Jay Rosen
THREAD
The latest filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox nails something critics have long argued for.
Fox is not a news organization. It's something else.
But what is this other thing? In this thread, I will try to answer that.
Next slide, please. 1/
Jay Rosen
The Dominion suit establishes that Fox stars (like Tucker Carlson) and executives (like CEO Suzanne Scott) were fearful and enraged when some of their own people blundered into delivering a true and accurate report about the 2020 election.
Think about that for a moment. When its own talent reported the facts truthfully, the result was an atmosphere of crisis in the company.
This is one way we know that Fox is not specifically a news organization.
There are others... 2/
Dan Gillmor
@jayrosen_nyu Important to put Fox "News" in context -- an arm of the Murdoch family empire. Its sole purpose is to collect power and money, by injecting poison directly into the civic bloodstreams of at least three democracies: the US, UK, and Australia. Power and money, by any means deemed necessary.
Jay Rosen
Below is Brian Stelter with another story from Dominion's latest filing.
A truthtelling journalist at Fox was thought by Tucker Carlson to have committed a firing offense. Her crime: seeing no evidence for Trump's stolen election claims she said on Twitter "there is no evidence." 4/
Jay Rosen
Click through to see Jacqui Heinrich's "crime" and you will see what I mean.
https://twitter.com/jacquiheinrich/status/1327354119439470592?s=46&t=nr4aN_Oyhjkkw-TifvNatA
It is a very careful, limited statement. Mild pushback. But Tucker Carlson felt panic over it, and demanded her head.
This kind of behavior exposes a weakness for Fox.
Keepers of a resentment machine— for that is what Fox is — may suddenly find the resentment coming straight for them. 5/
Jay Rosen
"Sidney Powell is lying," said Tucker Carlson to his producer.
"Sidney Powell is a bit nuts," said Laura Ingraham to her colleagues.
But they did not share this view with their audience.
Defenders of Fox get a lot mileage out of describing its evening line-up as the "opinion side" of the operation.
But that's not accurate either. About Sidney Powell the prime time stars withheld their opinions. Meanwhile the bookers at Fox placed her on show after show. 6/
See: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1158223099/fox-news-dominion-wackadoodle-election-fraud-claim
Jay Rosen
If Fox is not a news organization — to me it's not — and it is not "opinion," either (because the Dominion filing shows the hosts are frightened to share their opinions) then what is it, exactly?
Some common answers I receive:
It's entertainment, a lot like professional wrestling.
It's propaganda; what else do you need to know?
No, Jay, it's just ratings.
7/
Jay Rosen
Erik Wemple of the Washington Post shows how reponsible behavior by a wayward presenter, Neil Cavuto, was treated by company executives as a "brand threat."
If responsible journalism can be a threat to your brand, then it's not a news brand you have cultivated.
It's something different. 3/
Jay Rosen
The power structure at Fox called it "respecting" the audience when they stoked its false and pathetic belief in a stolen election.
"Showing 'respect' to viewers by actively misinforming them," as Stelter put it, may stop them from raging at you.
But it is not the behavior of a news company. 15/
Andrew Hinton
@jayrosen_nyu I can’t help but read into that “respect” position an echo of authoritarianism … going back to people raised by parents who demand “respect” in an authoritarian sense of “don’t question me, I’m right by definition”. If you’ve been conditioned to detach truth from safety, this is your default model of how to do anything , including run a business
Jay Rosen
I said it earlier: Confident keepers of a resentment machine can find the resentment coming straight at them.
The Republican party has to continually adapt to that. Fox has to accept that its powers are limited.
Meanwhile, the Fox audience can veto events that in the rest of the world unquestionably occurred. 11/
Jay Rosen
You're not a news organization if your audience's refusal to accept what happened prevents what happened from regularly airing as news. 12/
Jay Rosen
Though it is styled as one, Fox is not a news organization. And it's not opinion, either. It is something else: Power formation by means of resentment news.
But the formula doesn't always work. The crowd seethes back when the machine miscalculates, generating its own kind of power.
Reactionary is the right term for it. 13/
Jay Rosen
Both the Republican Party and Rupert Murdoch's fear-and-lothing machine know they cannot control the core audience for commercialized resentment and white nationalism, which will turn on anyone who interferes in the free exercise of its many hatreds. 14/
Jay Rosen
When I use the term "Fox," I mean the commercial arm of a political movement that has taken control of the Republican Party.
The product is resentment news. By which I mean: Current ways to resent. New people to resent. "Here's something they call Critical Race Theory. You should resent it."
Success in a market like that makes for political power. That's the Fox I know. A kind of machine. 8/
Jay Rosen
By "machine" I mean to evoke both the steady manufacture of politicized grievance for fun and profit, and the kind of machine through which Richard Daley rose to power in the mid-twentieth century. A machine in the sense of the Cook County Democratic Machine.
Again: that's not a news organization. 9/
Jay Rosen
Dominion's filings describe a time when the audience took charge of the Fox resentment machine.
Power traded hands for a moment. Viewer backlash from the Fox newsroom's correct call in Arizona felt ruinous to the people at the top of the network.
Stars with their own shows and executives nominally in charge of Fox saw how weak their positions were.
Read Brian Stelter in the Atlantic about this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/fox-news-dominion-voting-lawsuit-2020-election-conspiracy/673111/
10/
JBGerman
@jayrosen_nyu Fox is a punchline out of Ghostbusters
Flaming Cheeto
@jayrosen_nyu Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away
- Phillip K Dick
wondrng1
@jayrosen_nyu — kinda like when Bill O’Reilly got 45 to admit he was vaccinated — with BO’R joined saying he’d also gotten vaxxed — the speaking tour audience turned on both of them, booing. TRE45ON was visibly taken aback, even though he tried to joke about it.
Bob Thomson
@jayrosen_nyu it’s Orwell’s Two Minute Hate, except it’s 24x7.
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