Christine O'Donnell's primary victory is highlighting some divides within the Fox News family. GOP's struggles play out on Fox

Fox News helped give birth to the tea party by covering the movement's early protests with such enthusiasm that its detractors accused it of crossing the line into activism.

Eighteen months later, the signs of ambivalence within the Fox community about the tea party movement — or at least its new star, Christine O’Donnell — are hard to miss. If the Republican Party is indeed in a civil war, as former George W. Bush adviser Mark McKinnon suggested to USA Today, then this is its most public battleground.


In the weeks leading up to O'Donnell's upset victory in Delaware, Fox News provided an important platform for O'Donnell's supporters, according to an analysis by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America. Michelle Malkin endorsed O'Donnell on Sean Hannity's radio show on Sept. 8, and Sarah Palin did the same the next day. On Monday, Greta Van Susteren aired Palin's endorsement of O'Donnell.

But then all hell broke loose, dispelling any notion that Fox News's opinionated prime-time hosts or the contributors to their show speak with a monolithic conservative voice.

Karl Rove slammed O'Donnell as "nutty," a day after listing concerns about her "checkered background" to Sean Hannity. He walked the comments back a bit, but Charles Krauthammer maintained his position on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Thursday, calling her "overwhelmingly likely to lose." On the same show the night before, O'Donnell's greatest champion, Palin, went on to "tussle" with Rove and "the hierarchy of the political machine" that believes O'Donnell can't win in the general election.

And the former Alaska governor offered her a pointed piece of advice that underscored the importance Fox News now has as the principal platform for conservative voices both within and without the Republican Party.

"Go with her gut, get out there and speak to the American people," Palin said of O'Donnell. "Speak through Fox News and let the independents who are tuning into you, let them know what it is that she stands for, the principles behind her positions."

Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog group, said that Fox has generally given O'Donnell the exposure it typically gives its anointed candidates, such as Scott Brown or Sharron Angle, and that this week's infighting was a departure.

"This is the first time that we've seen really any kind of internal squabbling in Fox over a candidate," he said.

Now that O'Donnell has won the nomination, he expects Fox News contributors to be more in accord, as shown by the way Rove walked back his comments.

"I think they are on the side of Christine O'Donnell because Fox News wants Republicans to win, so therefore they are committed to her candidacy," he said.

Fox News declined to comment. But Brent Baker, vice president for research and publications at Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, said the debate over O'Donnell shows that Fox News is actually a big tent containing divergent views among its frequent commentators and opinionated hosts about the future direction of the right.

"Fox News Channel, in general, has far greater diversity of opinion, in terms of actual journalists and their host and guests, than you get on the other channels," said Baker.

Part of this diversity, he said, comes from a willingness to give airtime and respect to tea party candidates whom other news outlets don't take seriously.

"They understand that it's a major movement, and they are willing to give it airtime and treat it as real people, not as a bunch of weirdos," he said. "They treat it as reasonable people."

Perhaps because of Fox's usual openness to the tea party, the backlash is fierce when one of its commentators deviates from this line. That was certainly the case with Rove. One conservative site, The Freedomist, called on Fox to suspend him because Rove tried to get tea party groups in Delaware to back O'Donnell's opponent, Mike Castle, back in December.

"The Freedomist urges Fox News, in light of this information, to suspend Rove and investigate whether or not this is true and, if it is true, to fire Rove immediately for violating Fox's policy of being fair and balanced and for vilifying a Palin-endorsed conservative icon," wrote the anonymous blogger.

"While Rove is an opinion journalist, to not disclose his alleged role, if indeed such a role was played by him, and more details to follow, while declaiming on the merits of a candidate whom he was seriously working against is unethical and shocking."

But Fox had taken pains to distance itself from the tea party even before the heated debate over O'Donnell. As its host Glenn Beck planned his rally in Washington last month, organized with help from tea party groups FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, he used his show to promote the event, but Fox officials made sure to draw a clear line between Beck's own show and the wider network.

"Glenn may mention it from time to time, the same way other talent involved in outside ventures mention their books or events, but there is no organized promotion planned for the rally on Fox News, and the network has nothing to do with it," Fox executive Bill Shine told POLITICO at the time.

When the day came, it was CNN that gave the most live coverage to the three-hour rally, with Fox running pre-scheduled business shows during two of the hours.

This restraint echoed a statement in April from Rupert Murdoch, Fox's parent company's chairman, who said in response to a question about Fox's heavy tea party coverage: "I don't think we should be supporting the tea party or any other party."

A week after that statement, Fox News pulled Sean Hannity from a starring role in a tea party rally.

David Folkenflik, who covers media for NPR, said this moment was the “line in the sand” that Fox drew between its competing desires to latch onto the enthusiasm of the tea party and yet remain a credible news organization.

“There was an exuberance in many of the anchors covering it,” he said. “In some ways, there seems to be a shared sense of purpose. But Fox is a news organization, as well as an ecosystem in which to get the conservative message out — it has this dual and conflicting role — and I think the news managers were very aghast at the fact or appearance of somebody like Hannity as a promoter of this.”

Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair columnist and author of the Rupert Murdoch biography "The Man Who Owns the News," has long argued that there is indeed a civil war over the tea party happening within News Corp., just not quite the kind on display this week.

"You have within News Corporation an internal war, or maybe a cold war," he said. "Murdoch doesn't like [Fox News President Roger] Ailes. Murdoch thinks Ailes is crazy. That's a direct quote. There's a sense within the Murdoch family and other levels of News Corporation that they are stoking the fires of something that is weird and disreputable and ultimately something that they don't want to be identified with. Having said all that, there is still the fact that Roger Ailes sees this as good television, and Fox is one of the profit engines of the company."

Wolff argues that Ailes, despite his many years as a Republican political operative, doesn't care whether the establishment GOP or the tea party wins this current power struggle; he only cares that the battle itself is entertaining.

"Fox is on the side of Fox, which means that Fox is on the side of what makes for its kind of television," he said.

"In a certain sense," Wolff added, "you might even say that CNN is more political than Fox, in that it has a sense of supporting a whole liberal value structure. Whereas I would argue that Ailes is just focused on how he can help create the kind of conflict and the kind of drama, large and small, that are good for television, that are good for Fox."

Focusing on what makes for good television has paid off handsomely in ratings. Pew Research Center recently released a survey showing that Fox was the only television news outlet to have maintained its audience size in recent years, and this was "because of the increasing number of Republicans who regularly get news there." (Forty percent do, up from 36 percent two years ago, according to the study.)

But Paul Levinson, a professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University and author of "New New Media," warns against leaping to the conclusion that this makes Fox Republican.

"Progressives tend to misunderstand that the primary motive of everything that Fox does is commercial," he said. "That's not to say that they don't talk about the politics, but Rupert Murdoch is first and foremost a businessman."

Among its opinionated prime-time hosts and contributors, he believes Fox has long included more diverse voices than its left-leaning prime-time competitors at MSNBC.

"On [Keith] Olbermann, you rarely see a contrary point of view, but on O'Reilly, although not as much now as a few years ago, he basically feasts on contrary points of view," he said. "Traditionally, there has been much more of a difference of opinion on Fox than a superficial take on what Fox does or says might suggest."