Fox News Admits Lying and Trump Lies to CPAC
Fox News Admits Lying and Trump Lies to CPAC
Tucker Carlson Hates on Trump, GOP Hates on Tucker Carlson, Walgreens Gets Boycotted, Racism Among Louisville Police, and More
What People Get Wrong about News Media…
This has been a troubling but revelatory week concerning the news media. Fox News admitted they lied for ratings money (more on that later). This is not a hysterical socialist conspiracy theory but verifiable facts from the mouths of Fox’s owners, executives, and on-air hosts. They lied. For years. They admitted it. You can’t spin that (though they and their viewers will try).
The good news is that what many in the press have been accusing Fox News of—biased reporting and outright lying—has been proven true. The bad news: it probably won’t matter. Their demographic prefers the lie—the feel-good blue pill of illusion. In 2021, Tucker Carlson admitted on The Rubin Report that he lies: “I lie. If I’m really cornered or something, I lie. I really try not to. I try never to lie on TV. I just don’t, you know, I don’t like lying. I certainly do it, you know, out of weakness or whatever.” The “or whatever” is the $35 million a year Fox pays him to lie.
Conservative broadcasters used to call legitimate press sources “mainstream media” as a way of positioning themselves as underdogs fighting The Big, Bad System. Everyone roots for the scrappy Rocky-like underdog. But as the numbers were released showing that conservative media actually had higher ratings and more social media subscribers than most “mainstream” sources, they had to change their wording to “legacy media” (technically meaning meaning media that started in print or broadcasting, but has taken on a pejorative slant meaning liberal). Ironically, conservatives in general promote tradition and legacy as being preferable. Double ironically, some of the most conservative media are also “legacy media”: The Wall Street Journal was founded in 1889, The New York Post was founded in 1801.
Here’s what most critics of the news media get wrong. When people complain about the news media they usually mistakenly lump news reporting together with editorial opinions. Because they don’t like the editorial opinions, they condemn the entire news organization. Part of the reason is that news organizations sometimes let their editorial opinions seep into their news writing. In previous newsletters, I have pointed out several examples of this specifically in news media that I trust. The difference is that it happens rarely in news sources with journalistic integrity and when it does happen, they try to rectify it. Not so with Fox News.
To be clear, the public is bombarded daily with opinions (mine included) that aren’t news and therefore shouldn’t be thought of as news. Commentators like Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Steve Crowder, etc. are not impartially reporting the news. They interpret the news the way the Catholic clergy used to interpret the Bible because it was only in Latin until 1522. But they are separate from the news departments that are supposed to give you the un-fluffed facts. You want to judge the news media, judge the departments separately.
If you don’t like Maddow’s opinions, don’t use them to judge MSNBC. Unless she openly lies or perverts the truth. Then the network that supports her should be held accountable. I’ve never seen her do that which is why, even when I disagree with her on a particular issue, I respect her opinion and the network.
That’s not the case with Fox. Almost everyone involved purposely broadcasts lies or misdirections from the truth.
That’s what makes last week’s quote from Trump’s former campaign manger Kellyanne Conway on Fox’s Hannity so revealing. “…I want to challenge people watching tonight who don’t wear red hats, who don’t consider themselves ’MAGA’ [and] don’t consider themselves race-drawn political people,” Conway said. “Ask yourself how many times you’ve been lied to not just by this government, but how many times you’ve been lied to by the people whose job it is to tell you the truth in the media—all in the service of getting the president.” Remember that Conway coined the dubious phrase “alternative facts” when Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer lied about the size of the inauguration crowd. More to the point, she made this latest appeal on the network who’s just been caught repeatedly lying.
It’s like the famous scene in Say Anything when Lily Taylor’s character angrily sings “Joe Lies”: “He'll tell you what you want to hear, but it's never the truth.” (How’s that for obscure pop culture reference?)
Rupert Murdoch says Fox stars 'endorsed' lies about 2020. He chose not to stop them (NPR)
SUMMARY: “In the heat of the moment, right after Election Day 2020, media magnate Rupert Murdoch knew that the hosts on his prized Fox News Channel were endorsing lies from then-President Donald Trump about election fraud.
“And he did nothing to intervene to stop it.
“Instead, Murdoch, the network's controlling owner, followed the lead of the network's senior executives in sidestepping the truth for a pro-Trump audience angered when confronted by the facts.
“Asked whether he could have told Fox News' chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. ‘I could have,’ Murdoch said. ‘But I didn't.’
“…Behind the scenes, however, Fox News chief executive Scott had been wooing Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, major advertiser and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist, according to Dominion's filing. Scott sent Lindell a personal note and a gift while encouraging Fox shows to book him as a guest to ‘get ratings.’
“On Jan. 26, Tucker Carlson had Lindell on his show. Rupert Murdoch told Dominion's attorneys he could stop taking money for MyPillow ads, "‘[B]ut I'm not about to.’
“An attorney for Dominion suggested, ‘It is not red or blue, it is green.’
“According to the filing, Murdoch agreed.”
MY TAKE: The main thing we learned from the testimonies of all the top people at Fox is that they lied, and not in a noble but misguided effort to promote some sort of political justice, but to win back an audience that was abandoning them when they actually told the truth. They did it for the money.
After Fox rightfully called Arizona for Biden during the 2020 elections, the network held an emergency meeting in which the CEO, Suzanne Scott, complained that “if we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following election day, our ratings would have been bigger” because “the mystery would have been still hanging out there.” Sean Hannity was angered that the news division’s reporting of the facts went against their financial interests: “news destroyed us.”