(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The media insistence on propping Fox News back up again is getting so, so tedious [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-08-25 I swear, the media insistence on treating Fox News as if it isn't primarily a propaganda outfit is going to kill us all. First we had The New York Times giving us the always unnecessary pre-debate fluffing of the moderators selected, one of the particular vanities of the pundit class that they especially like because it makes them feel like celebrities. Now we've got the equally unnecessary "let's talk to the moderators to get their impressions of how the evening went." Politico does us the poor favor of giving us that one. I'm not even going to get to the actual audio interview because I want to just highlight how all of this is being presented in the first place. There is way too much drama here, all of it in service to pushing the self-importance of a network. There was a lot on the line for each [candidate]. But there was also an enormous amount at stake for the news organization that hosted the debate: Fox News. No, not really. We had the Times explaining to us beforehand that this was the Fox News attempt to polish up their "news"-side image after getting nailed for a three-quarters of $1 billion settlement for spreading straight-up-lies about Dominion Voting Systems. This despite decades of evidence that both the company and the two particular Fox talking heads in question, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, are not too worried about the company's audience-pleasing blend of truth and falsehood. So what was at stake? The only way Fox could have hurt themselves is by so obviously tipping the scales for or against candidates that the live studio audience started throwing things, and that didn't happen. Possibly because the audience was too drunk to get a good aim. If audience reaction was any indication, Fox managed to get a strange, strange crowd in the building. First there was Trump, who refused to participate and lashed out at Fox and its talent, including Baier, on social media. Yeah, that's called publicity. Who cares? Oh, right—ratings. If they had convinced Trump to come on, the ratings might have been higher. Not really a "news"-side concern, though. Then there was Tucker Carlson, McCallum and Baier’s former star colleague who is in messy litigation with the network, and who nabbed Trump for himself and counter-programmed the evening with an interview that aired simultaneously with the Fox debate. Do you know who's been talking about Tucker Carlson's big counterprogrammed interview with Trump? Nobody. Nobody cares. It was a flop from a political and publicity standpoint; there was nobody talking about Trump's bog-standard sit-down on debate night. Not on Twitter, not on the networks. Nobody cared. Tucker and Trump have egg on their face—if anything, Trump's absence proved that Republican presidential debates can run just fine without Trump and his grade-school insults and vocabulary. Trump blew it big time by not showing up because he gave America a taste of what it would be like to not have his sneering mug hogging all the cameras. Then there was Rupert Murdoch hovering in the background. In the days before the debate there were new reports that the man who runs Fox, MacCallum and Baier’s boss, has his own strong feelings about who the GOP nominee should be. Oh, right, the part where the whole premise of Fox news-side objectivity falls apart because MacCallum and Baier's entire chain of command is keenly aware that "objectivity" that pisses off either the prime time pundits or the Murdoch clan itself will result in angry phone calls reminding you where you work. I still have my suspicions that Fox asked Chris Christie the night's most ludicrous question, which was about UFOs, in hopes that if anyone clipped any footage of Christie answering questions that evening it would be The Ludicrous Question and not any of his digs at Dear Felonious Leader. But you never know; the "fun" irrelevant question at the end of a debate is a press tradition, an elf-on-the-shelf for the pundit class. Add to that the challenges of being the ones asking the uncomfortable questions in that arena on Wednesday. The candidates are primed to pounce on you if it serves their political interests. The boisterous crowd of partisans could turn on you at any moment. These people make more money in a year than most of us will see in 10 or 20 or 50; they'll be fine. The people tasked with feeding the alligators in roadside Florida attractions get, what, minimum wage plus whatever raw chicken floats back out of the pond? I'm sure Stumparm Joe could handle getting called names by Vivek Ramaswamy just fine if anyone at Fox wants to swap jobs. As for the "boisterous crowd of partisans," Fox was clearly going for a crowd that would provide hooting and jeers rather than the sort that would tap out some light applause now and then, so it'd take some gall and then some for the moderators to fear being "turned on." Not a thing. Look, I get it. This is a sporting event. The network is going to boost "interviews" with its supposedly objective news stars because the network pays those people a whole lot of money and wants their names and faces to be as well known as can be mustered. But if we're going to play the whole thing off as a sporting event, then you've got to accept the implication of that: There ain't no larger stakes. It's a manufactured drama. And it's a crooked sport anyway, because nobody's going to get fined for not following the night's rules, the referees know who they want to win and how to rig the game against the ones they don't, and the scoring system is based almost entirely on who arrives in the "spin room" and how much bluster they can pump out. Ehhh. Maybe we're all just crabby—listening to Vivek Ramaswamy will put anyone in a sour mood for a few days. But the national media's continued insistence that Fox News is anything other than the toxic propaganda peddlers the network was designed around is just so, so tedious. RELATED STORIES: Fox News keeps playing journalists, and journalists keep letting them Sincere advice for GOP debate candidates (No, really) [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/25/2189614/-The-media-insistence-on-propping-Fox-News-back-up-again-is-getting-so-so-tedious Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/