Fox News backs Covid vaccination – a pity no one told Tucker Carlson

When Fox News launched a public service announcement urging people to get the Covid-19 vaccine this week, it was hailed in some quarters as a virtuous move. What the network might not have expected was for the message to be almost immediately undermined by the network’s biggest star, Tucker Carlson.

It looked like an onscreen, real-time battle between Fox News and Carlson, who has previously challenged the safety and questioned the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine, that pointed to wider mixed messaging at the network over the issue of vaccination.

Related: Fox News host Sean Hannity urges viewers to ‘take Covid seriously’

It was also a conflict that played out as the more contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading rapidly through areas of America where unvaccinated people are concentrated, which are often Republican-supporting – and Fox-watching – states.

Since vaccines became commonly available in the US, key opinion hosts on the rightwing news channel have repeatedly cast doubt on vaccination.

Laura Ingraham has proved to be a vaccine skeptic, questioning the vaccine’s efficacy this week, while in a two-week period from 28 June to 11 July Fox News personalities and guests ​​made a total of 216 claims undermining or downplaying vaccines in segments about coronavirus immunization, according to Media Matters.

There has been a shift in some of Fox News’ coverage in the past week, however. First Sean Hannity, on Monday, told his viewers to “please take Covid seriously – I can’t say it enough.”

Hannity added: “I believe in the science of vaccination.”

Hannity had previously made a similar comment – although it was also qualified with an exhortation to “talk to your doctor” – but this one came during a week in which Fox News launched its new public service announcement, headlined on Fox News’ website as: “‘We’re in this together’: Fox News hosts urge Americans to get the vaccine”, on Wednesday.

“America, we’re in this together,” Steve Doocy, one of the co-hosts of the Fox & Friends morning show, duly tells the viewer. We then see the daytime host Harris Faulkner, who adds: “And if you can, get the vaccine.” The video directs its viewers to a CDC link on the Fox News website where they can search for vaccination sites near them.

That was all well and good, except Carlson, Fox News’ most-watched host, popped up an hour after the PSA aired to evacuate all over the sentiment.

Carlson, who has been doing good business with far-right conservatives through his repeated questioning of the vaccine, seemingly used CNN, which has also encouraged its viewers to get vaccinated, as a proxy for Fox News in an indignant monologue.

“As a channel, CNN shouldn’t have a position on whether you should take medicine or not, because it’s a news channel, it’s not a health agency,” Carlson said.

He later added: “Why is a news channel doing this? Any news channel. A lot of them are.”

The hoo-ha came a couple of days after Ingraham, who hosts a show called The Ingraham Angle, asked her viewers: “What about the efficacy of the vaccine itself among adults?” Ingraham pointed out that five vaccinated Texas Democrats had tested positive for coronavirus.

“We have to know more about that,” Ingraham said.

The mixed messaging was the latest clash of thinking within Fox News over vaccines.

Carlson has howled on his show that the idea of vaccine passports is the medical equivalent of “Jim Crow” laws, but against the dystopian picture of huddled masses presenting barcodes to emotionless big state bureaucrats is the reality that Fox has already implemented its own version of a vaccine passport among its staff.

An email sent to Fox Corporation staff, including Fox News employees, at the end of June said the company had “developed a secure, voluntary way for employees to self-attest their vaccination status”, according to CNN.

Staff are encouraged to report the dates they received the vaccine and their vaccine status. If they could prove to Fox that they were fully vaccinated, they are eligible for the “Fox Clear Pass”. With the Fox Clear Pass, staff are able to bypass an otherwise obligatory daily health screening, CNN reported.

A Fox News spokeswoman pointed to examples of some of its hosts and journalists expressing support for vaccines, and to a Fox News PSA from 2 February that showed Faulkner telling viewers “if you can, get the vaccine”.

There are caveats, however, to at least some Fox News hosts’ apparent enthusiasm for the vaccine. After Hannity was praised by non-rightwing media for his seemingly pro-vaccine stance, he angrily told viewers on Thursday: “I never told anyone to get a vaccine.”

And even Hannity’s – brief – encouragement of the vaccine was couched with him telling people they should speak to their doctor before getting it, a caveat that seemed like a sop to vaccine skeptics. In the US, where the majority of people have to pay to see a doctor, consulting a medical professional can be a serious obstacle.

The questioning of vaccines by some Fox News hosts and other rightwing networks “[is] about ratings and ratings ultimately become revenue, and that’s the name of the game”, Carl Cameron, formerly Fox’s chief political correspondent, told CNN.

The effects of anti-vaccine rhetoric could be severe. At least 99% of people in the US who died from coronavirus in the last six months were not vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

While vaccine skepticism might win those ratings and revenue, it is surely a law of diminishing returns. The median age of a Fox News viewer was 65 years old in 2017, suggesting many of those viewers are in the highest risk category.

Cameron said: “This is literally the metaphor of the lemmings running to their own slaughter. People who are listening to that sort of stuff instead of the science that goes way, way back.”