On April 22, Vox reported on a working paper from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics which shows “statistical evidence” that areas with higher viewership of Fox News host Sean Hannity's program, relative to fellow prime-time host Tucker Carlson's show, correlated with “higher local rates of infection and death” due to COVID-19.

According to the article, the study authors “calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death.”

The paper looks at Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight programming in February and early March. And though Fox figures “abruptly pivoted” on the coronavirus in mid-March, Hannity (and others) strayed back into reckless coverage by pushing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 -- a push which has significantly decreased across the network as more data suggest its use can be dangerous.

Lest anyone give Carlson too much credit for being more responsible than Hannity, who once called COVID-19 concerns a “hoax,” Vox ominously noted that Carlson has “inveighed against social distancing in April and praised anti-distancing protestors.”

As Vox noted, the working paper “hasn’t been peer reviewed or accepted for publication at a journal” and we should therefore be “especially cautious” in drawing wide-reaching conclusions. But the paper is “consistent with a wide body of research finding that media consumption in general, and Fox News viewership in particular, can have a pretty powerful effect on individual behavior.”

In fact, at least seven different polls have highlighted the extent to which Fox News has misinformed its viewers about the novel coronavirus. Forty-five percent of frequent Fox viewers believe the reported death toll is inflated, and people who watch Fox News are more likely to claim that the media is exaggerating the threat of COVID-19. According to Vox, viewers who tuned into Hannity downplaying coronavirus through February and part of March “were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules” and changed their behavior nearly a week later than viewers of Carlson’s show.

From the Vox article: