The Misinformation Bureau
Fox News misinforms it viewers to make money and if you don't believe me, just ask Rupert Murdoch…
So it turns out a whole bunch of people at Fox News thought Donald Trump’s claims of the presidential election being stolen were phony, but didn’t want to say that on the air because they were scared of losing viewers.
And we know this because Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion (oddly enough, if you repeatedly air allegations that a company that makes voting hardware helped rig an election, that company might get pissed off and sue you for defamation) and during court filings, evidence emerged that people at Fox News thought the stolen election claims were bullshit, but didn’t want to say so publicly.
Dominion is arguing that Fox News was airing claims they believed to be false and Fox News is arguing that it’s OK to air those claims as long as the claims are newsworthy…which makes me wonder:
If Rudy Giuliani smears another tin of shoe polish on his head and holds a press conference in the parking lot of a landscaping company to announce he’s actually a Lizard-Being from the planet Zeno, if that would also be considered newsworthy because I for one would really want to see that.
Now here’s a quote from an Associated Press story:
“Dominion says Fox was, in effect, torn between the truth that Joe Biden legitimately won the race and pleasing viewers who wanted to believe Trump’s lies.”
Here’s a link to the story if you want to read more about the legal issues involved:
https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-libel-defamation-voting-machines
Rupert Murdoch had to do a deposition, but rejected the idea that as an “entity” Fox News endorsed Donald Trump’s lies about getting cheated and election fraud, but conceded that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and former host Lou Dobbs promoted “falsehoods” about the 2020 presidential contest being stolen.
And you can’t slice your baloney much thinner than that.
In other words: Fox News did not endorse Trump’s lies, it was just the employees of Fox News, so next time we use the Marines to invade a country and people get pissed off about it, maybe we should say as an “entity” the United States did not invade your country, that was just our employees.
Fox News argues that they were just covering claims made by others, but according to the following article, outside observers say Fox News will have a hard time selling that version of reality because even though they didn’t believe her, they gave Sydney Powell a platform and didn’t correct her in real time when she made claims they believed to be false.
And if you want to read more about all that, here’s the article:
And here’s another article (lots of links today, which you probably won’t use, but I want you to know where I’m getting my information) and this one’s from NPR quoting an attorney for Fox News, Erin Murphy, who defends giving nutjobs a platform by saying:
“We err on the side of speech because the more and more speech you have, the better chance of having people actually getting the opportunity to point out what’s right and what’s wrong. And that’s why we don’t suppress the speech we don’t think is right.”
Which explains why so many Liberals and Democrats are featured on Fox News.
(OK, just kidding.)
The most impressive thing about Erin Murphy’s statement is that, as far as I can tell, she didn’t burst out laughing while making it.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161221798/if-fox-news-loses-defamation-dominion-media
During his deposition Murdoch said it was “wrong” for Tucker Carlson to host conspiracy theorist and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell after the election, but when Murdoch was asked why he continued to let Lindell appear on Fox News, Rupert said:
“It is not red or blue, it’s green.”
One of the major mistakes most of us make is assuming that people who are rich and own companies (and that definitely includes baseball teams) must be smart or they wouldn’t have gotten as far as they have, but one law professor said Murdoch’s admission that he was motivated by profit undercuts the argument that Fox News was airing false claims because those claims were newsworthy.
So now we know the bottom line on Fox News: it’s willing to misinform its viewers if misinforming its viewers makes them money. And if telling your audience what they want to hear is your business model, I’m assuming the Philadelphia viewers of Fox News were thrilled when they heard the Eagles won the Super Bowl.
In any case…I used the news that scientists had discovered the Earth has five layers, not four, to speculate what the fifth layer consists of.
According to the New York Times, conservative media – including Fox News and Fox business and Newsmax and One America News and a metric shit ton of right-wing websites and podcasts (y’know…the people who are unafraid to tell you the truth the “Lame Stream Media ” won’t) – have ignored the story about Fox News misleading their viewers and if you want to read more about that, here’s the article from those scaredy-cats at the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/03/business/media/fox-dominion-conservative-media.html
According to the Los Angeles Times, the war in Ukraine has countries buying up arms because nobody knows what’s going to happen next or who’s going to get pissed off at who and/or whom and the increased military spending has weapons companies stock at their best level in years.
So next time someone like me asks: “War, what is it good for?”
Feel free to answer: “The people who sell bullets.”
According to the following article from the Brookings Institute website (they call themselves “non-partisan” but other people have called them “centrist” or “liberal” or “right-wing” so take your pick) forgiving student loans would be “staggeringly” expensive.
Depending on which version you look at, it could cost $373 billion (Biden’s version) or $1 trillion (Senators Warren and Schumer’s version) or $1.6 trillion (Bernie Sanders version) so, yeah, that’s a shit load of money any way you slice it and here’s a link to that article:
OK, so forgiving student loans is staggeringly expensive and Republicans have accused Biden of trying to buy votes and according to the following article from the New York Times, people with college degrees are more likely to be Democrats and/or Liberals, so the Republicans might actually be on to something, although “Most Uneducated People Are On Our Side” isn’t much of campaign slogan:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-graduates-vote.html
Full confession: I do not have a college degree and I’m pretty sure I graduated high school by the skin of my teeth which would suggest I ought to be a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan or, at the very least, a Junior Senator from Missouri, but somehow I became a Pinko Liberal and I blame reading books.
Anyway…
According to the following article on the Politico website (and it’s described as “leaning left” or “moderate”) Donald Trump’s Tax Cut for the Rich and the Corporations They Own cost $2.3 trillion and Republicans were just fine with that.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/tax-cuts-trump-gop-analysis-430781
So I think the lesson here is politicians of both parties are willing to use our money to buy votes and get reelected so they can go to Washington and spend all day accusing the Other Party of being The Cause of All Our Problems and then get together that evening at a Georgetown cocktail party and share a good laugh about what a bunch of rubes we are.
So while I’m not sure I support paying off loans for people who seem to have a dim understanding of interest rates and how they work, I am sure politicians are being hypocrites.
The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by the news that parts of California had been hit with 15 feet of snow and if there’s any good news when it comes to climate change, it’s that this time around Noah’s Ark could be much smaller because we’re killing off so many species.
According to the following story from NBC News, since the 1600s human have driven at least 680 vertebrate species to extinction (which means most politicians are totally safe) and about 1 million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction and if we keep getting snowstorms that dump 15 feet of snow on us, we might be on that list.
OK, that’s it for today and sorry if this one ran a little long, but there was a lot to unpack in that story about Fox News and maybe you should send them an email telling them what news you want to hear, like maybe Rupert Murdoch kicking Sean Hannity in the nuts and if that happens I really hope they’ve got video.
About 20 years ago give or take I had a conversation with a MO state senator from St Joseph during which he Republicansplained to me that tax cuts (for the wealthy) don't cost anything because the state can't lose something (money) it never had. I'm surprised that argument hasn't been used this time.
Best line ever: So now we know the bottom line on Fox News: it’s willing to misinform its viewers if misinforming its viewers makes them money. And if telling your audience what they want to hear is your business model, I’m assuming the Philadelphia viewers of Fox News were thrilled when they heard the Eagles won the Super Bowl.