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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your Election Day with us. I am really grateful you're here. Just a reminder, we don't know what the next few days will bring. We will be here no matter what, not just to bring you the news, but also to be a source of information, inspiration, and community. Remember our pandemic-era segment If You Need a Minute? Well, we decided you might need a minute today, so our meditation minute is returning for today.

On the show, we'll learn about a man known as the conscience of Congress, John Lewis, who fought for integration and voting rights. His biographer, David Greenberg, joins me to discuss. We'll also be diving into some election issues like, how well did the media do to cover this year? NPR reporter David Folkenflik joins us to talk about what the media landscape was, is, and we want to hear what sources you turn to. Plus, the anxiety over the election can be a little overwhelming, so we'll speak with a therapist and a mental health reporter about how to identify the triggers and then how to deal with them. That's the plan, so let's get this started.

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Alison Stewart: Since it launched nearly three decades ago, Fox News has become a platform for conservative voices with the power to shape the country's political future. Vice President Kamala Harris recently sat down for her first formal interview on the network. She joins Democrats like Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who've also appeared on the network to try to sway swing voters, but is that possible?

The 10th season of Slate's Slow Burn explains how Fox News became a cultural and political force. The podcast revisits the origins of Fox News, the key players in front of and behind the scenes, viewers' relationship with the network, the story about George W. Bush that put them on the map, and how Fox News became a fixture of the political scene in the last 20 years. The season is titled The Rise of Fox. Episodes 1 through 6 are out now. You can find them at slate.com/podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Host and editorial director Josh Levin joins me to discuss. Hi, Josh.

Josh Levin: Hi, Alison. Thank you so much for having me on.

Alison Stewart: Thanks so much for joining us. What was the media landscape like in the '90s that set the stage for Fox?

Josh Levin: There was just one 24-hour cable news network, CNN. There was not a lot of competition in that space. A lot of folks had discussed starting competitors and getting into 24-hour news. Rupert Murdoch decided to take the plunge in 1996. He brought on Roger Ailes, who had been with NBC. He'd been running CNBC, the financial network, as well as this little-known cable channel called America's Talking. They teamed up and decided to create this challenger. They called it an alternative to what was already out there in cable news and in the media in general.

Alison Stewart: What types of programs did the network offer in its infancy?

Josh Levin: There was a show called Fox on Pets, where people would call in to ask questions about their cat sitting on a radiator and whether that was normal. [chuckles] That did not turn out to be a staple of the Fox News programming lineup. I'm kind of sad that it didn't.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Josh Levin: A lot of the shows or the types of shows that people are familiar with now were there from the beginning. There was a show called Hannity & Colmes, where a conservative and a liberal would debate the issues of the day. Bill O'Reilly was a primetime host from day one. Then there was news programming during the day, what Fox billed as being objective and fair and balanced. You had the opinion stuff in primetime and then the news during the day.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we're talking about the origins of Fox News. Do you remember the first time you heard of Fox News? What do you think the cable does differently than other cable networks? Did you watch Fox News' election? What are your thoughts about how they covered the candidates? You can call or text us at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. This is a no-judgment zone, so call us in if you like Fox.

If you like it, tell us why. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. What do you think that Fox News does to our culture and our political conversation? 212-433-9692. I'm talking to Josh Levin. He is the host and the editorial director for Slow Burn. This season is about the rise of Fox News. That's the name of the season. Today, Fox News is often thought of as a conservative news network. When did Fox develop this reputation?

Josh Levin: Kind of from day one. If you look at articles that were written about the launch, that was the question about it from its inception. Rupert Murdoch had owned the New York Post and was known around the world for running a conservative media empire. Roger Ailes had been a notorious Republican political consultant known as the dark prince of political advertising.

He was trying to rebrand himself as this more down-the-middle media guy that he had moved into journalism and had moved away from partisan politics, but there were certainly doubts about that from the beginning. The combination of Murdoch and Ailes led a lot of people to wonder and speculate like, "How could this not be a conservative outlet and institution?"

Alison Stewart: It's interesting though because they definitely have tried to distance themselves from being a conservative network. Initially, what was the argument that they weren't a conservative network?

Josh Levin: That they had brought in a lot of journalists who had worked for traditional outlets. Folks we interviewed came from NBC, came from ABC. Some came from CNN. These are people who came from newspapers, came from United Press International, the wire service. These were people who had hard news backgrounds that weren't partisans and that legitimately saw themselves as doing fair reporting.

They would also argue in a way that I, through my reporting, found to be disingenuous. They would argue that the reason that people saw them as conservative or thought of them as conservative was that the rest of the media was so liberal that Fox only seemed conservative by comparison, that Fox, in presenting both sides, actually, it seemed right-leaning because the rest of the media only presented the left or liberal side.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Dan is calling from Brooklyn. Hi, Dan, thank you so much for calling All Of It.

Dan: Hi. I watched it since it first appeared. In the beginning, all these guys would make real efforts to have divergent views. You would feel very enlightened. After a while as it started accumulating more commercials, it looked like it was trying to appeal to what it thought was a large audience of angry people. This is what has become now, a sort of outlet for angry people. I really wonder who is behind that because the approach they take, it transcends religious barriers, racial barriers, and everything. It just exploits this generalized anger that people feel overwhelmed by our society and its complexities as it is today.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, Dan. Let's talk to John from Westchester. Hi, John, thank you so much for calling All Of It.

John: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. There's an important point I think needs to be mentioned is that Fox did not get created in a vacuum. There was a niche market. Rupert Murdoch is brilliant. He saw profit in the appearance of an already divided country. That started with, believe it or not, cable TV, the beginnings of C-SPAN, where you might remember Newt Gingrich, famously, for weeks or months on end, preached to an empty gallery of Congress. This was a Republican, very conservative congressman.

He had this bully pulpit and people tuned in. Hold on a second. Sorry about that. Sorry about that if I cut out. People tuned in and they listened to him. They had a following on C-SPAN for this. At the same time, a presidential Medal of Honor winner you might know as Rush Limbaugh. His radio show became popular. This was the beginning of a conservative news outlet. I'm going to mention this. I hope it's okay if I mention another media competitor. It's a magazine called Business Insider. They had a wonderful data visualization. Since college, I've been working on data visualization. It has to do with red dots, blue dots, each representing a congressman.

Alison Stewart: You know what? I'm going to dive in because I think it's getting a little bit in the weeds. I think you have some interesting points. Thank you for calling in. I do want to talk to William from Toms River. Hi, William. Thanks for calling.

William: Hi. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

William: Long-time listener. Love WNYC. Listen to it every time I'm in the car. I'm also subscribed to The New York Times and I also love watching Fox News content. I think it's pretty obvious that coming from a conservative point of view, I think that they represent a certain segment of the population in the country. I don't think that anyone would disagree with that. I think that they obviously do have a bias. I think when I listen to WNYC, I hear much more of a bias towards the left and I think that's okay.

Alison Stewart: William, thank you so much for calling. My guest is Josh Levin. Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News is the current season of Slow Burn. Let's go all the way back to 2000, Josh, the election of George W. Bush. On the show, you discuss how the news of George W. Bush's DUI arrest just days before the election, how his cousin, John Ellis, ran Fox's decision team. How did their reporting on Bush lead to-- Well, let's start with, how would they report on Bush? Let's just start there.

Josh Levin: Yes, it's really fascinating. That's the reason why we wanted to start the season with the 2000 election because it was this moment that Fox really became prominent and powerful in the way that we think of them today. It was also a moment when Fox showed that it did have really solid and legitimate reporting. They were the outlet that broke the news that got the scoop that George W. Bush had a DUI from the '70s that he had concealed, that he had not revealed publicly.

Fox News was the outlet that reported that just days before the election. It was seen as potentially an October surprise, something that could have thrown the election to Gore, something that was to Fox's credit for putting out into the world. Now, Fox immediately began spinning against its own story. That primetime opinion versus news divide, the opinion hosts were talking about how it really didn't matter, that it wasn't important, and starting to discredit the reporting that Fox's own reporters had done.

Then on election night itself, the fact that George W. Bush's first cousin, John Ellis, was running the decision desk is just something that no other media outlet would have done. It was Fox thumbing its nose at rules and convention. In this position that's really supposed to be dispassionate, you just look at the data. You had this person who is literally related to one of the candidates. Fox ends up being the first network to call Florida for Bush at 2:16 AM Eastern. That fueled a lot of the animus towards Fox that still exists today. This idea that you would have someone in that position to make that call is just really audacious and, again, something that only Fox News would have done.

Alison Stewart: Something I found fascinating in listening to this series is somebody described it as CNN had viewers, but Fox had fans.

Josh Levin: That's right, yes. One of your callers mentioned it, I think, that anger has something to do with that and entertainment has something to do with it. Yes, C-SPAN, I think in some ways, they have the Republican line and the Democratic line. There had been attempts to do right-leaning television before. What Roger Ailes did was make partisanship entertaining.

He made a channel and a series of programs that people wanted to watch. It's one thing to have a political point of view, to have a slant, to have a bias, but you need to create shows that people not only tune in for, but they put their remotes down and they don't tune away from. That is what Fox managed to do in a way that CNN hasn't and I think most other news channels have a hard time doing.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from The Rise of Fox News, Slow Burn. This is Fox News producer Caroline Bruner and Fox News Capitol Hill producer Jim Mills talking about the comments they get from viewers.

Josh Levin: Fox News now had a loyal army of fans. When they called into Fox's weekend media criticism show, they expressed their gratitude for what they were seeing and hearing.

Fox Viewer 1: You're the only ones who give a fair and balanced news of the election.

Fox Viewer 2: I did choose Fox after channel surfing because I felt that they were touching the closest to the truth.

Fox Viewer 3: I really can only stand to turn on Fox News to hear the coverage because it seems to be the only network that reports it in a fair manner.

Caroline Bruner: We would get messages from people saying, "We've burnt the Fox News icon into our TV screens because we haven't on all day." When you turn off the TV, you'd still see Fox News burned into the glass.

Josh Levin: Fox producer Caroline Bruner.

Caroline Bruner: That was a turning point for me realizing that things were a bit different. The Fox News bug, the logo, it started moving because, otherwise, it was burning into screens.

Josh Levin: That Fox News logo started spinning in the summer of 2001, a few months into the Bush presidency and less than five years after the channel got off the ground. At that point, Anne and Caroline and a bunch more of the Fox staffers we spoke with said they still believed in each other, but they knew that Fox News was becoming a different place, that a whole big universe of Americans believed in Fox in a different way than they did.

Jim Mills: I would travel around and I would tell people. They'd ask, "What do you do?" "I work for Fox News."

Josh Levin: Capitol Hill producer Jim Mills.

Jim Mills: They say, "Oh, man, Fox. I love Fox. That's all I watch." I would say to them, "Don't do that to your brain."

Alison Stewart: We actually have somebody on the line who worked at Fox News. Michael, let's talk to you real quick. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Yes, so hello.

Alison Stewart: Hello.

Michael: I really don't talk about it much. I was very young when I started working there. A lot of us were recruited probably with the best intentions. I was a graphic designer. Obviously, right through the door, fair and balanced was kind of the mantra. The head of the art department, his name was Richard O'Brien. They had some of the best of the best. A lot of the people we recruited from CNBC and other places to start going up against CNN. I remember early on feeling very uncomfortable. Trying to verify information was very difficult. It didn't take long for a bunch of us to leave.

Alison Stewart: Michael, why did you leave?

Michael: Obviously, I wanted to finish up college. I was still in university at the time and they wanted me to stay. I kind of saw the writing on the wall. It didn't take long for it to realize you're in the basement of the New York Post.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Michael: Here's a television network version of the New York Post. Now, it's not even a ghost of what it used to be.

Alison Stewart: Michael, thank you so much for calling in and sharing your experience. Josh, how else did Fox change news?

Josh Levin: I think what it did was that it showed, around the 2000 election, especially during the recount, that there was this market niche for news, especially television news, from a partisan perspective. During that recount, during the 34 days, you could tune in to Fox and know that you would get a story if you were a viewer approaching it from the right if you're a Bush supporter.

You'd get the story that you wanted to hear. I think that if we fast forward to today, there's plenty of outlets where you can tune in and know that you're going to get a story that you want to hear. I think Fox accelerated that divide that already existed. I don't think that Fox created it, but I think it proved that that was going to be a successful marketing strategy no matter which side of the political aisle you're on.

Alison Stewart: It was also interesting that they invented the ticker along the bottom. The sounds that go with the graphics coming forward, they really brought news to a new level, question mark? [chuckles]

Josh Levin: Yes, I think that goes back to what you were saying, Alison, about Fox having fans and CNN having viewers. Fox created this feeling of urgency when you were watching. The ticker was an invention or the always-on ticker, at least, of September 11th that Fox that morning put a ticker at the bottom of its screen. It was very quickly copied by CNN and MSNBC. It's just this feeling that you can't flip away, that there's always something incredibly important, urgent happening, that alerts are flashing by you.

Just the sense that if you flip the channel, if you turn off your TV, you're going to be missing something that you absolutely can't miss. Yes, the Fox, the graphics, the sounds were really a new thing as well. The whooshing noise when they would project a winner on election nights. If you tune into Fox, this evening, you'll hear it. It was all a part of this kind of system that Fox developed that really changed the way that television news looked and sounded.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Dan in the East Village. Hi, Dan, thanks for calling All Of It.

Dan: Hi there. Thank you. I think it's critically important to watch whatever one considers to be the other side's news. If you're a liberal, listening to Fox and watching Fox might be really difficult hearing the contortions that some people go through to justify certain things, what gets ignored. No matter who you are, it's important to make sure to get a dose of this stuff just so you have an idea of whatever those who have different viewpoints are saying, what their arguments are.

If you want to have a discussion with someone, at least you'll know what they think. You can come up with either a counterargument and you might even hear a valid point or two that wasn't coming through on whatever sources you listen to on this side. I don't know how to get people to do this. I went down to the Capitol on January 6th just because I wanted to see for myself who all these folks are, what proportions of types show up. Largely, most people there were not willing to riot, but there was, obviously, a significant contingent there.

There was this one woman that really stood out. She came up to me and we started talking. She said, "There can't be a pandemic." Otherwise, she will be dead everywhere and saying other things that made it apparent that she had been not watching anything other than one source of news. I said, "Well, what about the ICUs in LA that we're full that we all hear about?" She said, "That's it. If you just stop watching," with this pleading look in her eye. I was like, "Oh." All this is happening actually while the QAnon Shaman is five people under, belting up--

Alison Stewart: You know what? I know what you're saying. Thank you so much for your call and your message. Let's talk to David from Inglewood. Hey, David, thanks for calling All Of It.

David: Yes. What I want to just say is the reason Fox started having such a wide constituency-- and by the way, the numbers at CNN for their viewership is pathetic. They can't hold a candle to any of the networks. They were once the leader, but they're just pathetic now. The reason Fox has gained so much is because the other networks all lean to the left so much. I'll give you two quick examples. How in the hell did Kamala Harris wind up on Saturday Night Live at the last minute? That wasn't for entertainment. That was to try to push her over the finish line.

Alison Stewart: Okay, what's your next point?

David: You guys joke because you don't listen to conservatives, so you think these are outliers' strange opinions. You had your NPR reporter Tamara Keith say, apparently, President Biden said that the Trump supporters were garbage. Apparently, it's right on tape. In the liberal mindset, you just can't even believe or you don't want to acknowledge anything because all of you are trying to get her over the finish line.

Alison Stewart: Well, thank you.

David: It's so apparent.

Alison Stewart: Okay, I appreciate your call. Thank you for calling in. I do appreciate it. Don't know if I agree with it, but I appreciate it. [chuckles] My guest is Josh Levin. We're talking about the rise of Fox News. It's the latest edition of Slow Burn. I'm curious. How do the journalists who work at Fox, do they identify as Republican? Do they identify as independent, liberal?

Josh Levin: The ones that we spoke with who were there from the beginning said that the rank and file in Fox in the beginning, at least when they started, there were primarily Democrats. That didn't necessarily mean that that affected their news coverage, that they saw their job as to report fairly and to do solid and legitimate stories, not ones that skewed to either side. The leadership of Fox from the beginning and to this day and the opinion hosts certainly skewed more to the right. In terms of just the rank-and-file producers or reporters, there wasn't the kind of conservative lean that I think people might assume.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Teresa in Manhattan. Hi, Teresa, thanks for calling All Of It.

Teresa: Hi, one second. Sorry, I had to get off speaker. Hi, yes, I was telling them that this is really making me go down memory lane because I grew up in a household that was early adopters of Fox. It started with my dad watching and mom. They gather around every night to watch Brit Hume, who actually did have that thing. That was my introduction to Mara Liasson. There was one and I'm trying to remember then.

There was more middle-ground Republicans now that they see middle-ground like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer. It's just all these people that, really, you did feel like you would have a conversation. It wasn't a lot of screaming. There was something interesting about it. More and more, my mom would keep the radio on all day and watch all the programs. Bill O'Reilly, I never liked. Colmes did calm down Hannity a little bit. When Hannity got his own show, it's just you saw the development of it.

You saw how it became more and more skewed. The left-leaning person was just barely part of the conversation and then only something to laugh at after a while. I just couldn't even stand it when I come home to visit and it would go to become Glenn Beck and all the things. Now, my parents know just not to even have it on when I'm in the house because it's just skewed so far. There is not that reasonable conversation that there once was.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for the call. We really appreciate it. Josh, we're going to wrap up soon. I've only listened to episodes 1 through 5, so this may be in the later episode. Fox actually has competition from the right now from Newsmax. Is it changing?

Josh Levin: Yes, so I think Fox has been changing. A lot of things have happened in the last-- whether you want to look at the last couple of years, the last 10 years. Roger Ailes resigned due to all of the extraordinarily credible and well-reported allegations of sexual misconduct and then he died. Fox hasn't had the kind of strong hand that it had under his leadership. Then the Dominion lawsuit and settlement about the election lies from 2020 has also had a huge effect, I think, on Fox. Tucker Carlson is not there anymore. You do have, as you mentioned in your intro, folks like Pete Buttigieg who come on regularly. I don't think it's been this totally static network.

I think it's trying to figure out its place in a media environment where cable news is less important, where social media is a place where a lot of people get their news, where there are these challenges from places like Newsmax from the right, from people that don't think that Fox goes far enough. I think Fox's future is incredibly uncertain. It's, I think, important that we're talking on Election Day because these elections, whether it's 2000, 2004, have been so instrumental in Fox's rise and people's memories of Fox that I just don't really know whether Fox will have the influence in 2028 and 2032 than it did in 2000 and 2004.

Alison Stewart: Josh Levin is the host and editorial director for Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News. Thanks so much for spending time with us today.

Josh Levin: Thank you so much, Alison.