Watching Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity cover the Trump tariff debacle recently demonstrated that Fox’s evening lineup consists not of real reporters committed to the truth but of two high-powered anchors competing for the title of the President’s poodle.
On April 9, the day the stock market soared following the administration’s announcement that it was pausing the hefty tariffs on dozens of countries around the globe, Ingraham informed her Fox viewers that Trump had just made a “brilliant move,” that he was a genius, and that all of his critics had egg on their faces.
Not to be outdone, Hannity used his Fox platform to refer to Trump’s backing down following one of the largest market meltdowns in years as the “art of the deal” while insisting that it was a huge win for the President and the country.
Never mind that the stock market was still down by thousands of points from just before Trump’s decision to impose the largest tariffs we have seen in decades. Never mind that Trump has launched a trade war with China with no end in sight, a war for which the Eastern superpower seems better prepared to navigate than the United States.
Ingraham and Hannity are apparently not concerned about the reality that millions of Americans close to retirement are down significant sums in their investment accounts. The two Fox anchors seemed oblivious to the fact that most leading economists are predicting higher prices for consumers as a result of Trump’s tariffs and many are warning about the threat of a global recession.
Fox’s evening anchors have betrayed the original slogan of the news channel, which was “fair and balanced” reporting. Many of its news broadcasters like Ingraham and Hannity do not even pretend to be fair and balanced, opting instead to feed their viewers a steady diet of pro-Trump propaganda.
For example, if you were expecting to hear any real critique of the current administration over their handling of the Signal chat breach (in which the editor of the Atlantic Magazine was added to a group chat of Cabinet members that were discussing plans to attack Yemen), you would not find it in the Fox Evening News. Instead, what you got to see was Laura Ingraham interviewing Mike Waltz, the official that had added the reporter to the chat, while the two used this opportunity to trash the Atlantic Magazine editor who disclosed this security breach.
Likewise, if you were hoping to learn why the Trump administration, with the help of DOGE, fired thousands of essential workers from the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services, or Veteran Affairs, only to rehire these workers days later, watching Hannity’s program on Fox will not help you. With Hannity, you are more likely to get a softball interview of Trump and Musk in which the host heaps praise on the two men.
For years now, Ingraham and Hannity have echoed the Trump mantra that immigrants are invading and taking over our country even though the evidence does not support this claim. The two Fox anchors never bothered to contradict Trump and Vance during the 2024 Presidential election cycle when they made the outrageous allegation that Haitian migrants living in Springfield Ohio were eating the dogs of that community. By serving as proxies for the Trump administration, Ingraham and Hannity use their nightly shows to misinform their millions of viewers and insult their intelligence.
We should not fault Ingraham and Hannity or the Fox media corporation for offering their viewers a conservative angle on the news of the day. Most media outlets bring a particular perspective and value system to bear on the issues they cover and how they choose to tell their stories.
However, in a democratic society, the press and, media in general, are expected to report on the facts and convey to its readers and viewers accurate information. More than that, good media is supposed to hold the government accountable for its decisions and actions, which is why we refer to the media as the fourth branch of government.
Ingraham and Hannity long ago abandoned the mission of a free and robust media in a democratic society for the sake of operating as lackeys and cheerleaders for President Trump. Whether they are doing this to curry favor with Trump, to raise the ratings of the Fox network, or to benefit themselves financially is not important.
What is critical to understand is that in functioning as the President’s poodles they have betrayed their responsibility to their audience, to the profession of journalism, as well as to our democracy.
Mordechai Gordon is a Professor of Education at Quinnipiac University’s School of Education.