In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Fox News executives reportedly met and discussed the uproar they faced from some conservatives for calling Arizona for Biden before any of their competitors. According to a recording obtained by The New York Times, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott brought together company leaders on Nov. 16, 2020, to discuss how the network could avoid antagonizing its MAGA viewership by being the first to call another election for a Democrat. “Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger. The mystery would have been still hanging out there,” Scott reportedly said. For potential solutions, executives apparently floated ditching their expensive, state-of-the-art projection system for a slower one or basing calls not only on data but also on how viewers might feel about them. In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson said, “FOX News stood by the Arizona call despite intense scrutiny. Given the extremely narrow 0.3% margin and a new projection mechanism that no other network had, of course there would be a wide-ranging postmortem surrounding the call and how it was executed no matter the candidates.”
Read it at The New York Times
