Fox News Is Trying — and Failing — to Bury the Epstein Scandal

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Jeffrey Epstein story is everywhere: Capitol Hill hearings, newly unsealed documents, lurid details splashed across front pages, and endless dissection on cable news. It’s one of those rare scandals with genuine bipartisan reach — Democrats and Republicans alike want answers, and the public is riveted.

Unless, that is, you’re watching Fox News. According to a transcript search database search over the past three weeks, Fox has mentioned “Epstein” just 429 times. CNN clocked 3,668. MSNBC? 5,624. For a scandal this dominant, the disparity isn’t just surprising — it’s damning. The most-watched cable news network in America is barely acknowledging one of the most talked-about stories in the country.

And this relative silence seems far more deliberate than accidental. For a scandal that fascinates both Beltway insiders and the QAnon corners of the MAGA base, Fox has gone quiet. The mentions that do slip through are quarantined to non-prime time programs — the very hours where Fox has the least at stake. In the slots that drive ratings and revenue, Epstein barely exists.

This isn’t about news judgment. It’s about politics — and what’s become a remarkably lucrative business model. Fox knows its viewers don’t want uncomfortable, Trump-adjacent headlines. Keeping that audience happy is far more valuable than pursuing the story. Which explains why Fox’s muted coverage looks less like an editorial stance and more like a truce, a tacit agreement to protect Trump in exchange for peace and profit.

Not so long ago, Trump treated Fox like an ex-lover, raging at CEO Suzanne Scott, blasting “crooked” polling, and sulking at even a whiff of balance. Today, the relationship looks very different. Trump still takes swipes at individual pundits like Jessica Tarlov or Karl Rove, but the scorched-earth broadsides against the network itself have all but disappeared. That’s not really a détente so much as a quid pro quo.

And Epstein isn’t the only story caught in the bargain. Take last week’s disastrous jobs report: a meager 22,000 new positions, with June revised down 12%. A brutal number by any measure. Fox & Friends gave it all of 16 seconds before moving on. Had Biden been in office, the coverage would have been apocalyptic — complete with ominous graphics, Wagnerian soundtrack beds, and endless handwringing about the “crisis in the job market.”

Inflation tells the same story. Headline inflation hasn’t budged: the Consumer Price Index stands at 2.7% year-over-year, the same as July a year ago. Core inflation—what really matters for budgets—also sits stubbornly above target. Egg prices? Still staggering: retail cartons remain roughly 16.4% higher than in 2024.

But Fox, once obsessed with grocery store “crisis” segments and on-air displays of soaring receipts, has quietly dropped the subject. The problem hasn’t disappeared. Only the president has.

And when the House Oversight Committee recently released disturbing new Epstein materials — including a grotesque sketch of the predator grooming girls to become “masseuses” — Fox mentioned it once. The controversial “birthday letter” reported by the Wall Street Journal drew Trump’s ire and a lawsuit? Well it’s been released by the Epstein estate, validating Fox News corporate sibling WSJ, but has not been mentioned once on Fox News since its release.

In early July the network’s hosts invoked “Obama” more than 100 times in a single day but “Epstein” just twice. That’s not news judgment. That’s narrative management.

None of this is accidental. After Fox briefly stumbled in early 2021, bleeding viewers to Newsmax and OANN, it clawed its way back by offering something those rivals couldn’t: the sheen of legitimacy combined with relentless Trump boosterism. The formula has worked. Fox’s prime-time lineup is not just the most-watched in cable, but across all American television. Financially, it’s a juggernaut.

But profitable doesn’t mean credible. Fox still employs excellent reporters — Jacqui Heinrich and Peter Doocy in the White House, Jennifer Griffin, Benjamin Hall, and Trey Yingst overseas. They’ve proven themselves capable of fearless, fact-based reporting. But they are exceptions swallowed by a prime-time machine that serves as a nightly pep rally for Trump.

The truth of a newsroom isn’t only in what it covers. It’s in what it erases. And Fox’s erasures are loud. The network has made a calculation: better to sanitize the news than risk alienating Trump or the audience that worships him. That may be smart economics. But it’s not journalism.

Fox News is trying very hard to keep its Trump base happy. In the short term, it’s lucrative. But the cost is credibility. And when the most-watched “news” channel in America trades journalism for loyalty, what the audience gets isn’t reality. It’s a mirror — polished until the reflection flatters.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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