Howard Kurtz details The “Secret Sauce” To Fox News 30 years of Success

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Guy Benson: Joining us now is Howie Kurtz, media and political analyst here at Fox News, host of the Media Buzz Meter podcast. You can follow him on Twitter or X at Howard Kurtz. Howie, great to have you back.

Howard Kurtz: Nice to be back.

Guy Benson: I would like to read from a tweet that was put out yesterday by Cheryl Atkisson, who’s a journalist who’s been in the business for a long time. She shared an insight into not just her own decision-making as a journalist at another network, but also the reaction that she got for some of those choices. This was something that she shared in alignment with the 30th birthday of Fox News Channel, which was yesterday and we did market here on the show. Here’s what Cheryl Atkisson wrote in part.

She says, true story about Fox News and CBS News. In network newsrooms, they typically had other networks playing on television monitors in the newsroom. That was the way they kind of kept track of what the others were doing. As 24-hour cable news was invented, we began adding them to the repertoire. CNN, MSNBC, CNBC could be seen on monitors in the newsroom and individual reporters’ offices.

Then along came Fox. I had just begun assignment at the CBS News Washington DC Bureau and was interested in the new network. I quickly noticed that Fox had interesting news items, sometimes days before the rest of us would pick them up. It seemed to me that we and the other networks weren’t monitoring Fox News in real time, the way we were obsessively watching other news outlets.

Since nobody else seemed to be doing it, I put Fox News on my monitor in my office. Newsrooms are funny because there’s a lot of group think, and you’d think it would be the opposite. I’m pretty sure I got pegged negatively by some colleagues because I had Fox News on my monitor. The fact is, I was being a responsible news monitor. Nobody else was.

Then she goes on to talk about being in meetings where she would mention a story that Fox was covering, and it would get poo-pooed or played down by people at CBS, and I’m sure this was happening elsewhere, as, oh, that’s a Fox story. No one’s paying attention to that, oh, they’re just pandering to conservatives. Nothing to see here.

And she concluded, I think we all missed an opportunity way back then to recognize we were too often talking past half of America, or at least a sizable chunk. Congratulations, she wrote at the very end, to Fox News for 30 years of work.

I think that assessment, that recollection by Cheryl Atkisson, goes a long way to explain the success of this place, Howie.

Howard Kurtz: It is true that the other networks initially didn’t take Fox seriously. It was Roger Ailes, it was a bunch of right-wing hacks, and we were missing stories. I don’t think that’s true today. I think everybody’s woken up to the fact that Fox has a very good news division as well as high-profile opinion hosts.

But think about it. These mighty networks, you know, Rather, Jennings, Brian Williams, and so forth, and they left a hole in the market. I mean, they thought they were doing a good job. A whole lot of conservatives, even though conservatives like Rush Limbaugh dominated the radio, felt like they weren’t getting what they needed, and the broadcast networks were blind to see this.

Guy Benson: Yeah, I think that’s true. I think some of that blindness very much still does exist today. It might not be the same, to your point, but I think back just to the border crisis for four years of the Biden administration. We were on that story like no one else.

And the rest of the media would occasionally show up, like that sort of Haitians-under-the-bridge moment. They would every so often pop in to do a story, often very slanted, and then run away. And it turned out that the border crisis and the fallout from that crisis was one of the top two issues that shaped a presidential campaign.

And they were playing sort of frantic catch-up, as were the Democrats, by the time that issue was front and center with voters. And I think, to some extent, maybe to a large extent, the reason that our competitors did not cover a giant story the way it needed to be covered is because they still try to ghettoize us and Fox stories as fascinations for the right wing.

I do think there is still some of that, even if it’s not the same sort of dismissive posture that you were just talking about from 20 to 30 years ago, let’s say.

Howard Kurtz: I don’t think it’s always true, and I see now more, I think, a lot of Fox clips on the other networks. If Brit Hume or others say something about the campaign, it’ll get picked up. This interview, because of a lot of exclusive interviews with administration officials, who obviously don’t seem to be speaking to us with CNN or MSNBC.

But the border is a great example. I mean, the border is the reason that Joe Biden lost the election, and other reasons too, but I think it was the principal reason. And sure, Fox was doing it day after day, which sometimes makes rivals say, you know, they’re obsessed with the story. But in the end, it turned out to be an incredibly important story.

Guy Benson: Yeah, the American people were also pretty obsessed with it and the consequences of the policies. And I mean, you said Joe Biden lost the election and effectively he did. Of course, it was Kamala Harris. But that was after they replaced their nominee. What a cycle that was.

I do want to ask you on a personal level, Howie, because you have this incredibly deep history in the news business, in different newsrooms, very well-established newsrooms, whether it’s the Washington Post and then CNN. And then years ago, you came here to Fox.

I just kind of wonder, in your experience and your interactions, and you don’t have to name names if you don’t want to, but just in that other world, what was the perception of Fox? What was your perception of Fox? And did any of that change once you joined us?

Howard Kurtz: Well, at the very beginning, I could get Fox when I was at work in the newsroom, but I couldn’t get it at home because it wasn’t cleared for the DC cable system. So they used to call me all the time to promote, you know, we’re up 0.1, you know, doing their job.

I’d say the perception in early years was pretty negative. And I say, I think as other journalists joined Fox, for example, Bill Hemmer coming over from CNN, I just wrote that out as an example. And as there were some legitimate scoops that they had to follow, and I can think of a few, where, you know, it was dismissed initially and then, as the example on the border, everybody ended up having to follow it.

I think Fox earned more respect, but because, you know, the nighttime hosts, you know, the president knew Trump dropped into attacking Fox now because apparently we should be able to put on Democrats. But the nighttime hosts at that time, not just one, and the book, Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, who I was intrigued by, it’s easy to say because you don’t wonder if there are very, very liberal people on MSNBC, for example.

You say, wow, that’s good. And when they were very conservative people, that gets a lot of dismissal from the outside world and the outside newsrooms.

Guy Benson: Yeah, I think a lot of the newsrooms enjoy seeing the left-wing people doing their thing because that’s how they view the world. And that shapes a lot of their coverage, which goes to the underlying theme of bias that you and I have talked about ad nauseum for years.

So then you made the jump, right? You were the anchor of a very well-known media beat show at CNN. And you came here. I’d love to get at least a brief version of that story, if you’re interested in telling it. And then once you were here, what was that like in terms of your own perceptions of the place? And of course, you still are a colleague at Fox News all these years later. How you feel things stand 30 years into this media insurgency, media experiment, whatever you want to call it.

Howard Kurtz: Right. Well, I don’t know if that’s going to show. I was taken off the air thirteen years, number one. But here’s the thing: I was stunned by how much freedom I had. CNN has a very corporate bureaucracy, and here I was creating a show from scratch, Media Buzz, and, you know, I’m an executive producer and so forth, but nobody was telling me what to do.

Often I’d go on the air on Sunday morning and, you know, people in New York didn’t know what I was going to do. And I said, this is great. I could sink or swim on my own talent, but…

Guy Benson: And your own news judgment. Cause that’s the other thing. You would sometimes send me a little note or even call me like, hey, we might do this. We’re thinking about that. There’s just never-ending news, especially in the Trump era. And you would just roll with the punches. If something was brand new, you would run with it. And there wasn’t this hierarchical structure telling you yes, no. It was kind of you, right?

Howard Kurtz: It’s a little weird. I mean, ten minutes before airtime, something was breaking that said we’ve got to get this, and maybe we’ll leave a bit, maybe we’re going to get a bump, somebody all the normal things. But it would be my judgment. And also because I talk a certain way, I wrote all the scripts. If somebody had a problem, they can blame me.

But yeah, it was an incredible amount of fun because you can rock and roll in a way that I don’t think is possible at the other networks.

Guy Benson: What do you think about this tiff, this fight between the president and some of the other networks right now? I’ve said I think that he is well within his rights to be angry and bitter about the way he’s covered at a lot of these places, just relentlessly negative, agenda-driven, all of it.

I also don’t love some of these precedents at all, and I know they’re trying to work some of this out. The White House has softened to some extent, but it’s still kind of going back and forth.

I’m worried about how a left-wing administration might try to weaponize some of this against us down the line, potentially. These are all considerations not just from the White House side but from the media side as well, where Fox is kind of figuring out what our role is in this.

Howard Kurtz: Well, as I said, the president is now including Fox. He looks to let out, and he doesn’t mean part for a fact, and he does it in part because he’s angry. There’s a huge amount of anti-Trump sentiment at the other networks and the major newspapers.

However, when he decides he’s going to just ban political MSNBC and CNN, I can’t root for that because my view is, if you let certain journalists in, you can’t pick and choose. And we’ll see how the judge finally rules.

Those who, you know, Trump says are inaccurate and fake news, but to me, it means he doesn’t like the coverage of him and the White House.

So that’s another royal battle. You know, he sued a bunch of papers. This is a battle for supremacy, and the press has never seen anything like it. To some extent, media, many of its members, have brought this on ourselves.

But Donald Trump, who has also gotten very personal with people like Kaitlan Collins at CNN, Donald Trump has certainly played a leading role.

Guy Benson: See, the thing is, if you take him out of it, which I want to do just for a second, take Trump out of this conversation just for a moment, I know it’s hard.

But I feel very confident that, for example, Joe Biden and his handlers would have loved an excuse to stop taking any questions or hearing any questions from, for example, Peter Doocy, who Biden in a hot mic called a stupid S.O.B. at one point and had to apologize, right?

Sometimes it felt like we were the only outlet in that briefing room willing to ask hard questions about anything, and certainly on some specific topics that were not going to get covered at all by anyone else.

Going back to the previous dynamic you were talking about, I don’t want to create an environment where a future leftist administration would say, well, citing this precedent, we are now going to lock Fox out of the room or the plane or whatever it might be.

Because I think that would not only be harmful to us and unfortunate, I think it would be a disservice to the country and the accountability journalism that oftentimes Fox News is virtually alone in delivering.

Howard Kurtz: I think your assessment of the Peter Doocy and others during the administration is right on. But they dealt with it. Of course, Biden was increasingly infirm and the press was very late to that story.

Guy Benson: Another one, right.

Howard Kurtz: But, you know, they may not have been able to turn down the Super Bowl interviews and barely could even be seen. So that was their strategy, and I didn’t like that either.

But certainly, Fox was the unwanted guest at the party for the four years of the Biden presidency.

Guy Benson: Last question, Howie Kurtz, and I asked a similar one yesterday to Steve Doocy. Thirty years in, so much of that at number one. In your view, if you could pin it down, what is the secret sauce here?

Howard Kurtz: Well, you know, the secret sauce, in part, is filling a void that a lot of my friends in the media were just too clueless to understand.

And the other part of it is, I think, not talking down to the viewers and not holding back stories for political reasons. It’s just everybody now knows how dominant Fox is. I mean, Fox’s cable ratings are higher than the other two cable networks combined.

And just in the latest quarter, Fox beat CBS. That would have been unthinkable five, ten years ago. So I think it’s got the biggest mountain right now, but it’s also more willing, and we’ll see what happens on election night, because it looks like a big Democratic year, more willing to take on all kinds of subjects.

Guy Benson: Howie Kurtz, media and political analyst here at Fox News, the podcast’s Media Buzz Meter. Follow him on social at Howard Kurtz. Howie, thanks so much.

Howard Kurtz: Thanks, Guy.