Krista, 49, sometimes struggles to walk upstairs. Her heart and lungs are so damaged by COVID-19 that her doctors have put her on cardiac medication, and she’s been inoculated for pneumonia, something that is normally recommended for much older patients. She also grapples with brain fog and vision problems and her doctors aren’t sure if any of her issues will resolve. She contracted COVID-19 last November before a vaccine was available despite taking every precaution.

Krista, who asked to only go by her first name, is a healthcare worker in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, which was a hot spot for COVID-19 infections and continues to have below average vaccination rates. Her patients are mostly elderly and chronically ill and many remain hesitant about getting the vaccine.

“They don’t have the best education, a lot of their stuff is only coming from those radio shows, or, what they listen to in the car as they’re driving from one place to another or Fox News. I will say that a large amount of the population I deal with has comorbidities that would kill them if they got COVID.” 

Krista’s 46-year-old brother-in-law, a staunch supporter of Donald J. Trump and avid viewer of Fox News, contracted COVID-19 in early August.  He was in the ICU for nearly two months and is still recovering at home with supplemental oxygen.

“He regrets posting all of that stuff now. He says he wouldn’t wish this on his worst enemy and that he was being stupid, said Krista. “He took all of that stuff off of his Facebook page but he’s still posting stuff about guns and how Biden is terrible.” 

Most Americans regardless of where they live know at least a few folks in their social circle or family who peddle conspiracy theories and promote pseudoscience. 

Disinformation comes from any number of sources from social media, traditional media and any number of places people share information. I set out to do a deep dive into extremist media to try to figure where these messages were coming from.

From June 14th to Sept. 15th I captured and analyzed media from Tucker Carlson Tonight, One America News Network and a streaming show called America First produced by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist. I created a detailed record of exactly how long each program spent on any topic, what type of expert they interviewed, if any, and what kind of evidence they used to support their claims. I archived clips of statements and declarations that were representative of each show as a whole. 

I was also looking for overlap.  I wanted to find how often the media companies promoted the same ideas and when did they diverge.  

Why I Selected This Media

Tucker Carlson Tonight is the #1 rated news program on cable television so it was my first choice to analyze since it had the biggest audience. Recently Tucker Carlson was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for his documentary “Patriot Purge”.  In their article the ADL points out that Tucker is parroting many ideas in his film that are promoted in extremist circles. 

“Given the fact that these dangerous conspiracy theories are often discussed by far-right extremists in online forums, and the fact that the Jan. 6 insurrection was ignited by similar conspiracies, these dangerous ideas could potentially lead to future violence,”

My second choice, One American News Network (OANN) has gained momentum since former President Donald J. Trump openly promoted it. The network has also been criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center for hiring anchors with known white nationalist ties. 

The League of Women Voters (LWV) also categorizes both Fox News and OANN as having a hyper-partisan conservative bias. 

My third choice, Nicholas J. Fuentes has been described as a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL.  Fuentes has posted so much hateful content on various social media platforms that he’s been banned from nearly every one of them from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and even most recently from Gettr a platform started by Jason Miller, advisor to former president Donald J. Trump. 

As a control I compared these sources to two non-partisan news programs, The PBS NewsHour and NBC Morning New NOW over the same time period. PBS and NBC both have a bias rating of neutral by the LWV.  The LWV describes neutral as – minimal partisan bias or balance of biases. 

This video shows how I set everything up.

I wasn’t expecting my focus to be about COVID-19, but the ongoing pandemic was the dominant topic discussed by three out of five sources and the second most frequent topic in the other two.  

What I Found

The three extremist media companies used a verbal avalanche of panic, fear and heated language to create an alternative narrative for their viewers while peddling misinformation, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. The intense rhetoric varied very little from the most extreme outlet to the most popular. 

The far-right media repeatedly promoted the ideas that the virus was harmless, the vaccines were dangerous and any government program or mandate in the name of public health was really part of a vast conspiracy to radically control the populace. 

It is impossible to prove that viewers will change their beliefs or behaviors after watching this type of programming but there is some evidence that it might play a role.

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 36% of Fox and 37% of One American News viewers either believed or were unsure about four or more false statements regarding the COVID-19 epidemic.  In comparison between 11% and 16% of viewers of NPR, CNN and MSNBC shared the same beliefs. 

Another survey completed this summer by the Axios/Ipsos tracking poll – specifically, a combined sample of their last two surveys, found that while 83% of CNN and MSNBC viewers had gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine only 62% of Fox Viewers had gotten the jab.  

Matthew Sheffield has unique insight on the motivations behind what might be driving this type of messaging.  Sheffield created two right-wing media companies, RatherBiased and Newsbusters. He later went on to work at the Washington Examiner. Sheffield and his brother Greg were instrumental in the takedown of broadcasting legend Dan Rather.  Sheffield became disillusioned with the conservative movement in 2013 and has since formed a new media venture called Flux. 

“Many reporters on the right wing see what they’re doing, as activism. They don’t see the point in being objective, to describe or chronicle reality, somehow,” said Sheffield. “The point of what they’re doing from their standpoint is to influence reality, to advocate for their views and to defend Republicans basically, or attack Democrats.”

Media Breakdown

Of the five media sources Tucker Carlson Tonight pushed misinformation about COVID-19 the most often.  Tucker frequently started his show with a 10-to-15-minute diatribe about the evils of mask and vaccine mandates while weaving in plots by the Democratic party to use the virus as a means for total government control. 

Over 26% of the programming on Tucker Carlson Tonight was dedicated to pushing theories that the vaccines for COVID-19 were dangerous and the disease itself was harmless. Tucker even went so far as to call mask mandates for children “child abuse.” He also alluded that Dr. Anthony Fauci was somehow profiting from COVID-19 or had played a role in the creation of the disease. 

Tucker was sure to sometimes interject that he was not anti-vaccine even though his programming contradicted his own words.

“Keep in mind it wasn’t so long ago that authorities in this country forcibly sterilized and lobotomized American citizens against their will in the name of public health,” said Tucker in one of his more alarming statements.

One America News Network heavily promoted The Big Lie – that false theory Trump was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election.  Reporters on the network never referred to Joe Biden as president, instead they called him Biden, Joe Biden or the Biden Administration. They left the title of President exclusively for Donald J. Trump while referring to Mike Pence as former Vice President sometimes in the same sentence. 

The network aired Trump rallies in their entirety with no commercial breaks. They broadcast the entire 36-hour Cyber Symposium hosted by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a passionate supporter of Donald J. Trump and promoter of the “Big Lie”.  

Conspiracies about COVID-19 were the second most frequent topic. OANN was unique from Tucker Carlson Tonight and America First in that it aggressively promoted both Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin as cures for the virus. Most of the misinformation about COVID-19 was peddled by Pearson Sharp, an OANN correspondent with no medical background. 

The most outrageous claim was made on June 24, 2021 by OANN correspondent Greta Wall when she implied Hillary Clinton might have had prior knowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like Tucker Carlson Tonight anchors on OANN would occasionally toss out a disclaimer that they were not promoting an anti-vaccine message, even when showing incredibly misleading segments about the pandemic.

“A leaked diplomatic document shows Hillary Clinton warned of China’s biological weapons program at the Wuhan lab. In 2009, then Secretary of State Clinton sent a cable to French diplomats saying the US was aware that France was helping China build a level four bio lab in Wuhan.”

America First made the made the most absurd and melodramatic claims about the virus, but the underlying themes were the same.  The host of America First, Nick Fuentes, claimed the vaccine was not just dangerous but lethal. Fuentes didn’t even go through the motions of inviting experts on his show or even citing specific studies.     

Fuentes went so far as to call it a vaccine holocaust.  At times Fuentes was even at the edge of inciting violence.

“At what point are we the unvaccinated, 80 million, whatever the number is, at what point are we going to go out in the streets and say, You’re going to kill us? Well, you know what you’re going to kill us in battle.”

The far-right networks were different hues of the same color when it came to their coverage of COVID-19.  Although the most histrionic language was used by Fuentes, Carlson wasn’t that disimilar with his claims of clandestine bureaucratic plots.  All three extremist sources promoted the theory that mask, and vaccine mandates were part of an attempt by the government to limit freedom. 

Researchers who study the far right are also alarmed by the overlap they see between platforms as extreme as America First and Tucker Carlson. 

“Tucker Carlson did that January six conspiracy documentary,”  said Jared Holt, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “It was basically just like a high budget InfoWars film. There was really, no real discernible difference between that and something you would find on Infowars except that it had Fox Nation branding on it, rather than, turning the frogs gay type of branding. But it seems, it kind of made me wonder if the producers on the show are consuming this kind of fringe content and, the degree that it’s influencing their own decisions for Tucker’s show.”

This video includes specific clips from my research.

The Use of Experts 

One method that was repeated on both OANN and Tucker Carlson Tonight was the use of dubious experts.  In most cases these professionals might have multiple degrees from Ivy League institutions, but they lacked any training or education in the topics they were discussing on air.  

I went through each media source and searched for experts who discussed some aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic.  I divided guests into three categories.

• Doctors and medical professionals
• Elected representatives and government officials
• Non-medical experts – this included lawyers who discussed the legal ramification of vaccine and mask mandates, lawsuits, etc.  It also included concerned citizens, community activists and anyone who did not have a medical or science background.   

America First was not included in this part of the analysis as the show did not feature any guests.  

Tucker Carlson Tonight 

Tucker Carlson Tonight had the lowest ratio of doctors and medical professionals who spoke about COVID-19.

The show had a total of 71 expert and guest appearances where COVID-19 was discussed. Only 23% of experts who spoke about COVID-19 had any medical or scientific background.  

Tucker Carlson was extremely creative in his choice of guests for any given topic. Some notable appearances included:

• Jimmy Dore, comedian: talked about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan
• Alex Berenson, journalist: discussed COVID-19 despite the fact Berenson had no background in medicine and was banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation about the disease.
• Jim Bruer, comedian: shared his views on COVID-19

One America News Network 

OANN scored a little bit better than Tucker although the network only featured 27 experts or guests to discuss the pandemic.  Most of the misinformation about the disease was pushed by OANN’s own Pearson Sharp in extended segments that were pre-filmed and aired repeatedly throughout the week.  These segments were often the longest in any broadcast.  Sharp also caused quite the stir when he not so subtly called for mass executions over what he believed was fraud in the last presidential election. 

NBC Morning News NOW

Despite the low production value of this streaming show the program often featured top ranking government officials such as the Surgeon General or the Director of the CDC.  Morning News NOW also relied heavily on in-house medical contributors who worked across all NBC platforms. 

PBS NewsHour

Not only did this show also have a high ratio of medical experts they also featured live interviews with the same caliber of guests featured on NBC.  Both NBC and PBS relied heavily on experts and academics from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

This video is a brief look at some dubious experts.

Dubious experts are problematic for a number of reasons. 

“With the boomer population, who’s new to social media, they grew up trusting their news sources, said Samantha Kutner a fellow at the Khalifa Ihler Institute.  So, when they see sites, they assume a level of authority where there really isn’t one, they don’t know how to go over things with a fine-tooth comb. And if Fox News is saying it, you know, they’re on the right side.”

Lisa, a Christian and former Republican in California who asked to go by her first name, found herself ostracized and cut off from about half her family members when she left the Republican party in 2016. For Lisa, Trump was her breaking point.  She guesses about 10 to 12 of her extended family members have refused to get the vaccine.

“I told my mother that Trump said that he didn’t have anything to ask forgiveness for from God. She didn’t believe me. I sent her the clip where he says just that and she told me that someone had dubbed in his voice and that it wasn’t him.  She’s basically in a cult.”  

Conspiracy theories exist all over the internet but there’s something about the sheen of a professionally produced news show that gives these false claims validity. 

“You get out in the woods in the sticks, in rural areas and they all believe that Trump was cheated out of the election, that Joe Biden is illegitimate and that Antifa invaded the Capitol on January 6th, you know all this garbage that Fox news feeds them”, said David Neiwert, author of Alt-America. “You go to their restaurants, you go to these towns, and they all have Fox on 24/7 in restaurants, and in their homes.”

For some Republicans and conservatives, the media they used to enjoy has become too extreme.  

Michelle, a former Republican in North Carolina who wished to only use her first name, said she slowly became disillusioned with right-wing media.  

“For a while there I read all of Rush’s books, loved everything PJ O’Rouke wrote.  I had a National Review subscription and loved William F. Buckley.  I gave up on right wing media due to the constant fear mongering.  I just want to know what happened to intelligent Republicans.”