6 facts about Fox News

Fox News, the cable channel Rupert Murdoch launched in 1996, holds a unique place in the American media landscape, particularly for those on the ideological right. While Democrats in the United States turn to and trust a variety of news sources, none come close to matching the appeal of Fox News for Republicans.

In addition, more than a dozen former Fox News personalities are senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Below are six facts about Fox News and who consumes news there, based on recent Pew Research Center surveys. You can also use our interactive tool to compare Americans’ usage of Fox News with 29 other major U.S. news sources.

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis as part of a larger study that tracked news consumption and trust across a wide range of news sources.

We regularly ask people about their news habits on various platforms (e.g., television, print, radio and digital) and their levels of trust in information from social media and national/local news organizations in general. This study was designed to be more specific, looking at Americans’ familiarity with, usage of and views toward 30 individual news sources (including Fox News). To learn more about how we chose the 30 news sources, please visit the survey methodology.

For this analysis, we relied on two recent Center surveys. The first was conducted Sept. 16-22, 2024, among 9,680 U.S. adults. The second was conducted March 10-16, 2025, among 9,482 U.S. adults.

Everyone who took part in both surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Interviews were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here is the topline for the first survey and its methodology. For the second survey, here are the questions, the topline and the survey methodology.

Around four-in-ten Americans (38%) say they regularly get news from Fox News, according to a March 2025 survey. This is similar to the shares who regularly get news from ABC News (36%) and NBC News (35%).

And while 37% of U.S. adults say they trust Fox News as a source of news, 42% say they distrust it. That level of distrust is the highest among the 30 news sources we asked about.

More Republicans trust Fox News than any other news source, while more Democrats distrust it than any other source. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 56% say they trust Fox News as a source of news while 21% distrust it. No more than a third of Republicans say they trust any of the other news sources we asked about, including new media like The Joe Rogan Experience (31%) and broadcast networks such as ABC News (26%), NBC News (25%) and CBS News (23%).

A majority of Republicans (57%) also say they regularly get news from Fox News. This, too, is far higher than the shares who get news from any other source.

Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, 64% say they distrust Fox News as a source of news – more than triple the share who trust it (19%). That level of distrust is considerably higher than for other news sources, including Joe Rogan (40%), Breitbart (26%), New York Post (25%) and Newsmax (23%). However, this also reflects the fact that Fox News is much more well-known than these other sources among both Democrats and U.S. adults overall; only people who have heard of each outlet were asked whether they trust or distrust it.

Liberal Democrats (78%) are far more likely than conservative or moderate Democrats (54%) to say they distrust Fox News.

Even though most Democrats distrust Fox News, around one-in-five (18%) say they regularly get news there – identical to the share who get news from The Washington Post.

On an ideological scale, the average Fox News consumer is to the right of the average U.S. adult, but not as far right as the average consumer of some other sources. As part of the March survey, the Center placed the audiences of 30 news sources on a scale based on the average self-described ideology and partisanship of people who regularly get news from each source. (You can read more about this classification system in the survey’s methodology.)

Based on this scale, the average audience member for Fox News is more likely than the average U.S. adult to be conservative and Republican. But the average audiences for five other news sources we asked about are to the right of the average Fox News viewer: The Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily Wire, Newsmax, Tucker Carlson Network and Breitbart. This is partly because a larger share of Democrats regularly get news from Fox News than from these other sources.

Older Americans are more likely than younger adults to say they both use and trust Fox News. While 47% of Americans ages 65 and older and 45% of those ages 50 to 64 say they regularly get news from Fox News, 32% of those ages 30 to 49 and 28% of adults under 30 do the same. That is in line with a broader pattern that older adults are much more likely to get news from TV.

Older Republicans are the most likely to say they trust Fox News: 76% of Republicans ages 65 and older say this, compared with 41% of those under 30. No more than about one-in-five Democrats in any age group say the same.

Shortly before the 2024 election, half of Americans said Fox News was either a major (22%) or minor (28%) source of political and election news for them. That is nearly identical to the share who said this at roughly the same time in 2020.

In 2024, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to say Fox News was at least a minor source of their election news (69% vs. 32%).

In 2024, Fox News was the most common outlet that Americans named as their main source for political news in an open-ended question. Some 13% named Fox News; by comparison, 10% said CNN, 6% said local TV and 5% said ABC News.

Again, older adults were much more likely than younger adults to name Fox News as their main source for political news. About two-in-ten adults ages 65 and older (22%) said this, compared with 5% of adults under 30.

Note: Refer to our earlier posts for facts about Fox News in 2020 and 2014.