Until a few months ago, it was Kat Abughazaleh’s job to watch Fox News for several hours each night. She worked as a video producer for Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group. In her spare time, she created TikTok videos that used mockery to debunk falsehoods, conspiracies, and controversies; several of them went viral. Abughazaleh’s online success brought more attention to the work of analyzing right-wing media. The New Yorker profiled her, noting that “the glee Abughazaleh takes from needling—and being needled—is perhaps indicative of the sort of progressive who would voluntarily immerse herself in Fox News’ world.”
Then, in November, the social media platform X sued Media Matters for defamation, claiming that the group had fabricated reports that X was running advertisements next to neo-Nazi posts as part of a bid to drive advertisers away from the platform. (Media Matters called the lawsuit frivolous and stood by its reporting.) Earlier this year, conservative attorneys general in Missouri and Texas filed lawsuits in support of X. The costs of the litigation put a strain on Media Matters. In May, the group laid off Abughazaleh and twelve other employees.
Fast-forward a few months and Abughazaleh is using her video skills as a freelancer for Mother Jones and Zeteo, a new media outlet founded by the former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. At Mother Jones, she plans to tackle disinformation with a focus on the election; at Zeteo, she’ll produce a segment called “Vibe Check,” in which she’ll debunk right-wing narratives. She’ll also continue to produce TikTok explainers and keep an eye on Fox News, albeit, now, with a lighter viewing schedule. Last week, I spoke with Abughazaleh about her new gigs, the embrace of “vibes” this election season, and how to better understand Fox. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
FM: What are you planning to focus on in your videos for Zeteo and Mother Jones? How is your approach going to differ from what you focused on at Media Matters?
KA: It’s going to be focused more on what’s happening in the news. I’m really enjoying being able to talk about even more stuff, not just right-wing media, because when you’re watching [Fox] for seven hours every single day, you kind of have to prioritize what Fox is saying. Now I can get into even more research and focus on what I want all the time, which is sick.
I still watch a lot of Fox News because it shows what far-right narratives have made it to the mainstream. But I don’t have to watch it every single night, which is really cool. I’d recommend it to anyone if you’re wondering why you’re depressed.
We’ve seen the embrace of “vibes” this election cycle, especially with regard to Kamala Harris recently. As someone who uses TikTok in your work—not to mention your Zeteo segment “Vibe Check”—what do you make of this language being used in this election season?
It shows this departure from a really old-fashioned style of political messaging that just doesn’t work anymore. We live in a different time, and trying to pretend that everything is the same is only going to hurt your chances, whatever your party is. I think it’s refreshing to see Kamala Harris referencing [the pop star] Chappell Roan and letting her social team have fun with tweets and going for the “weird” defense. Anyone who studies disinformation and right-wing media, we have been saying for years that that’s how they should attack [the right]. Andrew Lawrence, my old boss at Media Matters, was one of the first people to constantly talk about that. Harris and now [her running mate] Tim Walz are leaning into that.
What has the response to this been like on Fox and the right more broadly?
They’re so pissed off. They were planning on running against Joe Biden, and now they can’t. I’m sure you saw the clip of [Trump adviser] Stephen Miller where he’s melting down over it. They were planning on running against Biden, and now they have to change their entire strategy. And now it’s 2024—you can’t just go, She’s a Black woman; you can use dog whistles, but it’s not as easy as it might have been maybe a couple years ago. And then with Tim Walz, they expected [the vice presidential pick] to be [Pennsylvania governor] Josh Shapiro. They learned nothing from what they literally just went through on making assumptions, and so now their entire VP attack strategy is down the tubes.
I have not seen the Miller clip.
That’s an excellent way to live.
I was tempted in this interview to ask you all sorts of questions about the right-wing media propaganda world because you’re an expert and I don’t traverse that world that often. Like, what is “Mammoth Nation”? I often feel that with this world, the less I know, the better. When you’re making videos, are you focusing on people with that sort of disposition?
That’s exactly the audience I want to reach—or at least one of them. Like I said earlier, Fox is a manifestation of the Republican agenda and of what right-wing ideas are now considered normal—even if they’re extreme, even if they’re violent. There are a lot of people that are firmly on the left. But there are some people in the center that are just curious about what’s going on in right-wing media that use me more exclusively as an information source rather than an entertainment source, as some might.
Are you also reaching viewers of Fox?
Yeah, actually. And that’s probably the best feeling, because that’s the audience I want to reach the most. I grew up conservative, so I understand why people would think certain things; it’s not always malicious. Sometimes, it’s just really hard to admit that everything you were taught is a lie, especially if you’re older. I’ve had, like, weird incels message me to tell me they watch my videos because they wanted to degrade me online, but then something cut through.
Do you see ways that news media can better communicate [the context and influence of right-wing media] to people?
The most responsible way to talk about this is putting it in terms of weird, like the Harris campaign has been doing. It’s weird to constantly worry about children’s genitals and be, like, This child doesn’t deserve to be called the name they ask for. Journalists, pundits, anyone that is covering politics, if they want to be responsible, they need to stop acting like these are valid positions. Because they’re not.
Outside of media literacy, what can be done about better combating this? As you’ve said before, it’s not something where a body like the Federal Communications Commission can step in…
The FCC monitors over-the-air broadcast. Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are cable, and so those are not monitored by the government. And frankly, they shouldn’t be. I think that’s a huge issue for government censorship. They’re private. You’re buying it; the cable company is what’s in charge of what’s going on. You can look at how cable companies dealt with One America News Network.
The biggest problem is that Fox is holding cable companies by the balls. Media Matters has done a ton of work on this—essentially, cable companies pay a certain amount to have a channel on, and Fox gets these premiums at a much higher rate than any other channel. Even if you don’t watch Fox News—even if you hate Fox News—if Fox News is on your cable TV, you are paying for it. And a larger share of your cable bill is going to Fox. Hitting them where it hurts is always hitting them with money. If you cancel your cable package and tell them it’s because you don’t want to pay for Fox News, that’s going to have a much bigger impact than just posting about it.
Other notable stories:
- Yesterday, we wrote in this newsletter about the ethical quandary newsrooms face in deciding whether to publish campaign documents they believe may have been stolen by a foreign power, which is at issue again following claims that Iran may have breached the Trump campaign. Now the Washington Post’s Will Sommer and Elahe Izadi are up with an article of their own on the question, for which they spoke to various industry leaders. Matt Murray—the executive editor of the Post, which recently received a Trump campaign memo from a murky source and decided not to run it—said that the paper has “no blanket ‘no hacked materials’ policy,” but decided that this document was neither “fresh” nor “new.” Richard Tofel, formerly of ProPublica, said that newsrooms should be wary of just running what hackers send because that “turns the Iranians into the editor.”
- This week, Robert Telles—a public official in Nevada who stands accused of murdering Jeff German, a reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had covered him—finally went on trial in the case. Before the trial began, Telles waived any further search of German’s electronic devices, the Review-Journal reports, effectively ending “the possibility that a nearly two-year legal dispute between the news organization, prosecutors and police could interrupt the trial with a fight over press freedoms.” (After police seized the devices as evidence, the Review-Journal argued that they were subject to a state law shielding reporters against official searches; the paper ended up searching the devices itself.) Jury selection in the trial was completed yesterday evening.
- For CJR, Matt Laslo reports on the growing trend of right-wing lawmakers moonlighting as media stars, most recently by guest-hosting Steve Bannon’s podcast and Web show while he serves a jail sentence for contempt of Congress. “New tech, coupled with mass media layoffs, has enabled lawmakers—especially, but not exclusively, from the far right—to bypass the nation’s beleaguered press corps and become the first-person storytellers of Washington,” Laslo writes. After Trump labeled the press the enemy, undermining right-wing trust in it, “these conservatives see themselves as more than just stand-ins for Bannon: they’re the gatekeepers they love to decry.”
- According to Sara Fischer, of Axios, Harris’s presidential campaign has taken out ads on Google that link to news stories about her in major outlets but display headlines and descriptions that the campaign itself has rewritten; the ads are marked as sponsored content, but it’s not immediately clear that the accompanying text comes from the campaign, not the outlets themselves. The practice is a common one in commercial advertising and doesn’t violate Google’s policies, Fischer writes, “but the ads mimic real news results from Search closely enough that they have news outlets caught off guard.”
- And, if you noticed our styling of the word “Harris’s” in the bullet point above, you might enjoy this article, from the AP’s Holly Ramer, digging into the “apostrophe battle” over her name and that of her running mate, Tim Walz. “While there is widespread agreement that Walz’s is correct, confusion persists about Harris’ vs. Harris’s”—including within Harris’s campaign, Ramer writes. Michael Dukakis, the last nominee with a similarly tricky name, said that he prefers “s, apostrophe, and that’s it.” But we disagree.
