Fox News Releases List of Demands Right Before GOP Debate, Threatens to Sue Violators
Fox News is taking a page out of the left-wing media’s playbook with a new rule for the first Republican primary presidential debate, which is slated to air on Fox News on Wednesday.
The media outlet put out an advisory stating that for seven days from the date of the debate, no other media outlet would be allowed to air more than three minutes of excerpts from the debate in any one program, including video and audio.
The relevant portion of the advisory was read aloud by a very annoyed Ben Shapiro on “The Ben Shapiro Show.”
INSANE: per Fox News, any media covering tonight’s debate are only allowed to post up to 3 minutes TOTAL of the footage. That’s about two clips for all coverage. By imposing these ridiculous restrictions they’re not only depriving voters of relevant and important news, they are… pic.twitter.com/8dL0aTlc7W
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 23, 2023
“They’re out of their minds. That’s totally crazy. They’re treating this like a football game or like a baseball game, which is nuts,” Shapiro said.
“This is newsworthy material involving the presidential candidates, the people that are going to represent you at the top levels of government, and Fox News is saying that you’re not allowed to hear from them unless you watch the debate live or unless you’re watching Fox News,” Shapiro continued.
Shapiro explained that when people like him attempt to recap the debate to explain what happened, Fox News is threatening to sue them.
“How the hell is anybody supposed to actually figure out what happened in the debate unless they watch the thing live?” Shapiro continued, pointing out that the real reason for this is that Fox News wants to telescope all viewers onto their channel.
Fox News is just beginning to recover viewership after a devastating drop in numbers following the ousting of their biggest primetime star, Tucker Carlson.
In May, a month after Carlson’s departure, Fox News averaged 1.42 million viewers during primetime, a 37 percent decrease from the same month in 2022, according to Deadline.
In the key 25-54 demo, Fox did even worse, dropping a whopping 62 percent from the previous year.
After a desperate reshuffle of programming, which resulted in host Jesse Watters taking over the 8 p.m. slot, Laura Ingraham moving from 10 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Greg Gutfeld moving from late night to the 10 p.m. hour, the network has begun to buoy — thanks in part to an interview with former President Donald Trump on “Hannity,” which rated as the No. 1 cable show during the week of July 17 with an average of 2.84 million viewers, according to Forbes.
But now Fox seems to be acting like an over-possessive husband, refusing to let their content leave the house.
The network, which during Democrat administrations constantly complained that it was not given fair access, is now denying it from other, much smaller players.
For instance, in 2009, the Obama administration attempted to exclude Fox News from interviews with executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg despite extending invitations to reporters from major networks like the Big Three and CNN.
At that point, journalists from other networks rallied to Fox’s defense. Jake Tapper, who was with ABC News at the time, referred to Fox as “one of our sister organizations.“
Ironically, the back and forth with Obama drew audiences to Fox at that time — in many ways.
Now, Fox, arguably the top dog in establishment media news, instead of lifting up newer news providers having been in their shoes, is attempting to shut them out from being able to fairly report and explain the news. But it may well backfire on them.
By restricting access to the debate unless you watch it live, Fox may have been trying to take viewership away from Tucker Carlson’s online show. Carlson struck gold, securing a one-on-one interview on X, formerly called Twitter, with former President Trump, who decided to snub the Fox debate.
Ep. 19 Debate Night with Donald J Trump pic.twitter.com/ayPfII48CO
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2023
However, Shapiro thinks Fox’s strategy may backfire in the long term.
“What Fox is doing here right now actually helps Trump, and it helps Tucker, ironically,” Shapiro said on his podcast. “Because, by restricting the ability of other people to engage with the newsmaking that they are doing in this debate, this gives a leg up to Trump and Tucker, who are putting all their stuff out for free on X/ Twitter.
“All their stuff is now available to everyone, which gives Trump a leg up … and Fox News a leg down,” Shapiro continued.
“I understand that Fox is trying harder and harder to its declining user base, but I gotta say, this should be relevant information … classic fair use kind of stuff for conservatives all over the country.
“For Fox to restrict access to your ability to listen to clips of the debate with commentary, which is the normal way that fair use works, threatening litigation against everybody else is pretty insane.”
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