Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fox News Channel was founded by Rupert Murdoch and launched on the 7th of October 1996. Murdoch hired former Republican political strategist and NBC executive Roger Ailes as the channel's founding CEO. It launched to 17 million cable subscribers.
Fox News has been identified by critics, researchers, and academic studies as practicing biased reporting in favor of the Republican Party and conservative causes while portraying the Democratic Party negatively. Multiple academic studies have found Fox News increases Republican vote shares in elections, and by 2016 the channel became solidly pro-Trump. A 2009 Pew survey found 47% of respondents described Fox News as mostly conservative.
As of 2022, Fox News is the most-watched cable news network in the United States. In 2019, it averaged 2.5 million viewers in prime time, making it the top-rated cable network overall. In the first quarter of 2020, its highest-rated quarter in history, it averaged 3.387 million viewers in prime time. As of 2023, it generates approximately 70% of Fox Corporation's pre-tax profit.
Fox News faced legal and public scrutiny for knowingly endorsing false claims that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been used to commit fraud during the 2020 presidential election. Fox News primetime hosts promoted Trump and the Republican Party's election-fraud narrative during and after the 2020 election. The channel paid out millions of dollars in legal settlements related to this and other controversies.
Fox News is owned by Fox News Media, a subsidiary of Fox Corporation. In September 2025, Lachlan Murdoch secured control of Fox News, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal through a renegotiated trust in a deal valued at $3.3 billion. The terms of the trust are described as preserving the channel's conservative editorial direction until 2050. Suzanne Scott has served as CEO since 2018.
"Fair and Balanced" was coined by network co-founder Roger Ailes and was intended as a signal that Fox News would counteract what Ailes viewed as a liberal bias in establishment television. Fox News quietly began phasing out the slogan in August 2016, shifting to "Most Watched, Most Trusted." A network executive said the change had nothing to do with programming or editorial decisions, though media observers linked it to Ailes's departure under controversy.