Fox Lies. MSNBC Makes You Love the Lie.

Fox fires you up. MSNBC tucks you in. Wake up.

Fox News lies. With gusto. Ask Dominion Voting Systems, which walked away with $787.5 million after Fox pushed election-fraud claims its own stars knew were bogus. Here’s the twist. MSNBC won’t look you in the eye and tell you a fairy tale. It gives you the truths you like, wraps the hard parts in a warm throw blanket, and whispers stay right there after the break. One network sets your hair on fire with make-believe. The other pours chamomile on your conscience and calls it coverage. Together they keep us fired up, soothed down, and stuck. This didn’t start yesterday. It’s decades deep.

Inception and Intent: A Tale of Two Networks

Back in 1996, two channels showed up promising salvation by satellite. Fox said “fair and balanced.” MSNBC sold wired, neutral, tech-forward news. On paper, both sounded civic. In practice, Fox was built by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, who swore it wasn’t partisan. Internal memos told the truth. Editors issued talking points. Language was engineered to tilt right, from abortion to the Iraq War. One memo even pushed reporters to find Iraqi insurgents “thrilled” by Democrats winning Congress, and sure enough, anchors delivered the line. Staff were told to say “government-run” instead of “public option.” Executives leaned on climate coverage until doubt sounded like balance. The result wasn’t journalism with a lean. It was a machine tuned to make anything outside the Fox frame feel crooked.

MSNBC started different. NBC plus Microsoft. Suits and dial-up. Early years tried to look even-handed, even giving a slot to Michael Savage for “balance.” But neutrality doesn’t rate. Ratings do. Then Keith Olbermann started lighting up the Bush years and “Countdown” took off. Executives said go for it. By 2010 the brand said “Lean Forward.” Leadership admitted Olbermann’s success was steering the ship. MSNBC settled into the liberal counterweight role, complete with its own stars and its own grooves.

That didn’t mean it wanted to challenge power across the board. Look at 2003. The country was marching to war. Phil Donahue had the top-rated show on the channel. He put anti-war voices on air. He got canceled. An internal memo worried he was a “difficult face in a time of war” while Fox wrapped itself in the flag. Translation. Telling hard truths was bad for business. The lesson stuck. To survive, cater to your audience. Fox did it loud and proud. MSNBC did it in a softer register, polite and establishment-friendly, but just as calculated.

The Comfy Couch of Complacency (Morning Joe Syndrome)

If Fox is a siren that whips people into action, MSNBC can be a lullaby. You feel informed. You do very little. Morning Joe is the house band for that vibe. Joe Scarborough, former GOP congressman. Mika Brzezinski, Beltway royalty. The set looks like a Georgetown brunch. The tone is civil, insider, allergic to rupture. In early 2016, Trump dialed in and got the kid-glove rollout. Later, the show condemned him. The temperature changed. The habit didn’t.

Now the part folks argued about on replay. December 4, 2024. NBC News runs a piece raising questions about Trump’s defense-secretary pick Pete Hegseth and drinking concerns at Fox. David Frum comes on Morning Joe and opens with a one-liner: if you’re too drunk for Fox, you’re very drunk. During the break, a producer tells him to holster it. Next segment, Mika looks into camera and calls the line too flippant for the moment, then adds that a lot of good people at Fox care about Hegseth. Viewers hear it as an apology to Fox. Frum hears it that way too.

Next morning, Joe kicks off a long monologue. Not an apology, he says. Civility. He frames Mika’s comment as tone, not fear. That only dredges up the thing critics had been whispering for weeks. The hosts had already taken a fence-mending trip to Mar-a-Lago. Access is a powerful drug. On one side you have a guest cracking a mild joke. On the other you have the show smoothing Fox’s feelings on air. Frum later calls the whole sequence ominous. He points to the chill that comes when Trump’s team threatens media enemies and big shows start pre-emptively softening the edges.

That’s the reflex on display. Mollify. Keep the invites. Never push so hard the cocktail circuit gets awkward. And the Morning Joe rhythm spreads. Lots of talk. Not much walk. Sharp quips about Republican chaos, almost no call to mass action. Policy covered like sports. Will this help in the suburbs. Can this win the midterms. The message to viewers is simple. Keep watching. Let the pros handle it.

Which is how you get an audience that knows every beat of the Trump soap opera but rarely packs a town hall for insulin caps or climate survival. Fox got parents storming school boards over phantom CRT goblins. Morning Joe gave you a panel about a tweet. Outrage without organizing is entertainment. And entertainment, even the smart kind, won’t save you.

When the morning show sets the temperature that low, the rest of the day follows. That’s how you end up with wall-to-wall drama and a blackout on the stuff that actually changes lives. Let’s talk about those coverage failures.

Coverage Failures: When Entertainment Trumps (Pun Intended) Real Issues

Trump is ratings rocket fuel. Fox strapped in. MSNBC sold season passes. Even after he left office, they couldn’t break the habit. In 2023, every indictment played like a Super Bowl. Panels camping at courthouse steps. Producers tracking his plane like Santa on NORAD. The stunt worked. Ratings spiked. Some nights they even out-Foxed Fox. But while the spectacle glued eyes to the screen, real life slid off the rundown. Unaffordable healthcare. Homelessness swallowing whole blocks. A military budget that never met a ceiling it didn’t love. These stories are complex, slow, and stubborn. They do not trend. They do not fit in a chyron.

That is the core miss. A network that sells itself as the thoughtful alternative still reaches for the easy win. If it bleeds or tweets, it leads. Humanitarian catastrophes and foreign policy fiascos vanish unless Trump is in the frame. Yemen was one of the decade’s worst disasters, yet prime time gave it a fraction of the oxygen that palace intrigue enjoyed. Climate change got segments — credit to Chris Hayes — but the pre-2020 Trump IV drip drowned urgency. Labor strikes, Occupy, Standing Rock. Fleeting windows. Quick hits. Back to the courtroom door shot. Why. Because going deep risks clashing with sponsors and centrist friends. It is simpler to argue Trump’s character than explain why insulin drains paychecks or how Pentagon budgets float through with bipartisan smiles.

Now the format problem. Hour after hour of the Brady Bunch grid. Ex-officials and party veterans trading predictable takes. One analyst: this is not who we are. Another: our democracy is at stake. Both true. Both numbing by the hundredth repetition. You feel informed without knowing what to do next. Fox uses panels to reinforce propaganda. MSNBC uses panels to reinforce consensus. Fact-based, yes. But when everyone on screen agrees, the edges get sanded off. Nuance goes missing. During the 2020 primary, almost no one on air pressed the taboo question: did the DNC tilt the field against insurgents. That lived off-channel. So certain truths stayed unexplored on MSNBC the same way any good thing about Obama stayed unheard on Fox. Different omissions. Same effect.

Bottom line. Fox shouts you into delusion. MSNBC soothes you into distraction. One keeps you angry. The other keeps you seated. Either way, the couch wins — and the stories that change lives lose screen time.

“We Can’t Beat Fox If We Stay on the Couch” – A Call to Arms

Time for the wake-up slap. We can’t beat Fox if we can’t see where MSNBC keeps us on the couch. Fox riles its people up with fairy tales. MSNBC tucks its people in with bedtime truths. One sells adrenaline. The other sells Ambien. Either way, you ain’t marching.

This is the assignment. Build citizens, not superfans. Fox trains outrage on ghosts. MSNBC trains comfort into habits. The country needs sharp eyes and busy hands. Knowing every Trump subplot is trivia night. Knowing how policy lands in your zip code is power.

So demand better from MSNBC. Ask for coverage that moves beyond the panel clap-back. More policy, more people, more ground truth. Poverty, climate, healthcare, voter suppression. Put those stories in prime time with the same energy they give to courthouse doors and clever monologues. Invite real disagreement among serious voices on the left and center. Hold the party you vote for to the standard you preach. When they gloss over a strike or bury a blue-on-blue scandal, say something. Ratings follow attention. Give your attention to depth. Starve the fluff.

And yes, drag Fox with receipts. But fact-checking alone is a water pistol on a grease fire. Out-compete them. Win attention with solutions that touch rent, insulin, jobs, and the price of groceries. If MSNBC spent more time listening in red counties without sneer or smirk, then offered fixes with teeth, it could peel viewers off Fox’s fear factory. The antidote to a firehose of lies is not a warm bath of comfort. It is truth that sends people outside.

A Unifying Takeaway: Truth Over Tribe

Here’s the part both rooms can post without shame. Truth over tribe. Accountability over vibes. Two audiences feel miles apart, but both get short-changed by TV that chases dopamine, not daylight. Viewers have leverage. Use it. Step off the sidelines, cancel the half-truth drip, and ask for news that risks something.

Liberals, critique your home channel when it sandpapers the edges. Conservatives, demand facts from your home channel even when those facts burn. Imagine both camps saying the same sentence. Enough. Bring the reporting or we change the channel.

Democracy runs on an informed public. We can fight about solutions after we agree on facts. When Fox lies, everybody calls it. When MSNBC encourages passivity or edits out uncomfortable truths, its own fans ring the bell. That is not betrayal. That is adulthood.

So break the loop. Unplug the infotainment IV that keeps you sedated or hysterical. Share the stories that miss the rundown. Fund the reporters who knock on doors. Vote, organize, show up. Make a little noise at city hall. Then make more.

Fox’s empire of lies can fall. But it won’t fall while the rest of us are curled up, loving the narrative like a comfort show we’ve seen a hundred times. Flip the script. Ask for news that informs instead of performs. Ask for coverage that equips instead of soothes. Do that, and the lies start losing market share.

In this fight, the couch is the enemy. Get up. Change the channel on your habits. Build a media diet, and a country, where truth matters more than tribal comfort.

Now close this tab and nothing changes. Or move $8 from comfortable to useful. If this piece punched, become a paid subscriber right now. You’ll fund deeper reporting, fewer fluff panels, and a community that actually leaves the couch.

Sources

• AP: Fox, Dominion reach $787.5M settlement

• Vanity Fair: MSNBC Is Having Its Super Bowl With Trump’s Indictments

• Los Angeles Times: Trump indictment week puts MSNBC on top

• Al Jazeera (opinion): Trump is back—and the liberal media are loving it

• The Atlantic (David Frum): The Sound of Fear on Air

• The Independent: Scarborough denies fear after ‘apology to Fox’ flap

• CJR (Maria Bustillos): MSNBC Public Editor: please close 30 Rock

• Wikipedia: MSNBC criticisms & controversies (incl. Donahue/Iraq War memo)

• Wikipedia: Fox News controversies (incl. internal memos, “government-run” language)

• NBC (local recap of NBC News reporting): Hegseth drinking concerns cited amid defense pick scrutiny