Not happening!
(guardian.co.uk) In the wake of President Barack Obama’s election win last month – which flew dramatically in the face of Rove and Morris’s confident on-air predictions – the News Corp-owned station is being forced to adjust to a new reality. (EM mine)
Its broadcasting landscape is now one in which four more years of Obama’s presidency stretch out in front of it. That second term was also won in an election many saw as a rejection of a Tea Party-infused Republicanism that saw extreme figures like pizza magnate Herman Cain, social conservatives Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann and even business mogul Donald Trump briefly leading the Republican field.
As a result, some experts see Fox News as having emerged from the defeat of eventual candidate Mitt Romney in the same shape as the Republican party itself – with a somewhat tarnished image. “It was a damaging election for Fox, not so much down to the result, but in the way that it was handled in the weeks leading up to it and in Rove’s famous on-air meltdown,” said professor Jack Lule, a media expert at Lehigh University.
The incident Lule is referring to happened on election night itself when Fox regular Rove questioned the channel’s own polling unit in deciding to call the crucial state of Ohio for Obama. In a remarkable piece of live television – ordered by Fox News’ co-founder Roger Ailes himself – anchor Megyn Kelly and a camera crew then took Rove’s opinion to the Fox decision desk who stood by their call and debunked Rove’s doubts.
Let me just state categorically: Fox News is not adjusting. It is chastising its pundits and news staff for getting things wrong. It is not any type of adjustment towards the center. After the inauguration they will return to attacking President Obama, Democrats, and liberals in the exact same manner they did during the past 4 years. Right now they are just acting subdued and waiting for this embarrassment to pass by.
Even if their ratings drop, they will not change their stance. In fact, the run up to the elections shows they will double down on their approach. Like Republican candidates that failed to win; they just were not conservative enough! Fox News will simple believe they were not supportive enough of the conservative cause. More of the same, only with more effort!