A CNN interview with Carl Bernstein discussing Saturday’s Washington Post article by Greg Miller about the extraordinary lengths Trump goes to, to conceal details of numerous private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The conversation drifted onto FOX News not reporting on these latest revelations, nor about the growing impacts of Trump’s government shut down for that matter. At 5:47 Brian Stelter asks a question that I understood as:
‘Is the public ill-served if FOX doesn’t make it clear how important this Russian story is?’
Seems to me the question ignores the known history of FOX and what Mr. Ailes has achieved over there. In typing out a comment I couldn’t resist tossing in, I did some research to refamiliarize myself with the FOX network’s history. One thing led to another and since I like sharing the fruits of my efforts, I’ve created another bibliography, this one regarding FOX network and what amounts to one hell of a brainwashing operation. I start with the video, then my comment, followed by a fascinating, if depressing, collection of stories that help explain how FOX played the power game.
Carl Bernstein: Trump helped Putin destabilize US
Brian Stelter | CNN | Published on Jan 13, 2019
Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein discusses a report by the Washington Post that says President Donald Trump tried to hide his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin from senior officials in his own administration. #CNN #News
Comments | 5:40 CC wrote: Well, FOX, Murdochs, Ailes have been trying to manipulate and brainwash Americans and our politics since their inception. "Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization" Martin, Yurukoglu 4/5/17 https://web.stanford.edu/~ayurukog/cable_news.pdf
With the help of some oligarchs, tea party and such - the great American deception. It's been playing out under liberal noses, now the water's simmering froggy. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-244652/ -
So tragic, specially since we (specially liberals) keep talking past each other (specially folks who've disconnected themselves from physical reality, and folks who think they're "God's" warriors and who believe Trump is their messiah. It's foolish to think it's okay just to write them off.)
Incidentally, https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2018/12/confronting-faith-based-delusions.html
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Seems to me the oligarchs of the world are thinking they can dispense with governments. FOX owes no allegiance to America. Their history makes clear their own profits and power is all that matters to them. But enough from me, here’s an informative reading list:
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The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting∗
Stefano DellaVigna, Ethan Kaplan | March 30, 2006.
Does media bias affect voting?
In this paper, we present empirical evidence on the impact of media bias on voting. We consider one of the most significant changes in the US media in recent years, the entry and expansion of the Fox News cable channel. We exploit the natural experiment induced by the timing of the entry of Fox News in local cable markets and consider the impact on voting. …
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How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory
By Tim Dickinson, May 12, 2011
The onetime Nixon operative has created the most profitable propaganda machine in history. Inside America’s Unfair and Imbalanced Network
The key to decoding Fox News isn’t Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. It isn’t even News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch. To understand what drives Fox News, and what its true purpose is, you must first understand Chairman Ailes. “He is Fox News,” says Jane Hall, a decade-long Fox commentator who defected over Ailes’ embrace of the fear-mongering Glenn Beck. “It’s his vision. It’s a reflection of him.”
Ailes runs the most profitable – and therefore least accountable – head of the News Corp. hydra. Fox News reaped an estimated profit of $816 million last year – nearly a fifth of Murdoch’s global haul. The cable channel’s earnings rivaled those of News Corp.’s entire film division, which includes 20th Century Fox, and helped offset a slump at Murdoch’s beloved newspapers unit, which took a $3 billion write-down after acquiring The Wall Street Journal. With its bare-bones newsgathering operation – Fox News has one-third the staff and 30 fewer bureaus than CNN – Ailes generates profit margins above 50 percent. …
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How Fox News changed the face of journalism
Ellen McCarthy, Paul Farhi | October 14, 2011
FOX 15th anniversary. …
News as entertainment. …
Stocking up from the right. …
Fox’s biggest departure from its competitors was its political orientation. The network programmed mostly news during the day and opinionated talk during prime time. …
Livingston said that to understand Fox’s success, it’s imperative to look back to the conservative crisis after Watergate. In determining what caused the fall of Nixon, conservative leaders pointed their fingers at the media, think tanks and other political institutions that held influence. They decided that the answer was to create alternative institutions, such as the Heritage Foundation, and to establish a stronghold in talk radio, Livingston said.
Fox News “speaks to that need for framing cultural and political debate in America for a culturally conservative perspective,” he said. …
(Blurring the distinct between news reports and opinion shows.)
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12 most despicable things Fox News did in 2012
Mark Howard | January 5, 2013 | AlterNet.
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Book Chronicles The Building Of Roger Ailes' Fox News Empire
TERRY GROSS | Fresh Air interview | January 16, 2014
https://www.npr.org/2014/01/16/263063731/book-chronicles-the-building-of-roger-ailes-fox-news-empire
Fox News CEO and President Roger Ailes has succeeded in turning a television news network into an unprecedented force. Fox News is the most dominant media organization in America, generating more than a billion dollars in profit and earning the highest ratings of any cable news network.
Gabriel Sherman writes about Ailes' success with Fox News in his new book, The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News — And Divided A Country.
He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "Fox News is a complete expression of [Ailes'] world view. He said an interview ... he 'built this network from his life experience,' and it's true. It's amazing how this giant media organization is run as the expression of one man and his rule inside the company is absolute.” …
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Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization. - the study
Gregory J. Martin∗ and Ali Yurukoglu†‡ April 5, 2017
Abstract
We measure the persuasive effects of slanted news and tastes for like-minded news, exploit- ing cable channel positions as exogenous shifters of cable news viewership. Channel positions do not correlate with demographics that predict viewership and voting, nor with local satellite viewership. We estimate that Fox News increases Republican vote shares by 0.3 points among viewers induced into watching 2.5 additional minutes per week by variation in position. We then estimate a model of voters who select into watching slanted news, and whose ideologies evolve as a result. We use the model to assess the growth over time of Fox News influence, to quantitatively assess media-driven polarization, and to simulate alternative ideological slanting of news channels.
1 Introduction
The 24-hour cable news channels - CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC - are frequent targets of allegations of media bias. In this paper, we address several questions about cable news.
First, how much does consuming slanted news, like the Fox News Channel, change individuals’ partisan voting preferences in presidential elections, if at all?
Second, how intense are consumer preferences for cable news that is slanted towards their own ideology?
After measuring these forces, we ask: how much could slanted news contribute to increases in ideological polarization? And, what do these forces imply for the optimal editorial policy of channels that wish to maximize viewership, or alternatively to maximize electoral influence? …
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Roger Ailes's life achievement? He helped create this nightmare world
Arwa Mahdawi, May 19, 2017, The Guardian
A prescient propagandist, Ailes was quick to see the power of television as a tool of political persuasion. We are feeling the consequences of that every day . . .
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Fox News keeps ignoring the effects of the second-longest government shutdown in history
By JM Rieger, January 1, 2019, Washington Post
With negotiations between the White House and Congress stalled, the strongest indicator of when the partial government shutdown could end might be Fox News.
Republicans suffered the worst popular vote defeat in the House since Watergate after the GOP and Fox News tried to tie the 2018 midterm elections to immigration. Now, Trump and Fox are using dubious statistics to try to tie the shutdown to a “crisis” at the southern border while downplaying the shutdown itself.
Over the past month, Fox hosts and personalities have advocated for a permanent shutdown of government and questioned whether Americans even care about a shutdown (they do), examples of which you can watch in the video above. Trump even said he can “relate” to hundreds of thousands of federal workers not receiving paychecks.
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I’ve Studied the Trump-Fox Feedback Loop for Months. It’s Crazier Than You Think
By Matthew Gertz, January 05, 2018, Politico
… my many hours following the president’s tweets for Media Matters for America, the progressive media watchdog organization, have convinced me the truth is often much simpler: The president is just live-tweeting Fox, particularly the network’s Trump-loving morning show, Fox & Friends.
It’s no secret, of course, that the president likes to tweet about what he sees on TV. Thanks to diligent reporting from the White House beat, we know Trump often watches several hours of cable news each day via the “Super TiVo” he had installed at the White House. And journalists at CNN, the Washington Post, New York magazine, among others, have compiled lists of Trump tweets they believe were inspired by Fox. …
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Trump is staffing — or casting from Fox
Catherine Lucey | AP | Chicago Tribune | March 25, 2018
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-staff-fox-news-20180325-story.html
Trump's new national security adviser, John Bolton, is a former U.N. ambassador, a White House veteran — and perhaps most importantly a Fox News channel talking head. Bolton's appointment, rushed out late Thursday, follows Trump's recent attempt to recruit Fox guest Joseph diGenova for his legal team.
Another recent TV-land addition to the Trump White House is veteran CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow as top economic adviser. Other Fox faces on Trump's team: rising State Department star Heather Nauert, a former Fox News anchor; communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp and Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh. The latter two are both former Fox commentators.
"He's looking for people who are ready to be part of that television White House," said Kendall Phillips, a communication and rhetorical studies professor at Syracuse University. "This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down."
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Watch President Trump repeat Fox News talking points
by Jackie Wattles | April 22, 2018 | CNN
President Donald Trump doesn't hide his feelings: He thinks Fox News is the "fairest" source of news. He watches Fox all the time. Fox talking points frequently show up in his tweets and speeches.
Trump's tendency to echo the network's shows was documented on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" on CNN.
Remarks Trump made last week -- railing against the Russia investigations and attacking his enemies -- were juxtaposed with previous clips of Fox personalities saying almost exactly the same things. …
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New White House hire shows Sean Hannity is Trump's shadow chief of staff
by Brian Stelte, June 27, 2018
Shine -- formerly the co-president of Fox News who has accepted a senior position in President Trump's administration -- goes back decades with Fox's Sean Hannity. The two men are close friends and longtime colleagues. When Shine was about to be forced out of Fox News last year, Hannity called it "the total end of the F.N.C. as we know it." Observers wondered if Hannity was about to quit.
A few days later, Shine resigned, in part due to lawsuits and complaints about his handling of the sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes. …
Shine's hiring is the latest sign of the Fox News presidency -- an unprecedented amount of coziness between a TV network and a president. Trump watches the channel, promotes its talk shows, calls its opinion hosts for counsel, and even hires on-air personalities. Hiring Shine is a logical next step.
It also further illustrates Hannity's influence with the Trump White House. …
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THE DIFFERENCES IN HOW CNN, MSNBC & FOX COVER THE NEWS
By Charlie Smart - examining network’s chyrons
Given the importance of TV news and the accusations of partisan bias often lobbed at cable networks, it’s worth exploring what the news we’re getting from TV actually is and how that changes depending on what channel you watch.
To do that, we examined chyrons (the text at the bottom of the screen) from three major cable networks: CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. By looking at the words and phrases used between August 25, 2017, and January 21, 2018, we can get a sense of the differences in how each network covers the news and how a viewer’s perception of the world might change depending on which one they watch. …
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Journalist Sees 'Almost No Daylight' Between Fox News And White House Agendas
Terry Gross | Fresh Air interview | July 12, 2018
President Trump's connections to Fox News got even stronger last week with his appointment of Bill Shine, a former network co-president, to serve as the White House's deputy chief of staff for communications.
Gabriel Sherman, who covers the White House for Vanity Fair, notes that Shine has been named in "numerous lawsuits" related to the sexual harassment claims filed against the former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. …
He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "Fox News is a complete expression of [Ailes'] world view. He said an interview ... he 'built this network from his life experience,' and it's true. It's amazing how this giant media organization is run as the expression of one man and his rule inside the company is absolute.” …
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https://www.npr.org/2014/01/16/263063731/book-chronicles-the-building-of-roger-ailes-fox-news-empire
Gabriel Sherman writes about Ailes' success with Fox News in his new book, The Loudest Voice In The Room: How The Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News — And Divided A Country.
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Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration
By Greg Miller, January 13, 2019, Washington Post
President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.
Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. …
Former U.S. officials said that Trump’s behavior is at odds with the known practices of previous presidents, who have relied on senior aides to witness meetings and take comprehensive notes then shared with other officials and departments. …
The meeting in Hamburg happened several months after The Washington Post and other news organizations revealed details about what Trump had told senior Russian officials during a meeting with Russian officials in the Oval Office. Trump disclosed classified information about a terrorism plot, called former FBI director James B. Comey a “nut job” and said that firing Comey had removed “great pressure” on his relationship with Russia. …
Trump also had other private conversations with Putin at meetings of global leaders outside the presence of aides. He spoke at length with Putin at a banquet at the same 2017 global conference in Hamburg, where only Putin’s interpreter was present. Trump also had a brief conversation with Putin at a Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires last month. …
Because of the absence of any reliable record of Trump’s conversations with Putin, officials at times have had to rely on reports by U.S. intelligence agencies tracking the reaction in the Kremlin. …
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