What Is Journalism Today? Part Two
A World of Alternative Facts Is a World of Lies
Trump-allied lawyer Sidney Powell sent Fox an email full of wild claims from a woman claiming to be a decapitated time-traveler, according to a recent court filing.
—so says a recent news article.
Even as journalists historically shaded the truth, hid facts and ginned up public support for pet causes, they still owned some tether to a world of facts, and of facts that could be checked. Journalists did not engage in utter fabulism—not generally, anyway.
Today, some do.
Above, I am referencing a story involving Fox News, the most popular “news” organization in the nation. This organization reportedly is now engaged in outright, known, pernicious, continuing lies.
Recent testimony in a lawsuit brought against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems reveals that Fox commentators lied to the public. Fox had perpetuated a former President’s disgraceful contention that the election he lost was “stolen”, and that Dominion, a manufacturer or voting machines, was a culprit. Dominion sued. Fox tried to have the case thrown out, but it is proceeding.
And the testimony obtained in this trial is plain.
It reveals Fox News knew Trump’s claims were outrageous lies. More than one of their anchors, including Sean Hannity, sent texts showing that they knew Trump was wrong at best, and probably a liar. But for political/financial reasons, they parroted his talking points and promoted them to the American public as if they were facts.
Shading facts, obscuring truths, misdirecting attention: these have long been pitfalls, if not practices, of journalism generally. But the real trouble comes when journalists participate in wholesale and total fabrication. As shown above.
This is a new thing in this country. We have never seen public figures, with large public platforms, talk about their personal inventions as if they were as real as the day is long. We have never had attorneys invited on to news forums claiming to have received information from decapitated time travelers.
No, this is a new and terrifying turn of events. Too many vulnerable simpletons are set up to believe this nonsense and the hatred that lies just below its surface.
To be fair, many pundits are saying Fox News has a grievous exposure to massive judgments against it. This cluster of serial liars (aka Fox News) may have collectively discovered the practical limits of open, pervasive and continuing lies in a pluralistic society. Fortunately, it is still legal to sue for slanderous lies. And because we live in a nation where “corporations are people”, a corporation like Dominion Voting can claim enormous damage to its business—and spend the money to prosecute their case.
There is a chance our mostly-broken political system can perhaps self-correct in this fashion.
Maybe Fox News gets hit so badly in the pocketbook that they are forced to accept at least minimum standards for fact-verification.
But I am not placing any bets on that.
In any case, Fox News, while it may be a culprit, is far from the only purveyor of open, persistent and damaging lies in this country. Also complicit are Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. They are complicit insofar as they enjoy enormous profits (or at least FB/Meta does) by selling ads supported by the outrageous and damaging lies posted by “members of the public”.
They are free to do this because they are both shielded from liability and empowered to censor. They are shielded and empowered by a law that was passed in the 1990s, a time when legislators perhaps could not have foreseen what the Internet was about to become. This law is popularly known as Section 230. In effect, it gives a Facebook the right to censor anyone on its own platform (which, of course, is not truly censorship) while, at the same time, owning exactly zero liability for any harm caused by anything posted on Facebook.
The impact of Section 230 on the mental health of the nation has been ruinous. I will get to it more substantially on my next post.