This chapter begins with a description of the arrival and proliferation of Fox News across the United States during its early years and concludes with a description and some analyses of Fox News’ content. Both demonstrations are critical to our case. The former is required because our identification strategy requires that we satisfy the assumption that the Fox News rollout was as-if random – or haphazard – in the sense that it is not related to political factors capable of shaping House members’ behavior. The latter is important for both our empirical evidence and theoretical arguments. First, if we expect the arrival and presence of Fox News to have a unique influence on elite political behavior, it is important to demonstrate whether and to what degree Fox News’ content is different from other networks. Second, examining Fox News’ content can tell us something about the mechanisms for its effects or the process by which it shapes the attitudes and behaviors of political elites.

This chapter sets up our main research question, which is what effect, if any, did the arrival and proliferation of Fox News have on US politicians? It summarizes the history of Fox News and describes the natural experiment created by the haphazard rollout of Fox News. It goes on to summarize the scholarly literature on media effects and, specifically, how little of it focuses on the behavior of politicians. In turn, it summarizes the scholarly literature on members of Congress and how little of it focuses on the media. It then explains our open science approach.