Talk show host privilege
This could be something to look forward to:
Rupert Murdoch rarely has to answer for the alternative realities presented by his hugely profitable US cable network, Fox News.
Its conspiratorial claims of a parade of cover ups from the 2012 Benghazi attack to the climate crisis and Covid-19 have been lapped up by Fox viewers and scorned by much of the rest of America, and then the world moved on.
Well…the world moved on but with more people believing Fox lies about Benghazi and the climate crisis and the pandemic. It’s not “Fox tells lies and then we move on and nothing bad happened”; it’s Fox tells lies and people believe them and this is why we can’t have nice things.
But on Tuesday, the 91-year-old billionaire media mogul will be obliged to answer difficult questions under oath about the inner workings of Fox.
The “under oath” bit is significant, because it means he’ll have problems if he lies and they can prove he lied. Murdoch and Fox are all about lying, so not lying will be tricky for him.
Dominion Voting Systems is suing the cable news station and its Murdoch-owned parent company, Fox Corp, for $1.6bn (£1.3bn) over repeated claims that it rigged its voting machines as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump.
The suit shines a spotlight on Fox News’ part in promoting Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign and its hand in driving the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. But legal experts say that Dominion, which supplied voting machines to 28 states, appears to be building a wider case that Fox News has a long history of misinformation and steamrolling facts that do not fit its editorial line.
Fox’s “alternative realities” and “misinformation” are not what news outlets should be dealing in. Journalism shouldn’t tell lies.
Fox got in trouble with Trump when they called the Arizona vote for Biden in 2020. So…
Fox News put a parade of Trump lawyers, advisers and apologists front and centre over the following weeks to promote a myriad of conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen from Trump, including by rigging the voting machines.
Alongside them, some of Fox’s biggest names took up the cry of fraud. NPR revealed that during the discovery process, Dominion acquired an email written by a Fox News producer begging colleagues not to allow one of those presenters, Jeanine Pirro, on the air because she was spreading conspiracy theories about the vote. Pirro, a former district attorney and judge who is close to Trump, continued broadcasting.
Lawyers have also obtained rafts of internal messages that are “evidence that Fox knew the lies it was broadcasting about Dominion were false” and part of a culture of politically loaded reporting and broadcasts far from the network’s claim to be “fair and balanced”.
Maybe they think the truth should be balanced with lies.
It reminds me of the left over the past decade or so. Some of us say we can’t just keep repeating these stupid lies over and over, and others of us say we can and we must and you who refuse are evil murdering demons.
Fox argues that Hannity and the other presenters are protected by journalistic privilege but that position has been complicated by the Fox host’s own description of his role.
In defending his overt bias in favour of Trump and Republicans, Hannity has more than once said he is not a journalist but a talk show host, and so does not have to adhere to the profession’s ethical standards. He took the same position earlier this year after the January 6 congressional committee exposed dozens of his messages to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, offering advice and seeking direction as the White House challenged the presidential election result.
He’s a talk show host who identifies as having journalistic privilege.
If the lies identify as truth, then don’t we have to be inclusive?
Sometimes it has seemed to me more like it’s “Fox tells lies and its viewers swallow them, so Fox makes up even bigger lies.”
The problem they seem to have encountered is that it’s easy to keep lying about things that happened far away, or under information restrictions, or which involve unprovable skullduggery by unnamed persons, but if the audience requires ever-increasing outrage, they will eventually tire of mushy insinuations. The angry audience they created wanted something bigger, and they might run off to more bizarre corners of the media without it. Accusing huge American corporations of specific crimes is where the process stops, because not only does it run afoul of the law but, more importantly, it offers a good income prospect for expensive lawyers. Belly up to the defamation buffet!
The folx at Fox must have wet their pants in excitement over the fact that the voting machines showing a Biden victory were owned by a company named “Dominion.” That word reverberates with their religious audience. The conspiracy theories just write themselves.
But Murdoch is far smarter than the pack of galahs populating the Fox couches and talking head spots. He is from the old order of conservatism, pre-maga and pre-Bush by a long way. He will not scorn the advice of his lawyers, and will not speak carelessly.
Some time ago a FOX affiliate, WTVT, successfully argued that, although the FCC has a policy against falsification, it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.