Millions of Americans watch only Fox News, and don’t get news from any other source, which is a great big problem.
It’s a great big problem because Fox is propaganda, not news. It’s brainwashing, not informing, its audiences. Its top opinion-shaper, Tucker Carlson, is a Russia sympathizer. And, it turns out, all of its talk-show hosts are liars.
The network’s owners, Rupert Murdoch and his family, sponsor this behavior partly due to political motivations (they’re rightwing), but mainly for money. They sell a lot of advertising by peddling pablum to rubes.
It’s now coming out that Fox‘s on-air personalities not only knew Trump’s election claims were lies, but talked about it among themselves, and knew what they were saying on the air was false (see story here). But they and their network executives ran with it because they feared “telling its sizable audience the truth would prompt them to tune out.”
What does that tell you about the Fox audience? And, of course, this ends debate of whether Fox does “journalism.” It’s still protected by the First Amendment, but let’s call propaganda by its right name.
The now-unassailable fact that Fox lied to its viewers about the 2020 election is coming out into the open because Fox is being sued by a voting technology company it defamed by repeating baseless conspiracy theories that the company played an pivotal role in stealing the 2020 election from Trump. The court filings in the libel case are a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes information about what went on in the Fox studios, including text messages and emails.
After reading those written internal conversations, a CNN reporter covering the story wrote, “I think these messages really just expose Fox News as a propaganda network.” (See story here.) A CNN headline says, “Fox News has been exposed as a dishonest organization terrified of its own audience.” That appears to be a fair assessment.
The reporter says those conversations “show in excruciating detail that the highest ranking executives at Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Suzanne Scott, the CEO, as well as some of the top hosts, … Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram … privately knew these election fraud claims from the Trump team were nonsense. They use very harsh language to describe them.” That’s damning, not only of Trump, but of all these individuals who told millions of viewers things they didn’t believe themselves. It reveals they have no journalistic or other ethics.
Based on that, calling Fox News a “dishonest organization” is fair.
It’s also a business organization that’s now in deep legal trouble, because if Dominion Voting Systems is deemed a “public figure” that has to prove “actual malice” to recover damages for defamation, now they can. It’s clear that from top to bottom, everyone at Fox knowingly and deliberately promoted the lies about the company that got Fox sued. Dominion, which claims its business of selling voting systems and services to public entities has been harmed by these lies (and it’s hard to see how it hasn’t been), is seeking $1.6 billion of damages.
Fox can eat that loss and survive, and the Murdoch family can pay up and still be very rich. They’re both probably insured for this kind of liability anyway. Any other defendant would be talking settlement at this point. We’ll see where this goes in the months ahead, but my guess is it’ll go to trial.
That’s because Fox can’t afford the hit to its reputation with its audience, and equally important its advertisers, that it would take by confessing the allegations that it lied about the biggest news event of our time in order to hold onto its audience.
But it gets worse, at least for some of its on-air personalities.
“Lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems unearthed a message from Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in which she expresses a distaste for talking about having a peaceful transition of power to President Joe Biden for fear of alienating Trump-loving viewers,” Raw Story says (in a story here).
This should be career-ending. I used to follow Bartiromo when she was reporting financial news for CNBC, but since moving to Fox (presumably for a fatter paycheck) she has turned into a shameless propagandist, and this demonstrates she has no journalistic or personal ethics at all. It’s time for the world to tune her out for good.
Bartiromo also bit into the coin of a woman who claimed she got “election fraud information” by time traveling (see that story here). This isn’t journalism, it’s science fiction, misleadingly labeled as news (reminiscent of the 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast fiasco that caused panic, details here). That marks Bartiromo as a crank and a nut, which is not a good thing for a reporter or commentator to be, if they want to be taken seriously.
It’s time for everyone to stop taking Fox and its commentaries seriously. The majority of Americans already know Fox is a public relations office for the Republican Party. Its loyal fans probably would be Republicans with or without Fox, and that’s okay. However, a healthy democracy depends on a well-informed public, and Fox fans are not that. The MAGA voters are not that. Trump’s movement is a toxic cancer in our political system, and Fox has fed that cancer and allowed it to grow. Its vicious libeling of a voting technology company is the least of its sins. Its most serious offenses were committed against American democracy.