Addicted to Lies

Charlie: I’m afraid even a $750 million payoff to Dominion Voting Systems to make the Fox News defamation case go away isn’t going to change much of anything at Fox News. First thing is that Rupert Murdoch can dig that kind of money out of his sofa. He has lots of billions. The second thing is what Fox has done to help him make all that money over the years.

People are focusing on the dismissal of Tucker Carlson, one of Fox’s conspiracy, race baiting and hyperbole masters for years, as though it were going to solve the problem of dishonesty at the network. And believe me, the record in the Dominion lawsuit shows that it is a big problem.

But a saying comes to mind from long ago. In 1848 the French revolutionary Alexanandre August Ledru-Rollin wrote a phrase that could well apply to Fox News in the context of its own behavior. Slimmed down and modernized, it goes like this: “I am their leader, I must follow them!”

lithograph portrait of Alexanandre August Ledru-Rollin by Marie Alexandre Alophe

Fox gave its viewers exactly what they want, a rolling repetition of the lies President Trump conjured to try to overturn his own defeat, masquerading as news. And not just on the news, either. Business commentator Lou Dobbs was cancelled in 2021 after another voting machine company, Smartmatic, filed a huge defamation lawsuit alleging more lies from Fox.

One might think that would make the network strive for a more accurate, disconnected presentation of the news. I don’t think so. They became what they became because there was an immense amount of money in it.

They figured out the perfect way to monetize dishonesty, they presented it as news.

Expecting them to change that would be like expecting a pornographic website to turn away from enticing pictures of kids, well-oiled women and handsome guys posing as studs. Take that away and how would they draw more folks to their websites?

Fox is in the same situation. It might talk about going straight, but that would risk losing audiences. Lies are like candy to these people, on both sides of the equation. One side wants to hear them, and the other side is just as eager to broadcast them. Jim?

Jim: There’s no question we’re dealing with political pornography, Charlie. Just as porn addicts can’t help their lust for seeing lurid pictures, the audience built by Murdoch with or without Carlson is addicted to the lies and distortions it expects from Fox News, which is entertainment not news. If Fox had any news in its DNA, the network would challenge the views of its audience, not reinforce them. 

It's tempting to blame Murdoch and Carlson for this myopia. But you are right: Fox would not have relied so heavily on Carlson and Lou Dobbs if viewers had rejected the political pornography they peddle as news and opinion. Fox viewers ate it up. I fear that the adverse impact of all this isn't limited to Fox and its audience, either.

Money is the driving factor here. In reading about the Dominion Voting case, I learned that Fox had $4 billion in cash on its balance sheet, all money that advertisers spent for ads on Fox touting their goods and services. That's a lot of money, although I'm sure that Rupert didn't like handing over nearly a quarter of it to lawyers for Dominion. Some advertisers now balk at posting ads on Fox with Carlson on the network’s marquee. That's probably why Rupert canned him. But I will bet those advertisers will be back once the heat dissipates.  

Unfortunately, I fear the greed driving Fox isn't much different than the lust for profit that drives the hedge funds and newspaper chains who have created news deserts across the nation. Companies such as Alden Global Capital, which owns the Chicago Tribune, our former newspaper, and Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper chain, aren’t much different. They might not be as brazen and disingenuous as Fox. But they've reduced the newspapers they run to weak imitations of their former selves, limping along with overburdened staffs that can only hope to do the journalism in their hearts. The Los Angeles Times’ Jim Rainey reported recently that Gannett has a paper in Salinas, California that has NO reporters on its staff. Ironically, paid obituaries of the dead are the paper’s only live content. 

Are news organizations that slash staffs, thereby failing to provide readers with context and solid information, really any different from Fox and its imitators? Insatiable greed for profit drives them just as it consumes Murdoch, Carlson and company. This looks to me like the ends justifying the means. Maybe I'm being too hard on all of them. What do you think, Charlie?

Charlie: Hell no, Jim, you are not being too hard at all. But I don’t think the lust for profit spells death for journalism. I turn back to our era at the Tribune, which was a money machine if there ever was one. But we didn’t make that money by pandering to the political leanings of our readers. I was there for almost thirty years, and no one ever kept me from pursuing the truth. I don’t know any other reporters on our staff who were compromised by politics either. The people who own papers today need to remind themselves about our historic role in American political culture. I think it was Scripps-Howard that had this compelling slogan: Shine the Light and People Will Find Their Own Way. Fox News allowed itself, instead, to become a creature of darkness, hiding, not telling, always seeking favor with its audiences and its sources, embracing the profitable lie instead of the uncomfortable truth. We will see whether anyone learned anything from the Fox debacle. My guess would be no, that these people will chase money right into the ground, where they may well be buried by their own perverse greed and flight from reality.

Jim: I believe that the only thing that will save journalism, particularly local journalism, is capitalism, Charlie. Many worthy non-profits are staging brave efforts to provide readers with solid, credible information. I fear they lack the sustainability and scale to last, though. So, I don’t criticize anyone for seeking profit. But seeking profit to serve readers is different that seeking profit to serve advertisers. I fear the Tribune lost its way when it subordinated the interests of readers to those of advertisers, replicating the business model that hooks Fox and Carlson to the political pornography they peddle. I think we need a new journalistic business model that capitalizes on the better elements of artificial intelligence to create journalism produced by trusted individual news entrepreneurs, not hedge funds or newspaper chains but individual journalists. But that’s a whole different story.   

—James O’Shea and Charles Madigan

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Charles Madigan is a writer and veteran foreign and national correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, where he also served as a senior writer and editor. He examines news reporting, politics and world events.