Settled, But Not Over

 

Of course, I gasped with a bit of disappointment when we were just about to hear the opening arguments in the Dominion defamation case against Fox News, and then the delay...and then the news of a settlement. I know, $787,500,000 is not chump change, and Fox News definitely settled because they did not want the trial to go on but, but...

The dragging! Where was the great, beautiful Fox News dragging? I wanted to see Fox News hosting hoisting themselves on their own petard. Where's the spectacle? Where's the schadenfreude? 

It was, perhaps, never to be in this case. Here are the details: 

Dominion's legal team pursued a "to the pain" strategy, intending to inflict maximum discomfort for Fox and its proprietors in order to secure as big a payout and as public an apology from Fox News as possible. For Fox and its controlling owners, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, it was worth the cost to pay for the spectacle to go away. 

For Fox, what evidence dribbled out in court hearings and court documents piled embarrassment upon embarrassment upon disgrace: 

Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott warned her colleagues against running fact-checking segments by the network's own reporters debunking lies about election fraud, even as it gave such bogus claims acres of prime real estate.

The payout was a business decision between businesspeople, not a retribution against Fox News by the Avenging Spirit of Informed Democracy.  The thing that pisses me off isn't that they settled for a Very Interesting Sum, but that Fox News wasn't expected to make things right with respects to broadcasting the truth, on their own airwaves, in various timeslots, to correct the false impression they had created. 

And yet, the SOB thing about the Fox model, and right-wing media in general, is even the correction would be seen as something being "forced down their throats" by the liberal establishment, because this is the exact kind of fuckery they did on the brains of their loyal watchers. Faith, as in the belief in things unseen, and the ability to unhear what they never wanted to know. The Fox News watchers know what they want to believe and expect Fox to give it to them.

I really feel like only an exquisite dragging of the liars and jackasses who read "news" for Fox would have really done the necessary business.

Dominion says they will go on to make suit against other malefactors, and well, good luck to them. Maybe they will financially ruin some smaller outfit than Fox (OAN? Newsmax?) but undoing a lie is like trying to get toothpaste back in the tube. 

Now, Smartmatic says they are going to finish the job. I love that for them, and us, and Fox, if that's true. I still say Fox is in trouble--because I can't convince myself the bubble has yet been created that can't eventually be pierced, and I think the docs that Fox was hiding with respect to Rupert Murdoch must be very not great for them to have been hidden. 

But perhaps I should by now know to keep my hopes lower in the stratosphere. 

UPDATE: I find it interesting that investors are concerned that the business model has some real liabilities regarding coming onto contact with the truth. 

TWGB: I, Too, Hate Trump Passionately

 

While Tucker Carlson has been entrusted with the 1/6 footage and is doing his best to show as little of the American carnage as he actually potentially could, a funny thing leaked out from the Dominion defamation case against Fox News: Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump passionately. 

Whatever my differences with Carlson--boy, do I get that one! Trump is a shaved ape wedged into a badly fitting suit. He has the verbal finesse of a clever toddler and the instincts of a zoo-raised silverback--just madly jerking off and beating his chest to the applause of people who enjoy that sort of thing. 

This becomes a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag when you pause to consider that Fox News made Trump, the President, a thing. Would we have had Trump, the President, without Fox News? I'm not so sure. I think CNN and others gave Trump a platform and took him seriously because they wanted to see what Fox News was supposedly looking at. To connect with those viewers that they thought Fox had captured. Simple suburban and rural and exurban folks of the land. The common clay of the American experience. You know. 

I mean. You know.

The Wall Street Journal Publishes Fake News

WSJ reporters exasperated once again by paper’s Edit Page https://t.co/mu4g9MHUgq

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 28, 2021

Sure, it's the Opinion page. But is that a distinction the people who really want to believe are inclined to make?

Trump is a liar and a sore loser who has been complaining about the election being rigged since before the election even took place. The narrative serves the GOP, but it is deeply irresponsible and is doing real harm to the process and to people.  But it is still a lie.  And rather than even publish this nonsense from the former (FAILED!) one-term president, it would have far, far better to have declined his rantings.

There may have been people who have done more harm to US politics than Rupert Murdoch, but truly, he and his media outlets have done more enough.

UPDATES: Of course, Fox News is not to be one-upped in the shameless lying department, and Tucker Carlson is apparently about to present a case that January 6 was a false flag. Because of course he is.  I wonder if he's concerned that anyone associated with Rep. Jim Banks' office was involved?

Rupert Murdoch: First, Kill All Fact Checkers

Since Rupert Murdoch took over the venerable science publication, National Geographic, whose pages lovingly told in words and extraordinary photography the stories of peoples and animals and issues around our globe--things are quite definitely changed. Given that he is a notorious climate change-denying burk, who isn't so likely to be even around that much longer anyways, why does he have to come in and destroy a publication that was brilliant for so many years? He will you know.

I'm just really sure he will. It's a damn shame.