“Faith means not wanting to know what is true” Friedrich Nietzsche
Hell Broke Loose
On January 6th as the Capitol riot raged, Fox News anchors were (like their counterparts at other networks) visibly shaken and groping for words to report on the mayhem. Then, in the afternoon, Laura Ingraham called in to suggest that Antifa was the culprit behind the insurrection, despite zero evidence and in direct contradiction to what was playing out in real time. The anchors listened and began to nod in agreement. In that moment Fox chained itself like the Titan Prometheus, forever bound no matter how dark it would get to Trump, Trumpism and the Big Lie. Pundits had watched with considerable interest over the past two months as Fox grappled with a crisis of identity. Following election night, when they accurately called Arizona for Joe Biden, internal chaos broke out. A doorway opened up. They could tiptoe back into actual journalism, albeit conservative, or slither forever into the slurry of fake news that now included cheering on sedition. They chose their poison, the door slammed shut.
Good luck trying to find the headquarters of Antifa, but you can walk right into Fox Corporation on Sixth Avenue. If you ride up to the CEO’s office to give that cretinous prune Rupert a piece of your mind, I’ve got some bad news: Impossible to imagine I know, but premier Murdoch spawn, Lachlan is calling the shots now and Lachlan Murdoch might be the most nihilistic billionaire driving this country off a cliff, even worse than Mark Zuckerberg. Until we are all working from the same set of FACTS the country is in peril; and, sadly, Fox News does not give a FF about facts.
Daddy’s Boy
Ah, Lachlan, handsome, self-possessed, the winner of a sadistic “Succession”-like sibling rivalry scheme masterminded by Rupert ending with Lachlan’s appointment to CEO of Fox Corporation and the departure of his brother James and sister Elisabeth from the company entirely. An errant schoolboy who bounced in and out of various private schools eventually graduating from tiny Aspen Country Day School, in Colorado. He then studied philosophy at Princeton (hard to imagine a kid who barely graduated high school at a university with a 5% acceptance rate, but ya know how it is for the 0.00001%). Lachlan drifted over the decades away from the metaphysical eventually hardening into a pragmatist. It’s become the tell of a neo-liberal scion, like his on-air avatar Tucker Carlson AKA Fish Stick Man (heir to the Swanson Foods fortune), to see the world as a prop. Anything has that utility; family, entire swaths of the population, institutions like law or elections is fair game to fill their maw of greed.
There is no ethical or moral bar, already set preposterously low by Rupert, that these two won’t dive under. With the boss’s blessing, Tucker Carlson is on air nightly lying his bow-tied tussle-haired head off, his eyes brimming with faux boyish perplexity (Tucker Carlson is 50) injecting fear, bigotry, and stupidity into 4.5 million households. Tucker is the de facto big cheese at Fox and his stink permeates throughout the other shows. He spews a cascade of bullshit on dozens of topics including Climate Crisis, George Floyd’s murder, Bill Gates, 5G, even the Biden’s marriage. The most egregious being rejection of the election results and distrust for Covid-19 public safety measures; mask wearing, social distancing and now the vaccines. Except when Fox is being sued, as it is right now in two separate multi-billion dollar legal actions brought by Dominion and Smartmatic makers of voting machines (which Fox is seeking to get dismissed) they never dial it down, there is no mea culpa, no meaningful discussion. Murdoch & Carlson aren’t throwing a competitor under the bus to make a profit, they are running America over with the bus.
Momento Mori
When I describe Lachlan Murdoch as a nihilist I mean he is less than shameless. The probity of his corporation is meaningless, facts and American democracy are disposable. Let’s not mince words, Fox is helping to lay the groundwork for minority rule by a corrupt fascist Republican Party that refuses to detach itself from the guy that lost the presidential election and 70 court battles trying to overthrow it. Tucker’s audience is around 4 million. That is huge in the nightly news world. Plus the reprinting, tweeting, other shows and radio hosts parroting him, the so called “right wing media echo chamber,” aggregation is colossal.
Truth and Consequences
November 3, 2020. Fox had prepped heavily for the election. Rupert himself had okayed the purchase of a sophisticated election prediction system developed by Associated Press. Fox was the only network to invest in this system after the 2016 election and they were proud of it. Their method would be best-in-class. They hired experts and political analysts, including Chris Stirewalt, Bill Sammon, and data wonk Arnon Mishkin. It would be accurate. It would be honest. And in fact it was both. That’s how it all fell apart. Their data projected that Biden would take Arizona so they called it relatively early in the night. They almost called Georgia too, which would have also been correct! Welp, Donald Trump proceeded to have a titanic meltdown at the White House and Fox viewers, who had been fed a non-stop buildup that the election would be stolen for many months, went ballistic. They defected immediately en masse for somewhere that Trump was the rightful winner. Until recently. there was no other safe harbor for this cultivated ultra-MAGA audience. But now there are two networks where they can marinate in alternative facts: Chris Ruddy’s Newsmax and Robert Herring’s OAN.
Ass Up Head Down
Just as the Republican Party is now a bottom up organization where the unmoored-from-reality trump base dictates what the party “leaders” can say and do, Fox viewers (the same charming folks) are in control of the network. They demand a steady diet of bias confirmation or they will immigrate to Newsmax and OAN. To mollify them, Murdoch fired the election team which had become a lightening rod and shuffled the lineup to feature more of the insidious palp they crave. Right wing media (and politicians) are defined by their mendacity and cowardice. So called leaders are terrified of losing the support of maniacs they wouldn’t be caught dead with at a party or in a dark alley.
The Fox Tax
Part of every monthly cable television bill includes channels we don’t watch. The cable providers ‘bundle’ an assortment, newbies like Cheddar, oldies like TNT, passing the cost to consumers. Most channels have carriage fees of $0.50-$1.35/month. ESPN is the most expensive at a whopping $7.80 because, you know, sports. Fox News is the second most expensive at $2.00. CNN is $1.00 and CNBC is $0.55. Big contracts between Fox and cable providers are up for renewal in 2021. Fox has been savvy about negotiating a high rate, because of their loyal audience. Customers don’t get to cherry pick their channels or we haven’t yet, but it’s time to try.
A quick word on boycotting advertisers. Boycotts against Fox advertisers are definitely taking their toll. From an average of 30 spots per show they are down to 14; a loss of $100 million in revenue. Fox is now its own largest advertiser. The thing is, Fox News earns 75% of its revenue from the distribution and Lachlan is angling to increase the Fox News carriage fee to $3.00-3.50/month. At that rate, Fox would become 100% immune to ad loss. There are 90 million cable viewers in the U.S. and 3.5 million watch Fox News, yet every one of us pay a Fox Tax of ~$2 per month, roughly $20 per year. 90,000,000 subscriptions x $20 = $1.8 billion. 90,000,000 x $3.50 = $3.7 billion every year in perpetuity. Murdoch, Carlson, Hannity etc. are ramping up the crazy to keep those viewers on the network in order to leverage customer loyalty during contract negotiations. We can’t let them win. Two points; many cable companies are private and not beholden to shareholders demands, and everyone hates their cable company. There’s a way for them to earn some good will with customers and Congress, which is investigating the providers’ responsibility in pushing fake news, especially as it related to the MAGA Insurrection.
One key to stifling trump fascism is to unbundle Fox from cable packages around the country. If they were paid solely on their viewers, the cost would so outpace the revenue, it would be untenable. We need to tell our cable companies to Get Fox Off Our Box! Media Matters, a media watchdog group https://www.mediamatters.org has created a movement called #UNFOXMYCABLEBOX and I urge you to click on the link below and share far and wide. Write an email or call your cable company. Write a big note on your bill. Tell everyone, put it in the local paper, post it on Facebook and group texts. Call your representatives. Yes, OAN and Newsmax are problematic, but they don’t have as 1/5the influence as Fox. Click on this link and seriously, Let’s Do This.
A primary role of the press is to advocate and frame political issues, to report on politicians, in whose hands the fate of countries lie. This power is so crucial that the media is often called the Fourth Estate. Referring to the 1870 English concept of ‘the order of the realm’; the nobility, the clergy and the commoners being estates 1-3, the press is number 4, ahead of academia or science.
A free press is the cornerstone of democracy. A fascist wields the media as a misinformation weapon to sow distrust in public institutions and anyone opposing him. Fox News is the Republicans’ bullhorn. We have no option but to try our best to take them down by any means possible.
*Thanks to Gary John Bishop for unwittingly allowing me to mangle the title of his book Unf*ck Yourself Get out of your head and into your life.