Truth Not in the Playbook for Fox News
"TONIGHT ON TUCKER: Will Transtifa Terrorist Drag Queens FORCE your kids into Gay Sharia Marriage Veganism? --Rick Wilson
Fox News is the subject on the front page of many American newspapers today, and that’s a good thing because the last set of choice revelations coming out of depositions taken for the Dominion lawsuit got buried in many of these publications.
The bottom line here is that a major network deliberately aired lies instead of truths about the 2020 election.
Imagine Fox as a football team caught cheating. The head coach –who just happens to be named Rupert Murdoch– is called in by the league to testify about a series of instances where it's obvious the rules of the game were broken.
Asked if these infractions were team policy, he said no. Asked if he knew the quarterback was cheating he said yes. The running back? Yes. The wide receivers? Yes. The defensive backs? Yes Were there any players who weren’t in on the scam? No.
Did anybody object to this ongoing wrongdoing? Yes, he says, we had an ethics committee. So we fired them.
And then we learn from a well-known heavy gambler –who just happens to be named Jared Kushner– that the team in question was given access to the playbooks of an opponents.
Flipping from the imaginary to the real world, is there any doubt in your mind, based on the testimony of the actual people involved and the big boss at Fox that the network was effectively serving as an propaganda outlet for Republicans and conspiracists?
Here’s recap via watchdog Media Matters to bring you up to speed:
In March 2021, Dominion filed a defamation suit against Fox for the false claims the network pushed after the election suggesting Dominion machines supposedly changed or deleted votes to sway the election in President Joe Biden’s favor. Publication of the opposition to Fox’s motions for summary judgment comes on the heels of the previously released bombshell filing detailing how Murdoch and Fox executives, hosts, and producers all knew that the network was pushing dangerous lies about Dominion and voter fraud.
This earlier summary judgment filing proved that Fox did not merely push the election lies made by former President Donald Trump and his allies because they were “newsworthy,” but rather because they feared other right-wing media companies would steal their viewers and hurt their bottom line.
Now, the newest filing confirms that the rot at Fox comes from the top. In emails after the Capitol insurrection, Murdoch even said, “Everything changed last Wednesday [January 6],” and that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott “thinks everyone is now disgusted and previous supporters broken hearted.”
But his network played an enormous role in stoking the flames of the insurrection — in fact, the network questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it almost 800 times in the two-week period after Fox News declared Biden the president-elect. Once January 6 was in the history books, the network downplayed its role and continued to host members of Congress who voted against certifying the election over 900 times in 2021.
Unfortunately, the First Amendment is very forgiving when it comes to the media. The question of whether or not Fox intended with malice to libel Dominion Voting Systems will be the determining factor in any decision.
You and I might look at the evidence and say “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.” A judge (or judges) of the Trumpian persuasion might say “I don’t see any duck there.”
Fox news people on air knew the claims of election fraud were untrue. They chose guests they knew were promoting a dangerous lie reducing faith and belief in the American system. They were afraid of losing viewers to other –very right wing– networks.
So, the question I hope all of Fox viewers should be asking themselves: “What else are they lying about?”
The answer, of course, is just about everything. The network’s idea of content is fear-inducing, and shouted performative untruths.
Here’s part of thread from never-Trumper Rick Wilson:
They're lying about Ukraine. About Biden (at scale). About all the catalog of imaginary culture war demons. ("TONIGHT ON TUCKER: Will Transtifa Terrorist Drag Queens FORCE your kids into Gay Sharia Marriage Veganism?")
This is Rupert and Roger's model at its end state, a seething, metastasizing cancer consuming the minds of millions of Americans convinced by the cynical playhouse of a network of liars, arsonists, and enablers.
Dominion called their b.s.
Fox will lose. They'll settle and offer a fat check and an elliptical apology.
If their viewers had the slightest curiosity they'd start asking what Fox is lying about to them now...and tomorrow...and the next day.
Because one thing is certain. The lies will continue.
It’s true that many (if not all) networks juice up their reporting. They can’t afford having viewers nodding off and missing the commercials for Cylextopiapon,* the new, miracle drug that will cure whatever you read about on the internet. (*Name made up with special assistance from my cat.)
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Does this obit remind you of anything happening in the US? Via Heath Cox Richardson:
Also in the news today was the death of Gleb Pavlovsky, former top political consultant to Russian president Vladimir Putin, after a long illness. Before quietly turning away from Putin, Pavlovsky helped to engineer his rise through a concept called “political technology,” a system that uses technology to manipulate voters into rubber stamping the election of favored political leaders.
According to historian and political scientist Andrew Wilson, who specializes in Eastern Europe, “political technologists” in the post-Soviet republics created a virtual political reality by blackmailing opponents, abusing state power to help favored candidates, sponsoring “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to take their voters, creating false parties to create opposition, and, finally, creating a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.
Under such manipulation, usually delivered in a firehose of outrageous and competing stories, people lost the ability to tell what was real and lost faith that they could have any effect on the political system.
Of course what’s NOT reported is significant, especially when it comes to the “others” in our society:
Finally, there’s all the bru-ha-ha over Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams being given the boot from most publications. No doubt Tucker Carlson or one of his compadres will rant about this as an example of “woke” cancellation.
Taken without context, the racist remarks made by the cartoonist could easily be justified by Facebook Gramps as (something, something).
What Adam was responding to was a question from conservative pollster Rasmussen Reports asking whether people agreed or disagreed with the statements “It’s OK to be white” and “Black people can be racist, too.”
What you may not know is that while the slogan in the first question sounds harmless enough, taken in context is very offensive, especially to people of color.
This particular slogan evolved out of a hate campaign started by Jared Taylor, “alt-right impresario" behind the white supremacist digital magazine American Renaissance. That publication had an ongoing effort to popularize slogans and art crafted in such a way as to promote “white consciousness.”
It’s “OK… yada, yada” evolved and popularized by racists posting on 4chan, a bulletin board catering to the wild-eyed conspiracist set. It was a handy slogan for the emerging alt-right movement to say something more than the exact phrase suggested.
Far right groups took to hanging posters with the phrase on college campuses around the country. This propaganda campaign had the effect of outraging the more activist types in colleges, whose objections to the poster actually had the effect of popularizing the slogan.
Voila! Those college kids had been trolled, just like any number of packages sold by the talking heads at Fox News.
Parker Malloy at the Present Age explains:
Imagine if the KKK adopted an unofficial slogan of “Sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns for everyone.” If you were familiar with it, and “sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns for everyone” had been associated with the Klan over a span of years, how would you answer the polling question, “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns for everyone?” Good pollsters don’t try to trick people into saying they agree with slogans (if they wanted to ask about whether it’s okay for white people to exist, they could have done that, but they, instead, decided to take something that the Anti-Defamation League added to its Hate Symbols Database). And that, among many other reasons, is why Rasmussen is not a good pollster.!
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Great job, Doug. I hope with all my heart that this lawsuit forces Fox out of business. I hope there are all sorts of lawsuits against the various broadcasters for their lies and deliberate misleading of too many Americans. I hope these lawsuits drive them into bankruptcy.
Great reporting
thank you Doug