If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to how Fox News operates, the recent revelations from a legal filing come as no huge surprise.
From the moment it was founded in the mid-1990s, Fox has been a partisan outlet – very much by the design of its founder, Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and its founding chief executive, Roger Ailes. It never was the “fair and balanced” news source that its motto claimed. Calling it “conservative” has always been putting things far too mildly; but for a time, it observed a modicum of journalistic standards.
But Fox became much more extreme over the years, moving well outside the journalistic mainstream
That journalistic mainstream was so institutionally – more culturally than economic – lefty and woke that there was a vast gap to the centre of it.
The very fact that someone could turn up and broadcast stuff that chimed with tens to hundreds of millions of Americans is the very proof of that contention. The existence of Fox News is the proof that American journalism is/was too woke.
If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to how the Graun operates the revelations of its tax dodging hypocrisy come as no surprise. The fact that it presents itself as anti-racist, but happily publishes cartoons of a Conservative Home Secretary who is a Muslim as a fat floating pig shows it has never been “fair and balanced”.
Taking advantage of neoliberal tax laws constructed by a socialist Chancellor, it avoided a large amount of tax. Much like the rationale of the Socialist Diane Abbott Education Trust, which despises rich people sending their children to public school, but finds she has to send her own child to public school
Touche, Guv…
“It never was the “fair and balanced” news source that its motto claimed.”
The motto was taken from a Pew Media report into coverage of (as far as I recall) the 2004 Presidential election, in which the Left-leaning organisation found Fox to be the “most fair and balanced” of all the news networks.
The ‘journalistic mainstream’ has become lefter and lefter over the years. Even if Fox News hadn’t changed, the ‘mainstream’ would deem it to be righter and righter.
It’s not obliged to be a fair and balanced news source. It is privately owned and operated and is not subject to licencing arrangements and royal charter such as we have with the BBC. Good luck to ’em.
As someone else noted “Murdoch identified a niche market that represented about half the country”.
‘ But Fox became much more extreme over the years, moving well outside the journalistic mainstream..’
The ‘journalistic mainstream’ galloped progressively (grin) to the Left, so could it be that Fox didn’t move at all, it got left behind.
. . . and is not subject to licencing arrangements and royal charter such as we have with the BBC.
To be fair, BBC editorial isn’t subject to those either. It does whatever the fuck it wants.
@PJF – precisely, which is why it should be defunded. Then it can do whatever the fuck it wants legitimately.
Of COURSE she doesn’t even mention MSNBC.
This isn’t journalism. That word implies documenting what is happening in the world. No, this is fanfiction. She wants to live in a world where big, evil Murdoch is defeated by a frivolous lawsuit alleging that a cable network lies. Will there also be a lawsuit against every politician she and her opponents alike ever voted for?
This may as well be a WWE backstory. Just a bunch of corporate rivals wrestling in the mud. No one outside her Lenovo ThinkPad gives a shit.
Forget Fox News and MSNBC. CNN, the network all the corporate shills still believe is moderate, threatened to dox a private citizen over a meme he made poking fun at CNN. When the public accused them of blackmail, Brian Stelter said “It’s not blackmail, because he took it down, so we didn’t have to.”
CNN literally showed cities on fire and told their viewers these were “protests” that were “mostly peaceful.” They went after two young teenagers, one of whom had been through a traumatizing experience defending his life from three (white) people, and called both of them “white supremacists” in front of the entire world.
During Trump’s live Covid press conferences, CNN would only show Fauci and Birx’s footage, and then cut away to their analysts when Trump was speaking. Even when he was giving vital information about what the government was planning to do about the pandemic. Of course, every bit of NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS getting into petty cat fights during the questioning portion got its air time.
This Guardian blogger isn’t angry because of what Fox News does. She’s angry because other opinions are allowed, and the internet enables people to call out The Guardian on their bullshit, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Never let these journalists grovel about “truth.” Every single corporate media outlet, The Guardian and BBC included, will lie or omit even when it comes to pandemics, terrorist attacks and other times of crisis. They don’t care about you or your safety, only clicks. When a corporate journalist claims to stand for anything, or claims to play an important role in society, it’s akin to Kanye West claiming to be Jesus or Alec Baldwin thinking he’s tough in real life. They should be given the same amount of respect that is given to tobacco execs.
“The existence of Fox News is the proof that American journalism is/was too woke.”
Not if the accusations against it are true (which is that the staff pretened to believe things on air which they actually thought were completely false). That would have it proof that Americans cannot face the truth.
It’s inevitable that journalists are biased. One outlet may publish facts about false benefits claimants because it furthers their argument that benefits are excessive, while another may publish stories about people suffering hardship because it furthers their argument that benefits are insufficient. But neither should be publishing things that they believe to be untrue. Juornalists should present facts and their interpretations. We can make up plausible lies for ourselves, we don’t need journalists to do that.
Hmmm. Hard to get to a relatively non-biased description of the suit.
It ** appears** to be a suit against Fox because they allegedly did evil things like quoted Trump and his supporters too much, even when other sources had claimed they’d shown Trump et al to be wrong.
That’s violently different from Fox claiming that it, itself, knew the elections were twisted and that Dominion Voting Systems had twisted them deliberately by its own actions. On that basis, Trump should be able to clear a few trillion from the mainstream press.
One assumes that catual harm must also be shown – have DVS sales dropped off a cliff because MAGA supporters (shorthand) have stopped buying them?
The media coverage of the Twitter files tells you all you need to know about their belief in truth
I think this may be the actual filing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20527880-dominion-v-fox-news-complaint
which claims (amongst other things):
fictions included Fox falsely claiming that: (1) Dominion committed election fraud
by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election; (2) Dominion’s software and algorithms
manipulated vote counts in the 2020 Presidential Election; (3) Dominion is owned
by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for the dictator Hugo Chávez;
and (4) Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials who used its machines in
the 2020 Presidential Election.
3. Fox recklessly disregarded the truth. Indeed, Fox knew these
statements about Dominion were lies.