Save democracy – ban Fox News
And, what as NBC News thinking?
Want to save American democracy and eliminate talk of stolen elections? Want to take a significant bite out of misinformation and damaging propaganda? Easy. Ban Fox News.
I realize it’s not realistic to ban Fox News. As a strong First Amendment advocate, I believe they have a right to exist. But a guy can dream!
If we can’t push a button to eliminate Fox from our landscape, then let’s do everything we can to discourage people from watching it. Here’s why.
A new poll from the New York Times and Sienna College shows that Republicans who get their news from non-conservative media outlets are less likely to support Donald Trump than those who strictly adhere to conservate outlets. And if we can wean those conservates off Fox and its brethren OAN and Newsmax, they are more likely to say that Trump acted criminally.
The poll says fully 100% of people who got their news only from Fox intend to support Trump in the general election. That is a sad commentary. It’s about as sad as entrance polling that showed two-thirds of Iowans attending the Republican caucuses in January believe Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.
Contrast that with Republicans who mix other mainstream media outlets into their diet – like CNN. Only 79% of them plan to vote for Trump, and 13% said they plan to vote for Biden.
The implications of that are clear. People who rely mostly on conservative news outlets have a warped view of the world. Fox News has already demonstrated – and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in civil damages – because they exist only to serve up what its audience wants to know – not what it needs to know. That means it’s an entertainment network – not a news network. It’s not journalism. It’s not responsible. And it’s not good for Democracy.
What was NBC News thinking?
It was a watershed moment this week when anchors at NBC News and MSNBC criticized their own network for hiring former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a political contributor. After three or four days of complaints, news executives reversed course and let McDaniel go. One wag commented she lasted not even a half-Scaramucci.
She is not the first political type to take a media job and she won’t be the last. George Stephanopoulos left the Clinton administration to do several on-air jobs at ABC News, currently serving as anchor of Good Morning America. Nicole Wallace, the liberal host of an afternoon news program on MSNBC, once worked in the George W. Bush White House.
The news networks like hiring former political operatives. It gives them access to information. It gives them insight into the process. I have no problem with CNN hiring conservative former Republican Senator Rick Santorum to comment on the day’s events.
But the Ronna McDaniel hire was over the line because she simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth. All politicians spin facts in their favor. But McDaniel went far beyond that by backing Trump’s campaign to overthrow the 2020 election.
Shortly after the election, she told Fox News, “Every illegal vote is stealing from a valid vote, and every state that conducted their election fraudulently is stealing from states that conducted their elections fairly.” She talked about “deceased voters” and “batches of votes that were invalidated.”
Remember the infamous news conference with Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, the one with hair dye running down Giuliana’s face? McDaniel let that happen at RNC headquarters.
There’s spin, and there’s advocacy for one’s position – and then there is lying. You can’t lie through your teeth and later try to pass it off as “just doing my job.” Well, I guess you CAN do all of that, but not if you want to be trusted as a credible analyst on a major news network.
So, bad job out of NBC News but at least they admitted the error in judgment. And kudos to their own anchors who shamed their bosses into reversing the decision.
Follow up to Gannett dropping the Associated Press
It’s been one week since the Des Moines Register and other Gannett newspapers dropped stories from the Associated Press, and so far, I don’t see much of a fall-off in news coverage. There are plenty of national and international stories from either the USA Today network or the Reuters wire service.
As I wrote last week, it may take a while to notice a real difference. Certainly, other Iowa AP members that depended on Register coverage will miss having access to that information. And the Register may find itself behind on breaking news stories out in the state that other AP members cover.
I counted five of ten stories in the Register’s Saturday, March 30th e-newspaper came from Iowa Capital Dispatch, an excellent online news service that lets newspapers use its stories for free.
We may never know how much of the money Gannett saved by dropping AP will be used to hire more local reporters and how much is dragged to the bottom line in an effort to close the $28 million dollar loss the company experienced last year.
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Dave, I haven't read your full article yet, but I have been saying for awhile and louder lately, Fox News is killing this country. When you hear things from the mouths of your "good" neighbors that you know come straight from Fox News or WHO radio, you just cringe. We are so much better than that!
When I see your column in my inbox it is always one of the first things I open. So glad you are writing it! About banning Fox News: I've also fanaticized about its demise and the good it would do America and the world but we understand we don't work that way. I think "we are what we eat" and removing propaganda from the low-information class would reduce some of the craziness. However, I suspect the opposite is also true...if you took away MSNBC, The New Yorker, The New York Times and maybe The Atlantic from my information diet, I would probably have a different outlook, too.