Part 2 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary on the Murdoch media empire and Trump
Fox News is relevant to Australia not just because of the fact that US politics have impact world-wide, but because Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation began in Australia, and the impact of the company as a conservative news force is world-wide, but especially pronounced in Australia, the UK, and the US.
The first episode is pretty good.
Although the reporting is not necessarily "news" to those of us in the US dealing with the issue of Fox "News" and its force in conservative politics, but discloses new details about how the turn to the hard right caused a split in the family, leading James Murdoch to leave the company altogether because he couldn't abide by the channel's place as a Republican and Trump propaganda feed and he had no ability to influence changes.
The family split also led Murdoch to sell many of its studio and non-sports cable television assets to Disney ("Disney officially owns 21st Century Fox," NPR), while still keeping the Fox News and Fox Business cable channels and the terrestrial network and television stations. (The Fox regional sports networks were sold separately to Sinclair Broadcasting, itself an avowedly conservative force.)
The second Four Corners" episode focuses on how Fox News has been all in on the "Big Lie" promoted by Trump that he won the election, which has been used by Republican state legislatures and governors across the country to pass a wide variety of voter suppression measures.
-- "Fox and the Big Lie: How the network promoted Donald Trump’s propaganda and helped destabilise democracy in America," episode two, "Four Corners," Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Murdoch newspapers in Australia have been all in on denigrating ABC and "Four Corners," allegedly based on "news value," not as a concerted campaign by the company, such as these articles from the Australian newspaper, which is roughly equivalent to the New York Times or Toronto Globe & Mail as a national organ ("The ABC’s big lie and the madness of Four Corners" and "Four Corners ‘fails’ basic reporting: Fox News").
Living this here in the US, the first episode seemed plenty accurate to me. And the News Corporation articles defending Fox News seem fatuous. From the article:
The ABC’s flagship current affairs program, Four Corners, has bizarrely claimed that the Fox News network “undermined the American democratic system” — simply by reporting Donald Trump’s public statements in the aftermath of the US election last November.
... But the 50-minute episode on Monday night was beset by unverified claims, glaring omissions of fact and a confused narrative that at times seemed to favour the censorship of news reporting.
At times, Ferguson adopted a sneering tone toward the 74 million Americans who supported Trump, suggesting they were incapable of thinking for themselves.
“They didn’t reach these conclusions on their own. There’s plenty of propaganda to feed their beliefs. But former Fox News insiders level blame at the powerful organisation they worked for,” Ferguson said.
The problem of course comes down to "reporting" that treats claims as equal, reports what "one side" says, without acknowledging whether or not what they say is true ("Why the Republicans' Big Lie works so well: A sociopathic party, and a damaged country," Salon, "Our democracy is under attack. Washington journalists must stop covering it like politics as usual," Washington Post).
Fox News is a megaphone for Republicans who lie ("prevaricate") and it amplifies lies to the point where people think the lies are true ("Trumpists live in an alternate reality — but they believe in it, and that's terrifying," Salon).
Note that the first blog entry made the argument that on "fitness" grounds, Fox's television stations licenses ought to be subject to license challenges over their use of the "public's airwaves" the same way that many years ago, RKO's station licenses were similarly and successfully challenged.
Labels: conservative media, electoral politics and influence, law and the legal process, media and communications
posted by Richard Layman @ 11:25 AM&Permanent Link
7 Comments:
The Washington Post: Opinion | Madison Cawthorn's vile lies about Jan. 6 reveal a big truth about the right.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/31/madison-cawthorn-lies-jan-6/
https://theconstitutionalist.org/2021/07/19/the-gops-minoritarian-defense-and-justificatory-schema/
Opinion by Dana Milbank
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/texas-shows-us-what-post-democracy-america-would-look-like/
On the fairness doctrine.
My defining source as a lobbyist was the telecom act of 1996 and trying to liberalize various telecom rules.
Liberalization has been great. Verizon and ATT are usually the two largest infrastructure investors in the US. In 1995 a t1 line would cost you several thousand a month, and today you can get that on your cell phone. *
I tend to view proponents of the fairness doctrine as people who got introduced to it in high school "civics" class in the 1980s and who haven't thought seriously about broadcast spectrum management since then.
The basic rule broadcast spectrum scarcity meant the licenses had to behave is inherently as stupid as George Carlin, the original neo-liberal pointed out with his little skit on certain words.
And lets be honest -- technology has evolved so many ways since 1985 to push out news to you that regulating broadcast tv - not cable -- was never going to work.
But a few stories:
1) My college girlfriend was Argentine and was constantly sick of me believing in the New York Times. She thought all media was a lie. She was correct. The sooner you realize the map is not the terrority the smarter we as as society can become.
2) RE: liberalization. I remember when the FCC pushed through rules to allow pay phones to go up in price for a quarter. I correctly predicted it would kill the market as nobody has exact change. Some rules may be needed.
3) I was reading about the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 which lints the number of house seats. Fascinating history. For my purposes one result it they took out the language on districts needing to be compact. We've got now almost 100 years of gerrymanders as a result. Maybe a few words can make a difference? (and yes, the CBC is mostly a racial gerrymander although the NYTIMES likes that).
4) Unlike you, I am not a 1st amendment fundamentalist, but can the government actually put limits on speech?. the FCC basis was scarcity. There would be no basis for cable TV internet, twitter, facebook etc.
5) Big ongoing fight on libel rules and whether NYTIMES vs SULLIVAN needs to be removed. Likewise the lawsuits by voting machines companies.
I do think there is a case to be made that the fairness doctrine is like the pay phone rules -- ended up killed broadcast tv news.
* Download speeds. We're still stuck in the 90s on upload speeds.
Tricky stuff. I grew up in Detroit, when Storer Broadcasting owned WJBK-TV (now Fox). It was the CBS station. Bob McBride was the GM and he, somewhat uniquely, used to do broadcast editorials, always ending with "What do you think? I'm Bob McBride." A signoff I obviously still remember today.
Probably the FD killed "magazine" shows on local broadcast television (and radio), although so did economics. But certainly, getting rid of public service requirements, different from FD, did them in.
Some such programs still exist here and there outside of PBS, but not many.
2. BUT, and you're the lawyer, I am not arguing FD or scarcity here, merely "fitness" to operate a television license using the public's airwaves.
It's a different argument altogether. One remnant of the law was that you had to be a US citizen to own a license, which is why Murdoch became a US citizen. (The law is different now. If foreigners can't own a station in full they can own a big proportion. I don't know the exact law.)
A convicted felon can't get a license to own a television station. That was what did RKO in.
I am arguing that Fox doesn't need to be convicted to demonstrate that they are a threat to the public interest. That they have demonstrated their unfitness to own a station reliant on use of the public's airwaves.
Just as RKO was deemed unfit first for their corporate conviction, and later for lying to the FCC.
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WRT the FD, I understand your point about scarcity. My understanding, and I never took broadcast law... is that its legal justification was based on the use of the public airwaves, which is why to me whenever people say FD bring it back, I say it wouldn't pertain to cable.
OTOH, since satellite is used to deliver signals to most cable system headends, even if encrypted, I suppose you could make the argument they are still using the public airwaves.
Similarly, if the US still owned the Internet backbone, theoretically the argument could be made for FD type guidelines.
----
I am more of a 1st Amendment absolutist, sure, but I have no idea of what path I would recommend in the current situation.
It's not "both sides" or multiple sides that's the issue [I am not to the point of your former gf, but I do recognize at the foundation, the NYT sees itself as US first and foremost], just the lies.
How can you stop the lying on cable television, without necessarily going to the FD.
2. The other thing I would do though is require overtly biased news sources to have to be opt in subscription.
You used the word fuck in a response. I fucking hate that we pay Fox money monthly as part of our cable television subscription even though we never watch it, Newsmax, OAN or "The Blaze" which also get our money.
If they stopped getting monthly capitation fees so automatically, their revenue stream would be crippled and they'd have to be more responsive (I hope) to the truth.
Climate change as another News Corp issue
The New York Times: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia to Ease Climate Change Denial.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/06/business/news-corp-climate-change.html
Opinion by Greg Sargent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/16/prri-poll-fox-news-jan-6-trump/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/28/broken-news-review-fired-fox-news-editor-chris-stirewalt-trump
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