Fox News

Fox News is a U.S.-based 24-hour conservative cable news service. With 80 million subscribers, it has been, according to its website, “the most watched television channel for 19 consecutive years.” As such, it has had a significant impact on American journalism, media culture, and political life. This entry explains this impact by way of tracing Fox’s history as a product of movement conservatism as the critical nexus between conservative think tanks, political activists, and media personalities. The performative style of Fox’s conservative journalism and the audience populism it engendered culminated in the rise of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.

The story of Fox’s history necessarily revolves around its founding chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, who presided over the network from 1996 to 2016 as an ...