I’ve Studied the Trump-Fox Feedback Loop for Months. It’s Crazier Than You Think.

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[Commentary] After comparing President Donald Trump's tweets with Fox's coverage every day since October, I can tell you that the Fox-Trump feedback loop is happening far more often than you think. There is no strategy to President Trump’s Twitter feed; he is not trying to distract the media. He is being distracted. He darts with quark-like speed from topic to topic in his tweets because that’s how cable news works. Here’s what’s also shocking: A man with unparalleled access to the world’s most powerful information-gathering machine, with an intelligence budget estimated at $73 billion in 2017, prefers to rely on conservative cable news hosts to understand current events.

President Trump may not be trying to divert the media, but the media definitely gets distracted. President Trump’s morning tweets upend the news cycle, with cable news producers and assignment editors redistributing time and resources to cover his latest comments. Statements from the president are inherently newsworthy. But the result is certainly a positive one for Fox: The network’s partisan programming gets validation from the president, and forces the rest of the press to cover Fox’s obsessions whether they are newsworthy or not.

[Matthew Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America.]


I’ve Studied the Trump-Fox Feedback Loop for Months. It’s Crazier Than You Think.