Random Blogging – Page 44

Capitalism And The News

I wonder whether it will matter.

“It” of course, refers to the revelations that Fox “News” knowingly and intentionally lied to its audience, in order to keep the sheep from abandoning Fox for outlets willing to feed them their desired conspiracy theories.

The Dominion lawsuit has done America a huge service. Lawyers for the company have amassed an absolutely astounding amount of evidence supporting Dominion’s allegations of willful prevarication by a company pretending to be engaged in journalism. I titled this post “Capitalism and the News” because Rupert Murdoch admitted that the decision to promote what everyone at Fox knew to be a Big Lie wasn’t prompted by “red or blue. It was about the green.”

Fox was protecting its bottom line. If facts threatened that bottom line, then facts had to go. (Cozying up to the Trumps was part of that effort: Murdoch also admitted giving Jared Kushner access to Biden campaign ads before they aired.)

Sane folks have long known that Fox was a propaganda arm of the GOP, not a legitimate news organization, and real journalists and pundits have pounced on the evidence.. One of the more thoughtful responses came from David French.

To understand the Fox News phenomenon, one has to understand the place it occupies in Red America. It’s no mere source of news. It’s the place where Red America goes to feel seen and heard. If there’s an important good news story in Red America, the first call is to Fox. If conservative Christians face a threat to their civil liberties, the first call is to Fox. If you’re a conservative celebrity and you need to sell a book, the first call is to Fox.

And Fox takes those calls. In the time before Donald Trump, I spent my share of moments in Fox green rooms and pitching stories to Fox producers. I knew they were more interested in stories about, say, religious liberty than most mainstream media outlets were. I knew they loved human-interest stories about virtuous veterans and cops. Sometimes this was good — we need more coverage of religion in America, for example — but over time Fox morphed into something well beyond a news network.

As French noted, the Fox propaganda-as-business model has made it immensely popular on the Right, where it commands significant loyalty.

But that kind of loyalty is built around a social compact, the profound and powerful sense in Red America that Fox is for us. It’s our megaphone to the culture. Yet when Fox created this compact, it placed the audience in charge of its content…

As the Trump years wore on, the prime-time messaging became more blatant. Supporting Trump became a marker not just of patriotism but also of courage. And what of conservatives, like me, who opposed Trump? We were “cowards” or “grifters” who sold our souls for 30 pieces of silver and airtime on MSNBC.

Our disagreement was cast as an act of outright betrayal. People like me had allegedly turned our backs on our own community. We had failed in our obligation to be their voice…

In the emails and texts highlighted in the Dominion filing, you see Fox News figures, including Sean Hannity and Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, referring to the need to “respect” the audience. To be clear, by “respect” they didn’t mean “tell the truth” — an act of genuine respect. Instead they meant “represent.”

That sort of “representation,” of course, is not journalism. (Although French doesn’t use the term, the word “prostitution” comes to mind…)

French says that Fox embodies the “possibly apocryphal remark of the French revolutionary Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: ‘There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.'”

In a recent podcast, John Stewart made a different comparison: Fox is the “old dope peddler,” and it knows that failure to supply its addicts’ need will cause the loss of its customers.

Conservatives like French have already dissociated themselves from today’s GOP, so the question really is whether any intellectually honest people remain. How will the crazies spin the internal communications and testimonies of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and even Rupert Murdoch, proving beyond a doubt that they all knowingly promoted a lie because they knew their audience wanted that lie–and that failure to provide it would hurt their ratings and bottom line.

As Talking Points Memo put it,

The American descent towards authoritarianism, minority rule, and insurrection doesn’t happen without Fox News. It doesn’t happen only because of Fox News, but it’s been a critical ingredient in the toxic stew of misinformation, grievance, and division.

These stunning revelations ought to spell the end of Fox. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Addicts need their fix, and Fox is a willing supplier….

Truth can be so uncomfortable.

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Ceding My Space

Phil Gulley is a Quaker pastor in Camby, Indiana–one of Indianapolis’ bedroom communities. He lives in Danville, another small community. Gullley is also a humorist; he writes for the Indianapolis Monthly and for the Danville Republic, among other publications. He has graciously given me permission to share the following essay, which focuses on America’s future prospects.

When I am tempted to say something critical about “churchy” folks (as I often am) I think about Phil and about several good friends who are members of the clergy. (Those of you reading this know who you are!) They are all truly good human beings “walking the walk” of their various faiths–and their presence in the community and in my life reminds me that painting any group of people with too broad a brush is bigotry.

Here’s Phil’s essay.
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The study of American history requires a keen eye for irony. It began when Thomas Jefferson, an enslaver of some 600 souls, was charged with writing the first draft of The Declaration of Independence, which included these soaring words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For something that was self-evident, equality wasn’t apparent to Jefferson, nor to the 48 other founding fathers who held enslaved people, hence the irony.

Women were not accorded the right to vote for the first 144 years of our nation’s history, and not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did Blacks gain that right, though even today, in some of our more benighted states, that right is under steady assault by those who laud freedom in one moment and deny it to others in the next. As I said, one must have a keen eye for irony.

A more recent head-scratcher occurred after our last presidential election when a mob of miscreants, moaning about the demise of American democracy, nearly dealt it a death blow by storming the Capital Building to halt the peaceful transfer of power. As of this writing, over a thousand rioters have been charged, with one glaring exception, the Rioter-in-Chief, Donald Trump, who so far remains free. So much for that old American chestnut that no man is above the law.

Even now, those who crow the loudest about American exceptionalism are the same ones bemoaning our nation’s supposed fragility, daring to call those who believe most strongly in America’s promise of equality “snowflakes.” (Again with the irony.) If the United States of America should ever end, it will not be at the hands of those who demand equality, but at the hands of those who demand rights and privileges for themselves, while cunningly denying them to others. Should those robbed of their freedoms dare to complain or march or organize, their silence is demanded, their compliance required. Let a woman insist on the right to make her own medical decisions, let people of color decry police brutality, and all of a sudden America is perilously close to collapse, the end times are near, the socialists are coming.
It should come as no surprise that our faint-hearted brethren have draped themselves in the garments of religion, cloaking their tyranny in divine authority. It is God they are fighting for, not themselves. Or so they claim. Robert Ingersoll, a Republican when Republicans were sane, famously said of our founders, “They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought.” Fanatics and zealots are, and have been since our founding days, the gravest threat to America’s future. If we are imperiled, it is because of them.

But I am an optimist. I believe these lovers of piety and power, posing as lovers of freedom, will be seen for who they are. I believe wise Americans will reject their shrill demands, will recognize their crocodile tears as performative art and nothing more, and will dedicate themselves to a better America. As is nearly always the case, the younger among us will see what their elders refuse to see, that “freedom” which comes at the expense of another is not freedom at all, but oppression masquerading as liberty, and they will stand against it, and our nation will be saved.

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To which I say, “amen.”

See you tomorrow.

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Business? Or Profession?

I suppose it comes down to ethics, and the different ethical concerns applicable to different ways of making one’s living.

If I were to open a shop, my primary focus would be on my bottom line. I would certainly be obliged to operate honestly, and to treat my customers and employees fairly, but the primary focus of business is making a profit.

We have the right to expect doctors, lawyers, and other professionals to abide by additional ethical obligations–standards appropriate to the practice of those professions.

Journalism is one such profession–and when major news organizations are owned and managed by entrepreneurs focused solely on the bottom line, citizens are robbed of one of the most important protections of small-d democracy. When a purportedly “fair and balanced” media ignores any obligation to truthfulness in order to make money pandering to the biases of a designated portion of the population, the result is increased polarization leading to civic unrest and even violence.

Which brings me to recent revelations about Fox “News.”

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Fox News faced an existential crisis. The top-rated cable news network had alienated its Donald Trump-loving viewers with an accurate election night prediction for Joe Biden and was facing a terrifying ratings slide, not to mention the ire of a once-loyal president.

Concern came from the very top: “Everything at stake here,” Rupert Murdoch messaged Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.

The billionaire founder was eager to see the Republican candidate prevail in the coming Senate runoff in Georgia — “helping any way we can,” he wrote. But he also advised Scott to keep an eye on the uptick in ratings for a smaller, more conservative channel whose election skepticism suddenly seemed to be resonating with pro-Trump viewers.

Newly released messages show Fox executives fretting that month over an uncomfortable revelation: that if they told their audience the truth about the election, it could destroy their business model.

It is one thing to protect the Free Speech rights of news outlets and reporters who are simply mistaken, or for commentators to report matters that they believe to be true, even when they aren’t. But Fox folks weren’t mistaken. They knew they were lying. The network abandoned its professional obligations in order to protect its bottom line. It gave its audience the lies that audience wanted desperately to believe.

What Fox’s loyal viewers wanted to watch — and what Fox News was willing to do to keep them — emerged this week as a central question in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.

As it conducted discovery in that lawsuit, Dominion uncovered reams of internal correspondence and other evidence, information that became public last week via a court filing. The evidence showed Fox executives and on-air stars privately dismissing the “wild and false claims of a stolen election” that they proceeded to promote on air.

“Sidney Powell is lying,” prime-time star Tucker Carlson wrote to his producer about a Trump lawyer who had appeared on Fox and spewed baseless accusations. “There is NO evidence of fraud,” anchor Bret Baier wrote to one of his bosses.

The linked article quotes from numerous internal communications demonstrating that Fox willingly and knowingly lied in order to protect its “market share.”

As another article on the disclosures reported, a network executive in charge of prime-time programming warned that Newsmax’s brand of “conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled [Fox News Channel] viewer is looking for.” As a result, he added, Fox should not “ever give viewers a reason to turn us off. Every topic and guest must perform.”

A lawyer who knowingly misrepresented the law in order to keep a paying client would risk being disbarred. A doctor who knowingly misdiagnosed a patient in order to keep the dollars flowing would risk losing his medical license. Although the Society of Professional Journalists has promulgated a Code of Ethics, I am aware of no similar enforcement mechanism.

The primary ethical obligation of journalists–as set out in that Code of Ethics–is to: Seek Truth and Report It. That includes fact-checking, not intentionally distorting information, identifying sources, avoiding stereotypes, and supporting the open exchange of opinions. Most non-MAGA Americans already understood that Fox disdains and ignores those ethical obligations, but it is really stunning to read internal communications showing utter contempt for truth or fidelity to fact.

In the absence of a professional body able to impose sanctions for blatant ethical violations, Dominion’s lawsuit has done America a great service. Whether the unarguable evidence will be sufficient to awaken even a small percentage Fox’s devoted MAGA viewers is, of course, a different question.

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Fantastic News

One of the recurring themes of this daily blog (okay, perhaps “recurring rants” would be more accurate) has been my insistence on the importance of local journalism. When a community loses a credible source of local news, it experiences a number of very negative consequences–the most obvious of which is a loss of democracy, thanks to the lack of information needed to cast informed votes.

I thought about that when a reader of this blog sent me a report that began with the following introductory paragraph:

The Houston Chronicle is shining a bright light on some of the shadiest real estate dealsthat enrich charter school operators. What could be better than to get a charter, buy property, rent it to the charter at rates of their choosing, get the property made tax-exempt, and make a bundle using taxpayer dollars? In some charter schools, the superintendent owns the properties and pays himself rent.

Here in Indianapolis, local television stations have repeatedly been running an ad asserting the “unfairness” of charter school funding that is lower than that of public schools, and our legislative overlords are currently working hard to send more of our tax dollars to voucher and charter schools–schools that even Republican legislators admit lack accountability.

Misbehaviors like those the Houston newspaper uncovered are unlikely to be uncovered by our local “ghost newspaper,” the Indianapolis Star. Never a particularly good newspaper, Gannett has turned it into a pathetic shadow of even its undistinguished past.

Little by little, however, new efforts to improve local coverage have been emerging. I have begun quoting from the Indiana Capital Chronicle, which focuses primarily on the disaster that is our legislature, and I have pointed to outlets covering other matters of local concern. But the IBJ has now reported what I consider fantastic news. ( behind a paywall)

The Indiana Local News Initiative announced its launch Wednesday as a not-for-profit media organization planning to create newsrooms in Indianapolis and Gary.

With more than $10 million raised and the participation of civic leaders such as Penske Entertainment Corp. CEO Mark Miles and Women’s Fund of Central Indiana President Tamara Winfrey-Harris, the Indiana Local News Initiative said it intends to report nonpartisan information at no cost to its audience.

“This is public service journalism,” said Karen Ferguson Fuson, former publisher of The Indianapolis Star, who is serving as board chair of the new organization. “It’s ‘What do I need to engage in citizenship and democracy?’ ‘What do I need to live on a day-to-day basis?’”

The project started with a concern about protecting democracy. The steering committee began with the premise that a free press is critical to a free democracy, and research has confirmed Indiana’s “big gap” in coverage of local,” boots-on-the-ground community journalism.”

In addition to the 25 staff members to be hired for the Indianapolis newsroom, the Initiative will include funding for two new positions at The Indianapolis Recorder.

The Initiative will collaborate with existing media companies; its roster includes The Indianapolis Star, WISH-TV, WFYI Public Media and the Recorder. IBJ has not signed on as a partner.

While Indy is among a shrinking number of markets that still has multiple news outlets with talented journalists, the sizes of many of these outlets are a fraction of what they were before, and a fraction of the size necessary to cover all of the things central Indiana residents say they want,” Ferguson Fuson said.

The Lumina Foundation, one of the Indiana Local News Initiative’s partners, is providing support to TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website authored by Franklin College journalism students, to make its content available for free to members of the Hoosier State Press Association. The website previously required newsrooms to pay a fee.

Funders include the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, Herbert Simon Family Foundation, Myrta Pulliam, Lumina Foundation, John Mutz, Michael Arnolt, the Robert R. and Gayle T. Meyer Family Fund, Gene D’Adamo, Joyce Foundation, the Indianapolis Foundation and the American Journalism Project.

The Indiana Local News Initiative plans to train and pay residents, known as “Indianapolis Documenters,” to attend public meetings and publish the results. The Documenters Network, overseen by not-for-profit media organization City Bureau, presently operates in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and Cleveland….

The Indiana Local News Initiative is the latest media startup in Indianapolis, where not-for-profit The Capital Chronicle debuted last July and State Affairs Indiana debuted in December. Last August, digital media company Axios announced plans to launch a daily email newsletter in Indianapolis.

These efforts to combat our news desert are incredibly heartening. When people receive credible, trustworthy news and inhabit the same information environment, they not only become informed voters–they once again become members of the same community.

I’m a happy camper!

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Why They’re Leaving The Church

Christianity in America has been losing adherents, and the loss has become too pronounced to ignore. Reaction to that loss has been one of the more obvious motivators of White Christian Nationalists’ prolonged tantrum.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the media was filled with reports that–while “mainstream” Christian churches were losing ground–that loss was offset by the growth of Evangelical “mega churches.” Today, the reports are that those Evangelical churches are also in decline.

The question, of course, is why.

A Guardian article a while back addressed the phenomenon, and the purported reasons for it

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

The report noted that a large number of churches are being “repurposed” into cafes, museums and shops, reminding me of my last trip to visit my son in Amsterdam, where repurposed Churches seemed to be on every corner.

Here in the U.S. the pandemic has come in for a good deal of blame: researchers note that when people break the habit of Sunday church attendance, it requires some significant effort to get them back.

But a more likely diagnosis is the decreasing religiosity of the American population.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

As the article noted, some of the reasons were logistical–prompted by people moving away for college or starting jobs which made it difficult to attend church. But–as the research also found–other reasons were more philosophical. When researchers asked why they had broken with their churches, one of the top answers was that the respondent saw church members as judgmental and hypocritical.

About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues.

A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64% in 2020, with 30% of the US population being classed as “religiously unaffiliated”. About 6% of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

“Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’,” Pew wrote.

“This accelerating trend is reshaping the US religious landscape.”

In 1972 92% of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported, but by 2070 that number will drop to below 50% – and the number of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans – or ‘nones’ will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity.

Scholars of religion quoted in the article noted that the move away from religion occurred much earlier in other countries.

“Canada, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the nones rise much earlier, the wake of the 1960s the baby boom generation, this kind of big, growing separation of kind of traditional Christian moral morality,” Bullivant said.

“What happens in America that I think dampens down the rise of the nones is the cold war. Because in America, unlike in Britain, there’s a very explicit kind of ‘Christian America’ versus godless communism framing, and to be non-religious is to be un-American.

That belief–that one must be religious–or actually, White and Christian–in order to be a “true” American permeates the current White Christian Nationalist movement. Rage at the decline of that (ahistorical) insistence is fueling what I’ve characterized as a “tantrum,” leading to periodic eruptions of violence like that of the January 6th insurrection, which was striking for its numerous displays of Christian imagery.

A few days ago, a commenter to this blog noted that animals are most vicious when cornered, and that much of the rage we are seeing is triggered by similar perceptions of growing irrelevance. I think it’s a valid analogy.

The question is, how long does it take to tame that rabid animal?

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