The first amendment creates a quagmire. As Tim Weiner discussed, is anyone on the hill going to address the vertical and horizontal control of all media by a few billionaire nut jobs who care more for profits than democracy?? No one files anti-trust lawsuits and they should. The end of the gilded age is a great example you gave professor, but how do we get there today?
As always, explains clearly what many of us know but don't always articulate in understandable, well reasoned, fact based language. But the First Amendment provides an almost impenetrable shield for those who would use their pulpits to spout their poisonous, divisibe falsehoods. I am at a loss for solutions.
Excellent work! A media quagmire that I never thought I’d see decades ago when I started working as a reporter. All those lofty ideals have been trampled by crazies with no conscience. I will have to read this a second time. Thank you, Asha.
Great in-depth analysis, Asha!! I am sorry to know this is the state of things. I had a gut feeling but never got down into the details. Now that I’ve read it & see it in black & white how the right wing sausage machine proliferates, is measured, & how at least in this case with Fox News, they carry on as if it’s all just dollars & cents and to Hell with the actual integrity of the story they are reporting on, well, words fail me. Blood is boiling mad with the fact that this is their ethic. Every company is flavored by the ethics, values, & persona of its CEO. I knew Rupert Murdoch was scum abstractly, but this points to it in high relief. I’m disappointed to know these facts are the actual facts.
[“As I noted above, one strategy that Fox News and other outlets in this media silo use to protect their audiences from the cognitive dissonance they may experience when they hear news that contradicts their worldview is to give them permission to discount it as “fake news.” Unfortunately, once an audience is conditioned this way, a network is basically trapped by a monster of its own making — as Fox News found out.”]
We live in an age where the courts and personnel thereof are mindboggled in regard to what “delusion” will take place next, playing out within the jurisprudence system to mitigate the guilt of individuals who are in the role of defendant (but to be replaced with defenses associated with mental illness). Ms. Rangappa has made reference to “bottom up” systems (which can ring of Marx) having to take priority, or at least strike balance, with “top down” systems.
The very idea that Fox News has pandered to the masses in a disinformation age and has added fuel to the fire of social memes that circulate and mutate between those who indulge such prepackaged content as “reality;”
The very idea in and of itself is based on ideology that if an axis can get enough people to believe a version of the truth, then forms of revolution with reliance upon the (televisions’) “useful idiots” can overthrow sanity.
The reality is that we are on a collision course with one side versus the other, a “great schism,” not because we are born different than one another, nor incompatible; rather, we are loaded up with ideation, which then, from which, we create falsely rooted ideology.
Then, for no reason besides disagreement that has been delivered to our living rooms, we go to war on our neighbors, who were born to be our beloved.
These days, when we love our neighbor, we must not interact too deeply in contradiction to what our neighbor’s belief system is, as it derives, in part, from a mass media so influential and convincing that no typical human being, once beginning a steady diet of one form of content, can necessarily become mentally liberated.
The lies are so high-tech that they are created to build upon one another to fit into a grand scheme of a worldview based, for many who watch Fox News, on moral justification to hold viewpoints which have caused democracy to fray.
[Further, the underlying reason that Fox News strayed so far from the truth in presenting its content was because it needed to provide its audience with what they wanted to hear. (For News refers to this as “respecting the audience.”) Indeed, Dominion’s lawsuit alleges that Fox News acted with “actual malice” — a statement made with knowledge “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”]
Whenever I have a vague notion about some complex issue, I find that Asha is two steps ahead of me with a clear, researched, fact-based, and concise (but not too concise) summary and explanation. The most recent article on the Fox News Sausage Factory is another excellent example. Thank you so much for the work you do.
Thank you for this brilliant work Asha. One of my talking points. A foundational problem in America and probably the world is the lack of shared facts. This alone sets any discussion up for failure. It would be akin to trying to convince a Christian that Christianity is wrong with the Koran. I don’t know how we fix it but we need more shared facts. Perhaps the court system can help some as we see here with the Dominion lawsuit.
Struck by how often we see projection by those on the right, e.g., fake news. Charts showing sources such as WaPo, NYT and CNN as the liberal media 'center point' while the right is represented by such sources as Breitbart and FOX News.
Love the media bias chart. Have used in class as well. Also recommend to my students that they use a system we teach (OPCVL - given the origin, purpose & content of a source, what are its values and limitations) as well as mediabiasfactcheck.com
A different angle: The ease of developing a narrative, the more newsworthy the better. Using an example from India.
I was born and raised in India (the author’s name suggests she might be too), and have naturalized in the US, having lived here for nearly four decades. I am registered as an Independent, and generally lean Democrat in my national, local, and issues voting.
I follow India’s politics avidly. In the view of a majority of voters, the current administration ideologically overlaps with US Centrist Democrats, particularly in its actions for the disenfranchised, including women and minorities. In India, it is referred to as Right Wing, although it bears no resemblance to the US Right, its recent buddy fests with them notwithstanding.
Nonetheless, it is loudly criticized in Indian and US media for being anti- women, Muslims, Dalits (India’s lower castes). The narrative was developed by its political Opposition, which has since abandoned it as lacking traction, although it is repeated where convenient. The administration has been elected twice, and it looks a shoo-in a third time; the leader is revered by growing numbers.
In the West, however, momentum carries the narrative. Rarely is the prime minister mentioned without the phrases “Hindu fascist”, “anti-Muslim”, “anti-women”, etc. Also, witness the BBC’s recent documentary seeking to identify the prime minister as anti-Muslim, and George Soros’ pronouncement of the same. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, repeat the narrative. In general, no original proof is cited, but there is considerable self-reference to the assertion in prior issues. (The BBC does cite various items, but they are viewed as questionable by many.)
Irrespective of which way one’s sympathies lie, how do otherwise high-credibility (in the sense of being north on the chart) media platforms repeat a theme about India that even Indian media have largely abandoned? One hypothesis is that US media are more objective than Indian media, about India. Another is that India’s voting majority (which, btw, includes Muslims) has gone fascist, a swing mirrored in the West.
There is another: India is of marginal economic and military relevance to the West. Which therefore has little incentive to work hard to retrieve the truth, especially when loud Indian voices, and other Western media, provide a newsworthy narrative. Plus, India doesn’t fight misrepresentation the way, say, Israel does. Suggesting culpability.
In other words, where there is a newsworthy narrative, supported by loud voices, there is no need to scrupulously research the truth. Might that illuminate the Fox News / US Right Wing Media question?
There’s more to feedback loops than you can safely get into in this venue:
2023-02-21 00:58:00 Meidas Touch Podcast
Brett Meisalis makes a profound point generally about how people navigate hierarchies with their duplicitous politics. People on both sides of the extremes are pushed out while those talking out of both-sides of their mouths usurp power... hence both-sides-ism. Also interestingly Brett made a dynamic connection to how both-sides-ism creates a Tail-Wagging-The-Dog Feedback Loop. And if you look at Constructal Law or my similar theory, "Consciousness is Feedback" on my blog, you see that something that fights to survive is created. Talk to Dave Troy on how Constructal Law applies to these media dynamics. It’s in one or more of his 28 podcasts on his “Dave Troy Presents” show.
Fox, OANN, Newsmax: “…an entire symbiotic system built on the network knowingly deceiving its viewers for profit.” Bingo!
From infancy, we all learned to depend on other people to make sense of the world for us, and we have carried that trust into adulthood. So all mentally balanced people are susceptible to being victimized by liars and demagogues.
But a society that rewards lying with fat profits can’t survive indefinitely. Imagine trying to get around in an unfamiliar city if all the road signs had been randomly scrambled by a mischievous Tucker Carlson, or if your GPS device had a vested interest in steering everyone to Hannity’s Steak House. Who would want to live in such a place? Ultimately lies are unsustainable, They certainly work for the short-run benefit of the liars, but at a cost to everyone else. Maybe Dominion can teach Fox a lesson, but we shouldn’t have to count on private litigation to solve a major flaw in our system. We need legislation to find a new balance point between freedom of speech and the freedom to lie for profit, and I think James Madison would agree.
In the days before Internet, social media, and countless cable TV channels, we received most news from three major networks, newspapers, and radio, the majority not far from the center, uppermost section of The Media Bias Chart. Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, Tom Brokaw, and other news anchors had their conservative, liberal, and other bias, but on-air they reported the facts and kept personal opinions to themselves, which used to be “That’s the way it is.” (Cronkite’s famous sign off).
Fast forward to today, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other Fox “News” hosts are a joke and no longer deliver factual news. It’s ALL about throwing “meat” to MAGA viewership to maintain ratings (as we now know from their behind-the-scenes texts on Trump’s elections fraud lies), selling out their souls for multimillion dollar contracts to deliver Anti-American, Putin and Russian talking points which undermine our presidency, institutions, and democracy itself! However, I’m more of an optimist than Tim Weiner, and believe that our democracy will survive and history will correctly judge Trump and his MAGA movement as the shit show that it is!!!
The first amendment creates a quagmire. As Tim Weiner discussed, is anyone on the hill going to address the vertical and horizontal control of all media by a few billionaire nut jobs who care more for profits than democracy?? No one files anti-trust lawsuits and they should. The end of the gilded age is a great example you gave professor, but how do we get there today?
As always, explains clearly what many of us know but don't always articulate in understandable, well reasoned, fact based language. But the First Amendment provides an almost impenetrable shield for those who would use their pulpits to spout their poisonous, divisibe falsehoods. I am at a loss for solutions.
Excellent work! A media quagmire that I never thought I’d see decades ago when I started working as a reporter. All those lofty ideals have been trampled by crazies with no conscience. I will have to read this a second time. Thank you, Asha.
Great in-depth analysis, Asha!! I am sorry to know this is the state of things. I had a gut feeling but never got down into the details. Now that I’ve read it & see it in black & white how the right wing sausage machine proliferates, is measured, & how at least in this case with Fox News, they carry on as if it’s all just dollars & cents and to Hell with the actual integrity of the story they are reporting on, well, words fail me. Blood is boiling mad with the fact that this is their ethic. Every company is flavored by the ethics, values, & persona of its CEO. I knew Rupert Murdoch was scum abstractly, but this points to it in high relief. I’m disappointed to know these facts are the actual facts.
[“As I noted above, one strategy that Fox News and other outlets in this media silo use to protect their audiences from the cognitive dissonance they may experience when they hear news that contradicts their worldview is to give them permission to discount it as “fake news.” Unfortunately, once an audience is conditioned this way, a network is basically trapped by a monster of its own making — as Fox News found out.”]
We live in an age where the courts and personnel thereof are mindboggled in regard to what “delusion” will take place next, playing out within the jurisprudence system to mitigate the guilt of individuals who are in the role of defendant (but to be replaced with defenses associated with mental illness). Ms. Rangappa has made reference to “bottom up” systems (which can ring of Marx) having to take priority, or at least strike balance, with “top down” systems.
The very idea that Fox News has pandered to the masses in a disinformation age and has added fuel to the fire of social memes that circulate and mutate between those who indulge such prepackaged content as “reality;”
The very idea in and of itself is based on ideology that if an axis can get enough people to believe a version of the truth, then forms of revolution with reliance upon the (televisions’) “useful idiots” can overthrow sanity.
The reality is that we are on a collision course with one side versus the other, a “great schism,” not because we are born different than one another, nor incompatible; rather, we are loaded up with ideation, which then, from which, we create falsely rooted ideology.
Then, for no reason besides disagreement that has been delivered to our living rooms, we go to war on our neighbors, who were born to be our beloved.
These days, when we love our neighbor, we must not interact too deeply in contradiction to what our neighbor’s belief system is, as it derives, in part, from a mass media so influential and convincing that no typical human being, once beginning a steady diet of one form of content, can necessarily become mentally liberated.
The lies are so high-tech that they are created to build upon one another to fit into a grand scheme of a worldview based, for many who watch Fox News, on moral justification to hold viewpoints which have caused democracy to fray.
[Further, the underlying reason that Fox News strayed so far from the truth in presenting its content was because it needed to provide its audience with what they wanted to hear. (For News refers to this as “respecting the audience.”) Indeed, Dominion’s lawsuit alleges that Fox News acted with “actual malice” — a statement made with knowledge “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”]
Whenever I have a vague notion about some complex issue, I find that Asha is two steps ahead of me with a clear, researched, fact-based, and concise (but not too concise) summary and explanation. The most recent article on the Fox News Sausage Factory is another excellent example. Thank you so much for the work you do.
Thank you for this brilliant work Asha. One of my talking points. A foundational problem in America and probably the world is the lack of shared facts. This alone sets any discussion up for failure. It would be akin to trying to convince a Christian that Christianity is wrong with the Koran. I don’t know how we fix it but we need more shared facts. Perhaps the court system can help some as we see here with the Dominion lawsuit.
Very well presented, Asha. Thank you
Struck by how often we see projection by those on the right, e.g., fake news. Charts showing sources such as WaPo, NYT and CNN as the liberal media 'center point' while the right is represented by such sources as Breitbart and FOX News.
Love the media bias chart. Have used in class as well. Also recommend to my students that they use a system we teach (OPCVL - given the origin, purpose & content of a source, what are its values and limitations) as well as mediabiasfactcheck.com
I wish I could give this article multiple ❤️
The First Amendment shouldn’t allow treasonous information! Period! Cable networks who carry this venomous crap should be penalized too!
A different angle: The ease of developing a narrative, the more newsworthy the better. Using an example from India.
I was born and raised in India (the author’s name suggests she might be too), and have naturalized in the US, having lived here for nearly four decades. I am registered as an Independent, and generally lean Democrat in my national, local, and issues voting.
I follow India’s politics avidly. In the view of a majority of voters, the current administration ideologically overlaps with US Centrist Democrats, particularly in its actions for the disenfranchised, including women and minorities. In India, it is referred to as Right Wing, although it bears no resemblance to the US Right, its recent buddy fests with them notwithstanding.
Nonetheless, it is loudly criticized in Indian and US media for being anti- women, Muslims, Dalits (India’s lower castes). The narrative was developed by its political Opposition, which has since abandoned it as lacking traction, although it is repeated where convenient. The administration has been elected twice, and it looks a shoo-in a third time; the leader is revered by growing numbers.
In the West, however, momentum carries the narrative. Rarely is the prime minister mentioned without the phrases “Hindu fascist”, “anti-Muslim”, “anti-women”, etc. Also, witness the BBC’s recent documentary seeking to identify the prime minister as anti-Muslim, and George Soros’ pronouncement of the same. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, repeat the narrative. In general, no original proof is cited, but there is considerable self-reference to the assertion in prior issues. (The BBC does cite various items, but they are viewed as questionable by many.)
Irrespective of which way one’s sympathies lie, how do otherwise high-credibility (in the sense of being north on the chart) media platforms repeat a theme about India that even Indian media have largely abandoned? One hypothesis is that US media are more objective than Indian media, about India. Another is that India’s voting majority (which, btw, includes Muslims) has gone fascist, a swing mirrored in the West.
There is another: India is of marginal economic and military relevance to the West. Which therefore has little incentive to work hard to retrieve the truth, especially when loud Indian voices, and other Western media, provide a newsworthy narrative. Plus, India doesn’t fight misrepresentation the way, say, Israel does. Suggesting culpability.
In other words, where there is a newsworthy narrative, supported by loud voices, there is no need to scrupulously research the truth. Might that illuminate the Fox News / US Right Wing Media question?
There’s more to feedback loops than you can safely get into in this venue:
2023-02-21 00:58:00 Meidas Touch Podcast
Brett Meisalis makes a profound point generally about how people navigate hierarchies with their duplicitous politics. People on both sides of the extremes are pushed out while those talking out of both-sides of their mouths usurp power... hence both-sides-ism. Also interestingly Brett made a dynamic connection to how both-sides-ism creates a Tail-Wagging-The-Dog Feedback Loop. And if you look at Constructal Law or my similar theory, "Consciousness is Feedback" on my blog, you see that something that fights to survive is created. Talk to Dave Troy on how Constructal Law applies to these media dynamics. It’s in one or more of his 28 podcasts on his “Dave Troy Presents” show.
Fox, OANN, Newsmax: “…an entire symbiotic system built on the network knowingly deceiving its viewers for profit.” Bingo!
From infancy, we all learned to depend on other people to make sense of the world for us, and we have carried that trust into adulthood. So all mentally balanced people are susceptible to being victimized by liars and demagogues.
But a society that rewards lying with fat profits can’t survive indefinitely. Imagine trying to get around in an unfamiliar city if all the road signs had been randomly scrambled by a mischievous Tucker Carlson, or if your GPS device had a vested interest in steering everyone to Hannity’s Steak House. Who would want to live in such a place? Ultimately lies are unsustainable, They certainly work for the short-run benefit of the liars, but at a cost to everyone else. Maybe Dominion can teach Fox a lesson, but we shouldn’t have to count on private litigation to solve a major flaw in our system. We need legislation to find a new balance point between freedom of speech and the freedom to lie for profit, and I think James Madison would agree.
In the days before Internet, social media, and countless cable TV channels, we received most news from three major networks, newspapers, and radio, the majority not far from the center, uppermost section of The Media Bias Chart. Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, Tom Brokaw, and other news anchors had their conservative, liberal, and other bias, but on-air they reported the facts and kept personal opinions to themselves, which used to be “That’s the way it is.” (Cronkite’s famous sign off).
Fast forward to today, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other Fox “News” hosts are a joke and no longer deliver factual news. It’s ALL about throwing “meat” to MAGA viewership to maintain ratings (as we now know from their behind-the-scenes texts on Trump’s elections fraud lies), selling out their souls for multimillion dollar contracts to deliver Anti-American, Putin and Russian talking points which undermine our presidency, institutions, and democracy itself! However, I’m more of an optimist than Tim Weiner, and believe that our democracy will survive and history will correctly judge Trump and his MAGA movement as the shit show that it is!!!