A report from The New York Times details the internal strife at Fox News after the network’s decision desk called Arizona for now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential Election.
The Times claims it came into possession of a Zoom call held between Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Fox News President Jay Wallace, and anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum the discuss how the network could avoid angering its conservative viewers in the future.
The network was fearful its audience would abandon it for more conservative outlets like Newsmax or OAN. While discussing options on how to avoid an uproar in the future, Scott reportedly admitted that the network’s ratings would have increased if it hadn’t called Arizona for Biden.
“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,” said Scott. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”
In the same call, Scott is alleged to have railed against the decision to call Arizona, saying Decision Desk director Bill Sammon failed in his job to “protect the brand”, believing that he failed to understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling AZ” in his decision.
A network spokesperson told The Times “Fox News stood by the Arizona call despite intense scrutiny. Given the extremely narrow 0.3 percent margin and a new projection mechanism that no other network had, of course there would be a wide-ranging post-mortem surrounding the call and how it was executed no matter the candidates.”
Scott reportedly said CNN is well-known to hold off on calling races to increase intrigue and viewership. A CNN spokesperson refuted that claim, saying the network will “make calls as soon as we’re confident they’re right”.
