3 Unassailable Reasons Fox News is a Blight on America
--
There are a lot reasons ‘Fox News’ should be disqualified from legitimate news in America. These are the most important.
Founded in 1996, “Fox News” is a brand name and as such has no obligation to dispense “news” any more than Apple is required to plant apple trees. As an autonomous business entity in a free market, they’re well within their right to gin up any idea they want and broadcast it free of consequences from state or federal government intervention. This is a good thing, from a constitutionalist standpoint.
However, exceptions have been made where the hand of government takes rare, but decisive action in curbing businesses that threaten the foundation of the Republic and its capitalist scheme. Monopoly, for one, is a phenomenon that American government and society has taken action to prevent. In the past, when a business injects toxicity into the market, which in the case of monopoly means taking control of a market sector to the extent that it chokes out any viable competition, the government takes action.
This action, one can imagine, might be provoked by hopeful competitors, looking to cash in on the market the monopolistic company controls. With profit on the line, those hopeful competitors have plenty of motivation to light a fire under their friends in Congress.
The American People have no such motivation, or friends, particularly when the toxic control in question is over information decimated about political and social issues that shape governing bodies like Congress.
The following are three irrefutable arguments that the Fox News brand is toxic.
1. FCC Regulation
While some archaic laws remain for traditional broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and Fox), “cable news” networks are not required to register the purpose of their content with the FCC. For generations too young to remember a time before the Internet, back in the olden days, there were only a handful of TV networks to choose from. When industry experts talk about “networks” they’re typically talking about those four, original TV broadcasters. In the 80s, “cable” (and later “satellite”) came along and opened up the choices viewers had, from which to choose. Therefore, Fox News is a “cable” network, which is confusing because Fox is also an original (albeit the youngest of the four by 43 years) TV “network.” They are not subject to the same FCC regulations at its cousin, Fox Broadcasting.
Side note: it’s interesting to reflect on how significant it was when the FOX TV network showed up on the scene. NBC, CBS, and ABC ruled thecommercial airwaves for decades and then for an Australian-owned newspaper concern bought up a fledgling TV and film production studio and turned into a network. The Simpsons and Married with Children were the network’s two memorable hits, along with a salacious news program called, A Current Affair with guest host Bill O’Reilly. All of the early Fox shows were what I remember as “low brow” except for The Simpsons, to which I credit Matt Groening. It was a razor-sharp satire that masqueraded (and therefore survived) as a show about an American idiot (Homer Simpson).
Side-side note: How the hell did Simpsons creator, Matt Groening end up on Jeffery Epstein’s private jet?
Side-side-side note: It’s widely known that The Simpsons is News Corp CEO, Rupert Murdoch’s favorite show. Bart Simpson ostensibly put Fox on the map. I can imagine Murdoch feels grateful, if not indebted, to Groening for everything.
As pointed out in this helpful Quora post by Professor Donna Halper, “The FCC does not supervise a network’s content, nor does the FCC have a say over a network’s (or individual station’s) brand.” Therefore, a television network is permitted within the limits of the law to produce whatever information it wants under the First Amendment.
American views have six choices when it comes to television news: NBC News, CBS News, PBS NewsHour (my favorite), CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. The difference between Fox News and its television news competitors is a matter of ethical self governance, not some made up FCC classification. The five television news sources above impose a standard of journalism on themselves with no outside regulation other than their ad sales team—who, I assure you, as a ten-year veteran of television marketing, are some of the best in the business.
In short, there is no cultural, financial, government, or ethical check on the nation’s most popular information news network; a network who has, time and again, demonstrated willingness, if not tendency, to directly lie to its viewers about matters of health and safety, democracy, and the very society we live in as a people.
2. McDougal vs. Fox News Network
In McDougal v. Fox News Network, LLC, №1:2019cv11161 — Document 39 (S.D.N.Y. 2020), a federal judge dismissed a defamation suit brought by onetime Playboy Model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have an affair with then President Donald Trump, against Fox News in response to statements made on air by Tucker Carlson. McDougal’s story was purchased by the National Enquirer whose former chairman and CEO David Pecker, was a friend of Trumps. The magazine paid McDougal $150,000 and subsequently buried the story, a tactic referred to as “catch and kill,” intended to silence those attempting to speak truth to power. Mr. Carlson said McDougal intentionally extorted then President Trump during his 2016 US presidential election campaign, “in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair.”
According to Business Insider, the complaint stemmed from Carlson’s claim that McDougal “approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give [her] money.”
Accusing someone of a crime on TV without evidence is grounds for a civil suit in America. The problem was that Fox News lawyers successfully argued that Tucker Carlson was such a big liar, no reasonable person would ever take what he says seriously.
From the judges order:
The “‘general tenor’ of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’ “
“Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”
Tucker Carlson later produced a documentary about the January 6th Insurrection “full of falsehoods” and “conspiracy theories.” How this can go on is lunacy. Credit to this NPR piece for pulling quotes from the judges order above.
3. Foreign Ownership
I often wonder how many Fox News viewers who identify as American patriots know they’re watching a news channel founded and owned by a foreigner. Rupert Murdoch the billionaire chairman and CEO of News Corp, which owns Fox News, is not at all American. He’s Australian. I encountered Mr. Murdoch once at the News Corp offices in Midtown Manhattan. I worked there at the time, for the Wall Street Journal. One day, I looked over and there he was, being ushered in by a security guard who was brimming with joy over the sight of his boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’ boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. I remember him wearing a cobalt blue suit (no tie) and a pair of All Birds shoes. “Hello, sir!” The guard beamed as Mr. Murdoch crossed through the security gate. His unmistakable Australian accent and easy, “g’day mate”-charm was evident when he smiled and said hello in return. The strangest thing about it was how harmless, elderly, and kind he seemed.
While being Australian is not a crime that I’m aware of, there’s a sharp incongruity between the US nationalistic posturing Fox News projects in its 24-hours of daily programming contrasted with the fact that the puppet master pulling the strings there is simply not American.
I mean, hello…
Bonus: The Justice Holmes Problem.
“Shouting, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.” The difference between The Justice Holmes Problem and the issue of disinformation propagated by disinformation brands like Fox News is a matter of accountability. Shouting, “Fire!” implies there is a shouter, an individual, who if they’re lying about the threat of fire, can be apprehended and interrogated for motive. Information is an expression of truth, fraudulent or not. Truth is fundamentally relative, argues Plato. The threat of fire in a crowded theater, on the other hand, simply is or is not. One message (“Fire!”), one messenger (the shouter), to one audience (the crowded theater), about one issue (the threat of fire) cannot be compared to the complex media ecosystem through which disinformation is generated, distributed, and replicated across society, with a great deal of anonymity.
The US Constitution rightfully protects the freedom of speech in American media. However, it’s become apparent in the last two decades that our ideas about information need a rethink.
Dream with me for a moment, about a future where information is regarded like water, or air, or the environment.
Pollution is a concept that applies to more than just the natural world. Just as the night sky can be polluted by light, our media landscape, be it cable news or social spaces in the Metaverse, can be polluted by disinformation.
The pollution model suggests that there is a point of saturation, of critical mass. There is a quantifiable tipping point between a polluted freshwater pond and a cesspool.
