One year in, Fox News can’t decide if it’s a ‘booming’ Trump economy or Biden’s economic ‘mess’
As President Donald Trump closed out the first year of his second term with a stumbling economy, Fox pivoted to promising that “next year looks like it’s going to be amazing.”
Yet Fox is torn between crediting Trump with an economy that is supposedly “booming” and continuing to blame former President Joe Biden for Americans’ ongoing concerns about affordability and the economy — much as Trump just did during a January 13 interview with CBS News.
Fox also cheered on Trump’s destructive tariffs, which drove prices higher and contributed to the worst year of job creation outside of a recession year since 2003. According to economists, Trump’s tariffs were also responsible for the economic contraction in the first quarter of 2025, as individuals and businesses shifted their consumption activity and boosted imports in an effort to “front run” price increases — but Fox dutifully blamed the contraction on Biden instead, hinting at the economic coverage to come.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors