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/
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/
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/
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/
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/
“Dominion Voting AND top election infrastructure officials categorically deny this. “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history... There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.””
"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
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/
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/
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/
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/
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/
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/
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/
@Andrewhinton and Fox would be right to approach it like that. Their audience are baby boomers who think that, by virtue of being older, they deserve a very particular kind of respect: not one that should be extended to you and me, but one that demands their worldview is left unquestioned and unexamined. They are exactly the parents you're talking about.
No room for growth there. If you push them to think they'll hit you with their cane.
Jay Rosen
Andrew Hinton
Iwillyeah