Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
Fox News scrapped plans for a Bret Baier-hosted documentary on how former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, according to a forthcoming book.
The reporting comes from New York Times political reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns in "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," a copy of which was obtained by Insider.
As the network found itself under a siege of its own making from Trump following his loss and failed attempts to prove widespread election fraud, smaller but more extreme right-wing competitors Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN) were much more willing to run with the outgoing president's false statements.
Fox News executives reassured their "Trump-skeptical employees to wait until after the election for the overall tone of coverage to change," according to Burns and Martin.
"Then Trump began attacking the network, and Fox saw its audience dip as the former president's fans flocked to a pair of rival channels on the far right, Newsmax TV and One America News," they continue. "Fox got the message. There would be no documentary on Trump's defeat."
Burns and Martin also mention the departure of Chris Stirewalt — the politics editor during the 2020 election who, along with Fox News Decision Desk Director Arnon Mishkin, made the early but correct call for Arizona to go for President Joe Biden — as part of a shift back to more Trump-friendly coverage.
In a statement to Insider, a Fox News spokesperson denied the book's reporting and claimed that the network did not receive an opportunity to respond before it was published.
"If Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin had bothered to fact check their book with FOX News, they would know that these claims are entirely inaccurate," the network spokesperson told Insider in an email.
On sourcing Burns and Martin explain at the beginning of the book that direct quotations "reflect the verbatim language used in interviews, text messages, emails, documents, or in recorded material, or were relayed by authoritative sources soon after the fact," while other episodes are paraphrased from interviews and internal communications.
