 of stories sourced to this group of usual suspects, he shows up 20 times, trailing LibsOfTikTok (32) and the RNC Research account (24) but ahead of Fox contributor Joe Concha (18), Collin Rugg of Trending Politics (13), and Ian Miles Cheong and Trump War Room (12 each).

A content analysis can't demonstrate a direct agenda-setting effect, but some inferences about the transfer of issue salience suggest themselves from the reader comments (more than 9,000 at this writing). It is not, in short, a story about off-year local elections in the Midwest:

• the REAL EXENTENTIAL threat to america has been imported by who over the decades? hint: diversity is............
• Learn English
• Minneapolis is infested...
• Islam taking over one congressional seat at a time. It’s obvious. 
• Minneapolis had long been a lost cause!
• Diversity without assimilation is leading to the downfall of America. United we stand, divided we fall. 

There are, of course, other opinion leaders on the page -- for example, Bill Maher.** "Real Time rebuke" is the day's second unique Top 10 story based on Maher's "Real Time" program; a different story, by a different writer, appeared in the day's first capture as "Dems in chaos." "Bill Maher" is also the 23rd most frequent hed string across the data set, with 170 appearances, just behind "Anti-Israel" and "breaks silence" (176 each) and "Secret Service" (172), but ahead of "Kamala Harris" and "President Biden" (165) each, "Caitlin Clark" (150), "illegal immigrant" (143), "reality check" (125), "sounds alarm" (121), "Tom Brady" (117) and "Prince Harry" (116).

Monitoring the liberals is core watchdog journalism at Fox, but Maher has a special place as an apostate. Generally, only conservatives can blast in the active voice at Fox; liberals have to submit to being blasted. Because Maher blasts to the left -- at "cancel culture," "Hollywood liberals," "liberal support for Hamas" -- he can blast, slam or roast actively (13 times total). On average, a story about Maher's show or his podcast makes the top of the page about every 8.4 days. ABC's "The View," on the other hand, appears about once every 10.3 days, just to remind the faithful that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It is there to be slammed.

Two college football stories in the top 10 is hardly a surprise. "College football" shows up 98 times, in a headline frequency tie with "Dem-run city," "mass shooting" and "school board." "Golden Bachelor" Gerry Turner should also be a familiar face; he's been in the top 10 stories eight times, starting with the wedding announcement in December 2023. "Home Improvement" only rates five unique stories across the data set ("Little House on the Prairie" has six, in case you're trying to estimate the age of the intended audience).

Turning Point USA is an infrequent player in the data set, which only goes through late June 2025. Turning Point and Charlie Kirk have been constants on the page since Kirk's murder in September, including the five days before this capture. "Freedom wins" doesn't show up in the data set, but its friends do: "Biology wins" was the headline three days earlier on the court decision allowing the ban on "X" passports to continue, and "Faith wins" shows up 13 times, usually with a subhed like "Religious groups hail victory after deadline passes for Biden admin to appeal transgender ruling." We can put "Freedom wins" and its ilk in the "fourth wall" category; winning tells us who the good guys are.

Is there room for a lifestyle section? Yes, in a way. No complaints about unruly flyers or people unwilling to give up the aisle seat today (yes, Reddit is more or less the Dear Abby of the Fox homepage). Celebrities are especially prone to opening up: 119 unique headlines across the study period, compared with only 32 cases where people or corporations come clean. "Check your fridge" is rare, even if food recalls themselves are not. All in all, it's not an unstretchable stretch from the classic "family, food, fashion and furniture" (Voss, 2014) of the old newspaper days.

And there's some actual news, even if it's Trump adding random zeroes to numbers he doesn't understand in a social media post.

Methodology reminders: The layout of the Fox homepage has varied. In 2022, there were five stories at the top before a hurdle of paid content. That changed to seven stories briefly in early 2023, then to the 10-story layout you see today. 2022 and early 2023 had anywhere from six to nine captures a day; as the top of the page grew, I dialed that back and settled on four captures a day in mid-2023. The total is 50,883 screen captures through June 24. I'm still stashing four pages a day and may go back and add some more for analysis.

In addition to the attention-getting hed inset on the illustration, I'm also coding the summary hed beneath, position on the page, source of the key information in the story, and whether the story is new or repeated (the same story can get an entirely new illustration and hed treatment to become more Fox-worthy). There's also a "fourth wall" variable, roughly operationalized as whether the headlines tell the reader what to think -- "freedom wins," for example -- rather than what to think about.

* In one highly unusual case, social media is actually disturbed by Kristi Noem killing her dog.

** I haven't been that impressed since "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death," but your mileage may vary.

Go fish

Here's a charmingly ornate bit of fabrication from the Fox homepage Friday morning,* just to help set the stage for Saturday's "No Kings" festivities. Nothing in the display is actually a lie. "Dethroned" is the sort of verb that, like inflation spiking or a polling lead crumbling, can mean whatever the situation calls for; "as" doesn't imply the same sort of temporal connections at Fox that it does in real life; and "pushes peace post-pandemonium" is word gazpacho that sounds cool when you read it in Anchor Voice. But the overall result is a towering edifice of bullshit.

The headline with the story itself is a bit kinder, but the time link is still there. And the lede ... let's just say it adds complexity:

The progressive group Public Citizen insists its ‘No Kings’ protests aim to defend democracy — not disrupt it. But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s claim that radicals may be "infiltrating" protests adds complexity to that narrative.

Speaking to Fox Baltimore, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said federal agencies are concerned that extremist actors may be quietly embedding themselves within the ‘No Kings’ movement and questioned "who is funding this." Duffy did not cite specific intelligence, but his remarks echoed broader administration warnings about potential unrest tied to the protests this Saturday.

"I am all about free speech. I’m all about protest. It’s the great American way," Duffy told the outlet. "I am concerned about who is funding this. Who is paying for it? Who is organizing it?"

Nothing to surprise you there if you've been keeping up with the "broader administration warnings" and the usual Fox din about (ahem) rootless cosmopolitans. But this time, the evildoers actually get a chance to speak:

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, rejected suggestions that the movement had turned violent, saying that the goal was to send a message of unity rather than confrontation.

"The idea that America is a democracy is, at its core, small-'d' democratic. It’s not [the] Democrat [party]; it’s not [the] Republican [party]," she said. "It is the idea that we have a system that is based on checks and balances, where we understand that our elected officials answer to us. And that our votes count and matter."

"At its core that is what this ["No Kings"] is all about. And why people are turning out."

Fine, fine -- what about the dethroning violence and the coast-to-coast arrests?

While most "No Kings" demonstrations on June 14 were peaceful, a handful erupted into violence, leading to several arrests and at least one death. This Saturday, organizers say about 2,500 rallies are planned nationwide.

See if you can see a pattern in the June 14 eruptions that follow:

• Bystander in Salt Lake City killed in screwup by "event peacekeeper."
• Nine arrested at a march in Austin. Charges include interfering with public duties, disobeying a police officer, obstructing a passageway, providing false identification, walking on a roadway when sidewalks were provided, and felony assault of a peace officer.
• "Two people were arrested in connection with a hit-and-run crash at a "No Kings" protest in Southern California on June 14. ... The SUV driver veered toward marchers in Riverside, east of Los Angeles, and struck the woman, according to investigators."
• Three arrests in Ocala, Fla.: "arrested for battery after allegedly pushing a protester ... arrested for battery and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon after police said he pushed a protester while wearing brass knuckles ... arrested for battery after allegedly hitting someone with a cardboard sign."
• Culpeper, Va.: Goober "intentionally accelerated his vehicle into the dispersing crowd," striking at least one person." But back to our Fox narrative: 

... Yet even as those events challenge the "peaceful" framing,** a different variable looms: the possibility of paid agitators or external provocateurs. Adam Swart, CEO of Crowds on Demand, warned that "No Kings" is susceptible to such infiltration.

"My concern is that there are forces — some domestic, some maybe foreign — that actually want to pull America apart," he said.

Conveniently, that's exactly what he said in the lead story last Sunday morning. You'll be shocked to learn that Brother Swart has also been a source for stories August 12 and 15, July 16, and June 21.

If past is prologue, then, expect some breathless Fox tales of mayhem over the next few days. Just be careful not to read the stories or you might find out which side is doing the vast bulk of the erupting.

* No. 8 story, around 10:35 a.m. Eastern US
** Framing scholar here. No, they don't

Word salad through the years

 If you've been wondering who gets to serve the word salad at the Fox News homepage, here's a quick look at headlines, 2022-24.

The runaway leader, to no one's surprise, is Kamala Harris. (The only other entrant is Karine Jean-Pierre, from which you may draw conclusions.) The term is sporadic in 2022 and 2023, with nearly as many unique "word salad" headlines during three months of the 2024 campaign (9) as in the months preceding (10). Except in two cases sourced to other networks' programs, all of these are sourced primarily to social media comments.

In the gaffe category, Joe Biden is the champion with 35 unique "gaffe" headlines. Harris has 7, other Democrats have 8, Jill Biden has 3, and -- surprise -- Donald Trump has 1 ("Haley seizes Trump gaffe to suggest he may not be 'mentally fit' to be president," during primary season).

Stay tuned.

How to identify a top story

Fox News seemed to have a little bit of trouble settling on a top story Saturday morning, so let's play an agenda-setting game. Assuming that the news doesn't tell you what to think, how would you describe the issues that Fox News wants you to think about? (It's perfectly all right to take a nontheoretical detour here and there -- like, how exactly do you get to be an influencer by being silent? -- but do try to keep an eye on the ball.)

First up, captured around 8:30 a.m. Eastern US: Silent no more!

Comfortably seated in her home on a chalk-colored couch adorned with navy blue pillows, Cassie Clark, an influencer who makes North Carolina-centered content, recalled the moment a man was "berating" her in front of her teenage daughter for wearing a Charlie Kirk shirt. 

"He started just berating me that Charlie Kirk didn't like people like him. Every time I would try to respond, he would start speaking over me," Clark told Fox News Digital. 

"Rather than waiting on his group to come downstairs, he ended up walking across the street and sitting at the post office, because he didn't want to sit near us…. So I got on X, and I was frustrated, and I wrote a post about it [which] blew up," she continued.

Clark shared that while some of the responses to her post on X were "extremely negative," there were commenters who "reached out and praised" her for speaking up. 

The mother revealed that other influencers shared their fears of speaking out, telling Clark that if they were to "speak up" they would "lose sponsors" and "lose brand deals."

"To me, that's absolutely insane," she relayed. "We shouldn't be in a place in America where you can't say what you truly believe and you have to worry about getting pushback or losing money or losing a job over it when you're talking about something that half of the country agrees with you on. That's crazy."

No doubt they'll be glad to hear it over at Paramount. But by around 10, we have another top story:

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson ordered the removal of police tape near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility this week despite the federal government's call for the establishment of a perimeter around the ICE location, according to a report on oregonlive.com.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the ICE facility on Tuesday and Portland Police Bureau Chief Bob Day noted that authorities had the vicinity cordoned off for the occasion. 

But the perimeter was removed on Wednesday, according to the report.

According to the City of Portland, a message to Day from U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Scott Bradford stated, in part, that "all federal officers must be able to come and go from the ICE office without harassment or hindrance" and that "Portland must create a perimeter around the ICE office." He specified that this "perimeter must be at least as large as the perimeter state and local police set up today for the Secretary's visit."

The city also indicated that in a message to General Counsel for DHS James Percival, Mayor Wilson noted, in part, "You have requested that federal officers be able to ingress and egress from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility without hindrance. The Mayor and our local public safety professionals will continue to evaluate the situation on the ground, and they will continue to make public order decisions based on what they believe will be in the best interest of Portland and our community."

And yet another story has moved into the lead position by 11:30-ish:

As liberal pundits and networks across the country downplay the rise of violence carried out by Antifa, a journalist who has covered the domestic terrorist designated group extensively pushed back on that narrative in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

Social media has been littered with posts in recent weeks featuring elected officials and pundits dismissing concerns about Antifa violence as simply an "ideology" rather than an organized effort, which Ngo argues is a message driven by tacit support of the cause. 

"It is an ideology, but Neo-Nazis organize around an ideology, jihadists organize around an ideology, so what's your point really? The point you're really trying to do, when people bring that up, is to run cover for Antifa because these people on the left know that organized militant Antifa networks themselves and individuals operate as shock troops for their cause.

"They have the same enemies, they want the same outcomes in terms of the institutions destroyed, and they want the political opposition intimidated into silence and disengaging from the political process."

(Sure, it's a little sloppy to leave the subject's first name out of the story, but it's not like you don't have a headline and a video link to tell you it's Andy Ngo.)

So, with inflation plummeting, oil flowing, the world at peace, China hungry for US soybeans and American industry the envy of the world again -- what issue tops the media agenda at the Fair 'n' Balanced homepage?

42nd verse, same as the first

It seems sort of a truism of the whole agenda-setting project that when an issue (think Vietnam, civil rights or the 1968 campaign in the original Chapel Hill study) rises in salience, it's because something new happened that day in Vietnam, civil rights or the 1968 campaign. One of the striking things, then, about the administration's (and Fox's) crusade to make Portland a front in the New War on Terror® is how often the same tale resurfaces as fresh news. The latest outrage, in short, may have already done its work in 2022 or 2023 or 2024, and Tuesday evening's No. 6 story is a case in point:

Portland, Oregon, business owners sounded the alarm over the city's crime crisis Tuesday as President Donald Trump faces legal roadblocks in keeping federal troops on the ground to help mitigate the problem.

"We need help here," said Amy Nichols, whose local business has been the victim of 10 break-ins.

After years of struggle, Nichols believes the president’s push to keep National Guard troops in Portland could help shift things in the right direction and draw greater attention to the problems locals face.

Sounds outrageous enough, but ... we said "business owners," didn't we?

... Loretta Guzman, owner of Bison Coffeehouse in Portland, has had her own run-ins with crime.

She previously told Fox News about her plans to install bulletproof glass after criminals shattered her coffee shop's windows, but crime also invaded her personal life when she heard gunfire while in bed one night.

There really ought to be a Groucho Marx line in that, but let's get back to "previously" for a moment. The link in the text goes to a January 2023 clip (the bit about installing the bullet-resistant  glass, which also resurfaces with a May 2024 story), which seems like it might be related to this December 2022 story:

PORTLAND, Ore. – Residents of Oregon's most populous city dealt with unprecedented homicides, rising property crime and a general feeling of "lawlessness" during 2022, but Portland leaders have taken some steps to set a different tone for the new year.

"The rise in crime and the houseless and homeless population, that continues to be a challenge that I think the city is starting to get their arms wrapped around," business owner Katherine Sealy told Fox News.

... Police response times to emergencies hit levels not seen in at least a decade, according to Portland Police Bureau data, with the average high-priority call waiting upwards of 20 minutes for a response in October. Loretta Guzman, whose café was vandalized after advertising a Coffee with a Cop event, said her customers tell her it's like the police have "almost disappeared."

Which definitely seems kin to this November 2022 story:

PORTLAND, Ore. – Violent crime is rising faster in Portland than other parts of the country, but some residents say it seems like police aren't around when they need them.

"It's like they almost disappeared," Loretta Guzman told Fox News.

Guzman owns Bison Coffee House in North Portland, which vandals targeted in early October after advertising Coffee with a Cop. Guzman said she decided to host the event because she heard complaints about safety in the city from her customers over the past couple of years.

And, of course, to the original:

PORTLAND, Ore. – An ugly, dark feeling gnawed at Loretta Guzman's stomach when she went to bed on Oct. 4. Negative comments had poured in on social media as soon as she posted that she would host Coffee with a Cop the next day at her North Portland coffee shop.

She prayed and went to sleep.

By 2:47 a.m., six masked vandals had smashed her windows and sprayed paint throughout her entire store.

(Here's a "Fox & Friends" clip from that month, in case  you're bored.)

Read more »

A unicorn at Fox

 Every now and then, you run across a unicorn in the Fox data, as in this example from April 2024. Nothing unusual, of course, about a "social media disturbed" headline; what makes this one stand out is the target. Just as a refresher, here's a template for the "Social Media Explodes" genre:

1) Kamala Harris utters complete sentence with embedded relative clause, perhaps repeating a determiner phrase for emphasis
2) @RNCResearch (or @LibsOfTikTok) posts clip to Twitter, with comment about "word salad"
3) Intrepid Fox reporter pastes in quote-tweets by six or seven Usual Suspects from its stable of right-wing influencers and commentators (only a very small proportion of them -- let's be fair -- known to be on the Kremlin payroll)
4) "Fox News reached out to Harris' office for comment"

So even in spring 2024, having Kristi Noem on the receiving end is, let's say, anomalous. Here's how it plays out:

Noem’s post received nearly six million views in only a day, and courted a wave of horrified reactions on the social media platform, even from among her conservative fans.

Perplexed at why she shared the story, independent journalist Tim Pool* asked, "did she just intentionally end her career?"

Conservative influencer duo The Hodge Twins remarked, "Telling everybody you shot your young dog and promoting your book at the same time? wtf, this is wild."

Popular pro-Trump account "Catturd" seemed to take the story personally ...

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine commented, "No. Not normal. Shameful."

"Florida’s Voice News" CEO Brendon Leslie let Noem have it ...

Independent reporter "Publius"** made a pun out of the anecdote ...

When asked by Fox News Digital, Noem's staff had nothing to add beyond Noem's initial response to The Guardian's post.

No signs yet that social media has exploded over "South Park," but Secretary Noem is back in Fox's good graces nonetheless.

* Speaking of payrolls ...
** Using the handle @OcrazioCornPop, if you've been wondering how some themes keep surfacing long after the, erm, fact.