That question became terrifyingly urgent this weekend when the President of the United States admitted he was preparing to send US military forces into an American city based entirely on old Fox News footage and lies from his advisors.
Tim Cushing had a story yesterday about Trump’s bizarre declaration of war on Portland, threatening to deploy the US military against a city experiencing nothing more than a few tame protests. But the most alarming detail emerged later: in a conversation with Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, Trump admitted he had no idea what was actually happening in Portland:
“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
Read that again. The President of the United States—who has access to better intelligence than anyone on Earth—is moving to deploy military forces against American citizens based on what he saw on TV and what his “people” told him, without bothering to verify whether any of it was real.
Trump made his pledge to send troops to Portland on Saturday morning. On Friday, Fox News had several segments in which purported violence in the city was shown.
One featured Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security official who often appears on cable shows. As she was discussing an executive order Trump signed, the channel showed b-roll of events in Portland.
Sept. 26, 2025. (Internet Archive)
You will notice, though, that the footage was not timestamped for any date in September. Instead, they showed an encounter apparently involving tear gas that occurred back in June … andfootage from protests in July 2020.
In the next hour, they ran the same playbook. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on, talking about how dangerous the left was next to footage of Portland violence from July 2020.
Sept. 26, 2025. (Internet Archive)
If this is what Trump was seeing, one can see how he might have been confused about the timeline (particularly ifhe wasn’t wearing his glasses). You can also see how the average Fox News viewer might be under the impression that Portland is a violent hellscape.
There’s a lot more in Bump’s piece about how the White House seems to be living in a fantasy world of their own making.
Dan Froomkin at Press Watch notes that it probably wasn’t just the Friday coverage that caused Trump to do this, because Fox News has been playing similar b-roll clips for weeks now, and Trump seems obsessed with these five-year-old videos that keep replaying, thinking that they’re live.
And yet ever since Trump watched a Sept. 4 segment on Fox News’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” he’s been spouting outrageous fever dreams about the place.
But Trump fell for it bigly – and then ran with it. (The Guardian’sRobert Mackey, to his credit, reported it at the time.)
Here’s what Trump said. I’m quoting him at length because the White House no longer posts transcripts of his comments:
Trump:But I will say this, I watched today and I didn’t know that was continuing to go on, but Portland is unbelievable. What’s going on in Portland, the destruction of the city.
Q.Are you going into Portland?
Trump:Well I’m gonna look at it now because I didn’t know that was still going on. This has been going on for years. So we’ll be able to stop that very easily, we’ll be able to stop, but you know, that was not on my list, Portland, but when I watched television last night, this has been going on –you wouldn’t be standing, if you were the mayor, you wouldn’t be, can you imagine what they’re doing? They’re walking and throwing smoke bombs into stores. These are paid terrorists, OK? These are paid agitators, these are profess — I watched that last night. I’m very good at this stuff — these are paid agitators.”…
These are paid agitators and they’re very dangerous for our country, and when we go there, if we go to Portland, we’re gonna wipe ’em out. They’re gonna be gone and they’re gonna be gone fast — they won’t even stand to fight. They will not stay there. They’ve ruined that city. I have people that used to live in Portland, they’ve left, most of them have left, but what they’ve done to that place is just, it’s like living in hell.
On September 25,he was at it again, this time with vice president JD Vance nodding along:
Trump:When you go out to Portland and you see what’s happening in Portland, this is like —
Vance:Crazy.
Trump:— nobody’s ever seen anything like it every night and this has gone on for years. They just burned the place down and, you know, the shop owners, most of them have left. But the few shops that are open, they just use plywood and just like, three quarter inch plywood. They don’t put storefronts up because they know it’s going to be burned down. These are professional agitators.
Vance:That’s right.
So this started a few weeks ago due to Fox News playing b-roll from years ago, Trump thinks it’s live shots… and no one ever bothers to correct him, because no one corrects the mad king.
Even if the conversation with the governor made him think twice, he still moved to mobilize 200 National Guard members to go to Portland to fight a domestic war that doesn’t exist. Oregon quickly filed for an injunction blocking this nonsense, and it also suggests that Trump appears to making decisions based on believing that Fox News’ background b-roll from five years ago is happening now:
Nonetheless, on September 5, 2025, Fox News aired a report on Portland ICE protests that included misleading clips from Portland protests in 2020
Shortly thereafter, President Trump appeared to reference events in the same misleading FoxNews report when speaking to the press. A reporter asked which city President Trump planned to send troops to next, and he said he was considering targeting Portland because of news coverage the night before. President Trump alleged that “paid terrorists” and “paid agitators” were making the city unlivable, further stating “[a]nd when we go there, if we go to Portland, we’re gonna wipe them out. They’re going to be gone and they’re going to be gone fast. They won’t even stand the fight.”
President Trump later designated Antifa a terrorist organization on September 19, 2025. Afterward, he described a plan to insert federal personnel in cities such as Chicago, Memphis, and Portland. He stated “Have you seen Portland at all? You take a look what’s happening in Portland. It’s uh I mean, this has been going on for years. It’s just people out of control. Crazy. We’re going to stop that very soon.”
While answering questions from the press on September 25, 2025, the President baselessly insisted people had “just burned the place down.”
So half of this story is that we have a mad king who will fall for anything he sees on Fox News without bothering to first find out whether it’s true or not.
That’s terrifying!
But the other part is that his “people” around him are clearly abusing the senile President to take advantage of the situation to play out their own violent fantasies. Greg Sargent at the New Republic has a story about a back-and-forth he had with Steve Bannon, who flat out tells Sargent that all of this is Trump deputy chief-of-staff Stephen Miller’s doing:
I asked Bannon if he thinks Miller’s tweet means federal law enforcement should and will now criminally investigate groups who describe ICE as “authoritarian.”
“Yes,” Bannon replied. “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.”
Miller’s long-standing hunger for using federal force against those he views as domestic opponents now has the perfect vehicle: a president so detached from reality that he can be manipulated into military action by old Fox News clips and whispered lies from advisors who know exactly which buttons to push.
All of this is fucking terrifying. The institutions designed to prevent exactly this kind of abuse—Congress, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court—have either abdicated their responsibilities or actively enabled this moment.
But there’s a more immediate question: if the President can be manipulated into deploying military force by Fox News b-roll and vengeful advisors, what else might they convince him to do? Yesterday it was AI deepfakes of himself promoting fake medical devices. Today it’s military deployments based on five-year-old footage. Tomorrow?
Should the United States survive this, there is going to need to be a serious reckoning over how we fix our institutions to protect against such horrifying abuses.
We just got done noting how there’s not much the federal government can do about right wing propaganda outlets like Fox News, given their protections under the First Amendment and the general limitations (both legally and courageously) at regulators like the FCC.
But there is one thing that’s likely to cause some serious trouble for Fox News’: the continuing rise of cord cutting. A huge chunk of Fox News’ revenues technically come from consumers that don’t actually watch the channel, but pay for it through traditional, dated cable TV channel bundles.
Of the 70 million or so traditional cable TV subscribers, only about 17 percent of those actually watch Fox. Despite very often not even being watched, Fox nabs $1.8 billion a year — about fifty percent more than it makes off of advertising — from simply having its channel in a cable lineup.
But there’s trouble in paradise. Cable TV cord cutting (ditching traditional cable bundles in favor of streaming or over the air broadcasts) set new records in the first quarter, with U.S. pay-TV subscriptions falling to their lowest level since 1992.
Between this, Fox News’ various defamation cases, the scandals caused by their former 8PM slot bigot and propagandist, and the erosion of market share at the hands of even shittier right wing propaganda channels (OANN, NewsMax), Wall Street investors are starting to get a bit nervous. Especially as “must watch” sports channels like ESPN more heavily embrace streaming:
“Fox News’s share of conservative news viewers is down to 84% from 94%. Cahall also noted that Fox gets 50% of its revenue from affiliate fees. He sees cord-cutting as reducing pay TV subscribers by 7% to 8% this year. He adds that if ESPN goes direct-to-consumer, cord-cutting could accelerate.”
As Cable TV continues to die, Fox News faces some significant hurdles. While outlets like OANN and Fox enjoy a ton of coverage regarding their influence, the vast majority of consumers really aren’t interested. The traditional, bloated, overpriced channel bundle has historically helped mask that fact, but as streaming choice expands, reality could provide a pretty ugly wake up call.
That still doesn’t fix the broader problem of right wing propaganda posing as news, but expanded consumer options will make it clear that most folks (especially younger Americans) genuinely don’t want to play racist conspiracy theory pseudo-news patty cake. With the party’s older voting blocks dying off, the Trump GOP will need to develop new ways to trick Americans into voting against their best interests.
One of the reasons that propaganda mills like Fox News don’t take a bigger hit from advertising boycotts is because U.S. consumers pay billions of dollars annually for the channel, even if they don’t watch it. More specifically, Fox rakes in$1.8 billion in carriage fees to include the channel in bloated cable bundles, despite the fact that just 3 million of the nation’s 90 million cable TV subscribers actively watch.
Of course, this extends to other channels as well.
One new study estimates that U.S. consumers pay $1,600 annually for cable TV channels they never watch thanks to the dated, bloated, traditional channel bundle model. It also found that the average cable subscriber has access to 190 channels–but only regularly watches 15 of them. All the while, the average cable TV bill has grown 52% in the last three years, from around $96 to $147.
Customers have been “cutting the cord” (axing traditional cable TV) at an historic rate, and it’s not particularly hard to see why:
By paying $147 per month to watch only 15 channels, the average pay-TV customer shells out $9.57 per channel watched – an amount that rivals the monthly cost of most streaming services.
That per-channel price is even higher for the many viewers who watch fewer stations. Less than 50 percent of pay-TV subscribers regularly watch more than 10 channels, and less than a quarter regularly watched 20 or more channels in their subscription.
Streaming providers are also seeing slower growth because, in part, everyone (including top streaming outfit Netflix) is continually raising rates on users. I thought research firm MoffettNathanson issued an investor note that aptly captured the current state of the TV industry:
Many of the media companies have made conscious decisions to strip-mine their cable networks, shifting their best content to their streaming platforms. At the same time, they have raised prices relentlessly to offset declining viewership. Both strategies have alienated distributors, who are now more ambivalent than ever about trying to retain video subscribers who are themselves increasingly ambivalent about lower and lower quality video services for which they are asked to pay higher and higher prices.
You might recall the push for “a la carte” TV channels (being able to buy cable TV channels individually) was even a pet project of the late John McCain in the aughts, though his legislative efforts on that front never really went anywhere. The cable industry rejected most requests for such pricing by claiming it would drive up prices for consumers (this, if you didn’t notice, happened anyway).
And while the rise of streaming competition has mitigated the problem significantly (42% of Americans have ditched cable TV and gone broadband only), the tactic of forcing US cable TV consumers to buy massive bundles filled with channels they don’t watch remains a very real annoyance. And, in the case of ongoing financing of Fox News, in more ways than one.
This particular lawsuit was filed in Delaware state court against Fox News Corporation, alleging that many of its hosts and commentators lied about Dominion’s voting machines and its owners during coverage following Donald Trump’s election loss. These false claims continued to be made by Fox News personalities like Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo and amplified by guest commentators (who are also being sued by Dominion elsewhere) like former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.
Fox moved to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming there was no defamation here, just a lot of protected speech. Fox’s defense is that repeated lies by hosts and guests were heated hyperbole and statements of opinion rather than defamation. Also, Fox contends it can’t be held responsible for statements made by its employees. From the decision [PDF]:
Fox argues that multiple constitutional doctrines protect Fox’s alleged defamatory speech. First, Fox contends that truthfully reporting newsworthy allegations made by a sitting president and his legal team on matters of public concern is not actionable. Second, Fox claims that the media is completely protected when reporting and commenting about allegations made in government proceedings. Third, Fox asserts that opinion and hyperbolic rhetoric about newsworthy allegations are constitutionally protected. Finally, Fox claims that none of the challenged individual statements identifies actionable defamation against Fox.
But, as the Delaware Superior Court points out in its refusal to toss the case, Fox News and its hosts were provided facts that contradicted on-air statements. And yet these statements continued unaltered, with Fox News playing up the “stolen election” angle to drive viewers to its broadcasts.
It’s that refusal to correct on-air statements that may end up costing Fox News a whole lot of money. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion, citing the amount of money it has spent fighting months of false claims about its software and hardware, as well as contracts dropped by state officials who bought into the “stolen election” narrative.
The judge says repeating false claims when you have facts in hand can be defamatory. That’s called “actual malice” and it’s definitely actionable. And the reporting on the election and Dominion Voting Systems was far from neutral, undermining Fox’s “neutral reportage” defense.
The Court, reviewing the Complaint’s allegations, notes that it is reasonably conceivable that Fox’s reporting was inaccurate. As alleged, Dominion attempted to factually address Fox’s election fraud allegations. After Fox began connecting Dominion to election fraud claims, Dominion sent Fox executives and television anchors its “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT” emails. Dominion’s emails, which contained analysis from election and related experts, tended to disprove the election fraud claims. Nevertheless, Fox and its news personnel continued to report Dominion purported connection to the election fraud claims without also reporting on Dominion’s emails. When Fox guests spread or reiterated disinformation about Dominion, Fox did not use the information Dominion provided to correct its guests or to reorient its viewers. Instead, Fox and its personnel pressed their view that considerable evidence connected Dominion to an illegal election fraud conspiracy.
In addition, the Court notes that it is reasonably conceivable that Fox was not dispassionate. Given that Fox apparently refused to report contrary evidence, including evidence from the Department of Justice, the Complaint’s allegations support the reasonable inference that Fox intended to keep Dominion’s side of the story out of the narrative. Moreover, the Complaint alleges numerous instances in which Fox personnel did not merely ask questions and parrot responses but, rather, endorsed or suggested answers. Fox therefore may have failed to report the issue truthfully or dispassionately by skewing questioning and approving responses in a way that fit or promoted a narrative in which Dominion committed election fraud.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the neutral reportage defense is completely undercut. But at this point — with Fox having yet to actually respond to the allegations in Dominion’s complaint — Fox can’t make this lawsuit disappear.
First, Fox argues it was not required to “defend” Dominion from Fox’s guest by reporting Dominion’s refutations. Still, Fox’s possession of evidence demonstrating the election fraud claims were untrue supports the reasonable inference that Fox made or published statements knowing they were false or with a reckless disregard for the truth. Fox may not ordinarily have a duty to defend the targets of allegations on which it is reporting; however, Fox must report on those allegations accurately and dispassionately under the neutral reportage defense. Second, Fox argues there are instances in which Fox was critical of the allegations against Dominion and in which Fox reported Dominion’s refutations. Fox may end up being right. This is the pleadings stage though and, at this stage, this argument raises factual issues the Court must resolve in Dominion’s favor. Fox will have the ability to develop this argument during discovery as the case proceeds.
The “fair reporting” privilege also does not apply. This covers “substantially true” coverage of court proceedings. Hardly anything asserted by Dominion to be defamatory fits this description.
The Court recognizes that most of the alleged statements were made before a lawsuit had been filed (e.g., the Powell allegations). As a result, most of the alleged statements, even if true, were not “of” a judicial proceeding. That alone is enough to preclude the fair report privilege. Fox counters with decisions that, according to Fox, hold the fair report privilege applies to “anticipated” or “forthcoming” lawsuits as well as pending proceedings. To the extent Fox argues its personnel were referring to pending election fraud cases filed throughout the nation, and investigations initiated by the federal government, the Complaint alleges facts that Fox’s personnel did not tailor their comments to the allegations in those proceedings. By consequence, the Court finds there is ambiguity, from the viewer’s perspective, as to whether Fox was reporting on those proceedings.
Hyperbole and opinion? Maybe that defense will work for Fox News once discovery is underway and all the facts can be closely examined. But for now, the court finds too many of the statements made by Fox News hosts possibly actionable to toss out the entire suit.
[T]he Court finds it is reasonably conceivable that Fox and its personnel broadcasted mixed opinions that were based on either false or incomplete facts unknown to the reasonable viewer. Many of Fox’s reporters made broad election fraud statements that did not disclose their sources clearly, or clearly connect their statements to the election fraud litigations. Although Fox classifies its reporters’ remarks as “commentary” that used “loose and hyperbolic rhetoric” for entertainment value, even loose and hyperbolic language can be actionable if it rests on false statements of fact undisclosed to viewers. Accordingly, the Complaint supports the reasonable inference that Fox made unprotected statements of fact that defamed Dominion.
It’s those “false statements of facts” that bring in the “actual malice” component of defamation law. The court says Dominion has alleged enough to move forward. Fox’s defense that some of its commentators and hosts contradicted claims of election fraud — perhaps assuming this would mean Fox News as a whole can’t be sued — works against it.
In addition, the Complaint alleges that several of Fox’s personnel openly disclaimed the fraud claims as false. Yet, certain Fox personnel (e.g., Mr. Dobbs) continued to push the fraud claims. The nearby presence of dissenting colleagues thus further suggests Fox, through personnel like Mr. Dobbs, was knowing or reckless in reporting the claims.
That’s not to say this won’t ultimately result in Fox News escaping this lawsuit. But from what the judge has seen so far, Fox definitely has an uphill battle. Fox execs should have known they were playing with litigation fire by allowing their hosts to traffic in false claims about Dominion voting machines — especially after the network was given evidence that directly contradicted these claims. But the network apparently felt the “stolen election” angle was for more profitable and more likely to retain viewers unwilling to believe their president was no longer their president.
As multiple lawsuits continue to work their way through the court system, high-profile Trump acolytes are going to discover that their election conspiracy theories are going to cost them far more than their reputations.
As I just made clear, I’m no fan of Twitter’s new “private media” policy, which I think comes from a well-meaning place, but will lead to widespread abuse by malicious actors seeking to hide evidence of bad behavior (indeed, there’s evidence this is already happening). But that’s no excuse for Senator Josh Hawley (supporter of the January 6th insurrection, and who seems to think his job as Senator from the confused state of Missouri is to product manage internet services). Hawley reacted to this new policy by saying that it’s a reason to break up Twitter. He says “we oughta break them up” at the end of a very bizarre interview with Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
We’ll get to the other nonsense from Hegseth and Hawley in a moment, but let’s start by focusing on the “we oughta break them up” line. First off, he’s clearly saying that the company needs to be broken up in response to the company’s editorial decisions. That’s… just a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment. Hell, just imagine how he (or Hegseth!) would respond to a Democratic Senator saying Fox should be “broken up” because of the company’s editorial bias. I imagine both Hawley and Hegseth would go nuts about such unconstitutional overreach. But here, Hawley suggests breaking up Twitter in response to its editorial choices, and Hegseth seems happy to support that position.
That’s because neither of them have any principles. They’re fine with ignoring the Constitution if it allows them to attack their perceived ideological enemies.
Second, under what possible theory would you “break Twitter up” here. Twitter is relatively small as a social media player. Reports from about a month ago show Twitter as the 15th largest social media service globally. Even in just the US, it appears that Twitter comes in at least 7th place and possibly lower, depending on WhatsApp and TikTok’s growth.
So the company, in no way, qualifies for any sort of antitrust treatment no matter how you look at it. The only possible reason to suggest that we should “break up” Twitter is because you disagree with their policies, which is a blatantly authoritarian position. Which, well, fits when we’re talking about Josh Hawley.
As for Hegseth, his little bit of pandering is ridiculous as well. After mispronouncing both the first and last name of Twitter’s new CEO, Parag Agrawal, he blames Agrawal for the new policy (that surely was planned much earlier). He then goes on a rant about how this policy is “meant to protect” antifa and Black Lives Matter protestors, but insists that it won’t be used to protect conservatives.
Of course, as we showed in our original post, nearly all of the examples of enforcement so far have gone the other way. The policy has been used to takedown images and videos of Trumpists and white nationalists who didn’t like being called out by others. But, never expect a Fox News host to let facts get in the way of winding up the ignorant base. Hegseth also fails to mention the fact that the policy doesn’t apply to public figures or newsworthy events — and names multiple public figures and newsworthy situations that he insists will be “censored” under the policy. Basically, pure disinformation.
He then says:
It gives the social media platform even more control, which is scary. More control over what can be shown. And more proof that they are, indeed, a publisher, and not simply (eyeroll) an unbiased platform.
Except basically all of that is bullshit. Twitter has always had control over what it does and does not allow on its platform. That’s how terms of service work. It’s no different from the fact that Fox News and Hegseth would never have me on Fox News to explain to his face why he’s an ignorant, pandering fool. Because that’s their editorial discretion. That’s the right of Fox News, just as it’s the right of Twitter. Hell, Twitter allows WAY MORE speech on its platform that its executives disagree with than Fox News ever has and ever will.
And to then trot out the bogus and meaningless “publisher” / “platform” distinction (and throwing in a gratuitous and meaningless “unbiased”) makes no sense. A publisher has 1st Amendment rights to choose what to host and what not to. And Twitter was never an “unbiased platform.” That’s just something that people made up to attack the company.
Hegseth then claims that Twitter will now use this to censor content “they don’t want you to see.” Which is… not at all how this works. He then brings on Hawley, who rambles on bizarrely and disconnected from reality. He insists that this won’t be used to “protect the privacy of conservatives,” which is nonsense. Again, all of the examples we’ve seen of content being taken down are examples of it being Hawley’s fans and supporters who are abusing this new policy to hide their own bad behavior. Hawley then flat out lies about how Twitter operates, claiming that Twitter “tracks us around the web” builds a “dossier” on us and “sells our information.” Twitter… doesn’t actually do that? None of these companies “sell our information.” They sell advertising, which is targeted based on our information but that’s very different. And while you could say that Google and Facebook “track us,” Twitter really doesn’t except in the most limited of ways.
This is just random rage from Hawley in which he throws in a bunch of catchy sayings that don’t actually apply to Twitter, because it riles up his ignorant base (the only kind of people who would ever support Hawley, apparently) and then calls for the company to be broken up. It’s cynical, hypocritical and disgusting — or basically a Josh Hawley specialty.
Over the last few weeks there’s been a weird, wasteful, and just silly dispute in which the White House has tried to blame Facebook (and misinformation on Facebook) for not enough people agreeing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 (in light of cases ramping up again). Things have gotten so stupid that two Senators have released a terribly unconstitutional bill attempting to hold Facebook liable for “health misinformation” on its platform.
But… is Facebook actually to blame? Mark Zuckerberg (who, um, is obviously not an unbiased party) made a completely valid point in response to all of this: Facebook is available around the globe, yet much of the rest of the world is not seeing the same levels of vaccine hesitancy (indeed, the problem elsewhere tends to be a lack of supply), and that might raise questions as to why Facebook is facing the blame for vaccine hesitancy.
“..if one country is not reaching its vaccine goal, but other countries that all these same social media tools are in are doing just fine.. should lead you to conclude that.. platforms are not the decisive element..”
Of course, there’s more to it than that, but what strikes me as most notable is that actual health experts in places where there are high levels of vaccine hesitancy don’t seem to think that Facebook is the problem. They seem to recognize that it’s actually a Fox News problem. In an article talking with health officials in states like Alabama and Louisiana, where vaccine hesitancy is the highest, they’re saying the real problem remains Fox News.
Doctors and health officials in Alabama and Louisiana say their only hope for getting people vaccinated is if the media outlets that message to these areas, primarily Fox News, start advocating people get the shot, instead of pushing them away from the jab.
?I have people come up to me and say, ?Why on CNN? Couldn?t you go on Fox?? They are still very angry over the last couple of years. There?s an irritation. They are super frustrated. They need to hear it from the people that they trust. They need to hear it from where they get their news every day. And I don?t know why not Fox. Why not?,? O?Neal said. ?But it has to change this week. Every single show. And it has to be about the community, not the ?you? because there?s been too much about the ?you.? ?You? they got indoctrinated. It is not about ?you,? it is about the community. You?re going to kill your community.?
But despite the enormous reach of Facebook, only one media outlet has devoted itself to injecting falsehoods about the pandemic into the nervous systems of its audience on a 24/7 basis. That, of course, would be Fox News, the right-wing cable station that tells its viewers, over and over, that vaccines are dangerous and that wearing a mask to prevent COVID-19 is ineffective ? and, in any case, is not worth the price we?d pay in giving up our freedom.
None of this should be surprising. For years now we’ve been pointing people to the detailed, data-driven research findings of Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts in their book, Network Propaganda, which traced the actual flow of mis- and disinformation regarding the 2016 Presidential election, and found that the main vector (by far) was not Facebook, but Fox News. Yes, things would spread on Facebook eventually, but only after Fox News would make it into a story. A later study they did regarding disinformation about mail-in ballots found the same thing.
That’s not to say that mis- and disinformation don’t travel on Facebook. Clearly it happens all the time. But focusing on social media, as if it’s the primary culprit, or that somehow getting Facebook to delete the propagandists on that platform will magically solve all disinformation is clearly folly. Of course, you won’t see Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ray Lujan introducing bills to make Fox News liable for the health misinformation they spew — they at least recognize that that would not only be blatantly unconstitutional, but would be interpreted as an attack on conservatives’ favorite TV news channel.
Mis- and disinformation remain a real problem, but kneejerk attempts to blame social media are not helping and not getting at any of the root causes of the credibility crisis currently facing people throughout the US.
We’ve talked about the problem with bloated, expensive cable TV channel bundles for a long time. You might recall the push for “a la carte” TV channels (being able to buy cable TV channels individually) was even a pet project of the late John McCain, though his legislative efforts on that front never really went anywhere. And while the rise of streaming competition helped mitigate the problem somewhat, the tactic of forcing US cable TV consumers to buy massive bundles filled with channels they don’t watch remains a very real annoyance.
The latest case in point: many folks are realizing that the attempt to drive advertisers away from white supremacy apologists like Tucker Carlson aren’t really working, in part thanks to the traditional cable TV bundle. In short, because Fox News is included in most cable TV lineups, millions of Americans are throwing money at Fox News despite never watching the channel:
Lots of people asking about Tucker Carlson?s advertisers and, well, he doesn?t have any left. Like almost zero.
Fox News operates his show at a loss when it comes to ad revenue.
They pay for him through carriage fees, which we all pay into through our basic cable packages. https://t.co/yvwrcEGatO
I spent much of February talking to as many media scholars as I could for a piece trying to find a solution for the Fox News disinformation problem. The reality is there are very few policy proposals that wouldn’t run afoul of the First Amendment, especially with a rightward-lurching Supreme Court. One that might actually help work remains pushing actively to eliminate the bloated cable TV bundle:
“You?d kill those stations in a heartbeat if they didn?t get bundled in every cable package,? said Christopher Terry, assistant professor of media law at the University of Minnesota. ?All of those outlets thrive in the delivery to the audience they get by being included in every package, but in an a la carte cable package, only a handful of the true believer crowd would be willing to pay extra for them.”
?Imagine if they had to survive in an actual market-based scenario where the number of viewers they could have was limited by the people who would pay to have access to that specific content,? he added. ?You?d cut them off at the knees and use their own rhetoric to do so while making cable companies more accountable to the local customer base.”
Actually competing for attention, imagine that! Again, this was something that was supposed to be addressed by market forces via the streaming revolution, though many of the same failures in traditional cable simply wandered over to the streaming sector (not surprising since the same broadcasters and telecom giants dominated both arenas). And while streaming does provide greater choice, cable TV remains the dominant platform. As a result, Fox News still hauls in massive subsidies from a dated business model that involves tens of millions of Americans paying for a channel they never watch:
“Fox News makes $1.8 billion from the carriage fees it charges cable TV providers to include the channel in bloated, increasingly expensive cable TV bundles. But just 3 million of the nation?s 90 million cable TV subscribers actively watch the channel. In other words, 87 million Americans pay their cable company for and thus subsidize Fox News?despite rarely if ever actually watching the channel.”
“According to a survey conducted late last year, about 14% of cable TV subscribers watch Fox News regularly. But every cable TV subscriber pays an average of $1.72 a month to receive Fox News. In contrast, 31% of cable TV subscribers regularly watch FX (owned by Disney) but the channel adds just $0.81 to an average cable bill.
Judd Legum recently crunched the numbers further, showing how a lot of Fox News’ income comes utterly unearned, from people who may have zero interest in the racist tirades of a frozen TV dinner empire heir:
“According to a survey conducted late last year, about 14% of cable TV subscribers watch Fox News regularly. But every cable TV subscriber pays an average of $1.72 a month to receive Fox News. In contrast, 31% of cable TV subscribers regularly watch FX (owned by Disney) but the channel adds just $0.81 to an average cable bill.
This means, for every actual viewer, Fox News receives a $7.75 subsidy from people who never watch Fox News. This is a higher subsidy than other non-sports channels, like FX ($1.79), CNN ($3.18), and TBS ($2.79), receive. And none of those channels regularly spreads white nationalist talking points to millions of viewers.”
But again, as John McCain showed, breaking this logjam is easier said than done. Maine, for example, recently tried to pass a law forcing cable giants to sell channels individually, but found itself quickly sued by Comcast, which claimed the law violated the company’s free speech rights (Comcast’s winning that battle so far). The cable and broadcast industry has lobbied relentlessly to ensure this shift to individual channels never happens, claiming that moving to an a la carte model would kill niche channels and raise consumer prices (both things that repeatedly happenedanyway).
Granted this isn’t just about not liking the channel or disagreeing with the channels politics. There’s clear evidence, especially on the COVID front, that the bullshit pouring out of the Rupert Murdoch empire is actively harming human health:
“A media watchdog found over 250 cases of COVID-19 misinformation on Fox News in just one five-day period, and economists demonstrated that Fox News had a demonstrable impact on non-compliance with public health guidelines,? the lawmakers wrote.”
If you can’t rely on the wisdom of the courts, free market competition, or regulators to disrupt the Fox News disinformation parade, that leaves activists like Media Matters, which have increasingly been trying to target the problem with it’s Unfox My Cable Box campaign. But even if we’re to simply wait for the purely organic death of the traditional cable TV channel bundle at the hands of the streaming television and pissed consumers, it’s not entirely clear, based on the popularity of many bigoted influencers, that dangerous dipshittery won’t just find a new form to inhabit.
Bullshit is more profitable than truth under the engagement-driven, ad-based business models we’re building, and that’s simply a fact. Policies that change this reality won’t be easy to come by. The world’s top media policy experts are glacially pondering practical solutions to the toxic sludge of disinformation pouring out of the face of trolls like Tucker Carlson, but you may want to go read a book, because it’s gonna be a long wait.
Another day, another multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit. And like the other lawsuits filed over frothy falsehoods that emerged from the spittle-flecked lips of Trump lawyers and supporters, this one also targets people who definitely should have known better than to engage in the speech they did.
Smartmatic — a voting tech company whose name was dragged into the mud by a number of Fox News personalities and Trump legal team members — is suing three Fox News hosts and two lawyers. Media members and lawyers should definitely know how to stay away from engaging in alleged libel. But everyone sued here (Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro) abandoned their better instincts to wallow in the lowest-common-denominator toxicity that exemplified Trump’s response to losing a national election.
And Smartmatic had hardly anything to do with the national election. While Dominion Voting Systems — another post-election libel litigant — is in use in nearly half the nation, Smartmatic’s software was used in one single county in the US during the 2020 election.
But conspiracy theorists gotta theorize. So this group of morons in hurry to curry favor with Trump amplified a bizarre claim that Smartmatic was a tool of deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. In reality, Smartmatic is an American company founded by two Venezuelans. Its software was used by the Venezuelan government, but there’s absolutely no evidence the company itself engaged in any voter fraud, vote switching, or anything other illegal behavior Hugo Chavez’s government participated in.
The company’s 285-page(!) lawsuit [PDF] lays down the facts. A lot of the lawsuit’s runtime is given over to recounting the lies told by the two Trump lawyers and three Fox News hosts. Because the lying has been pretty much nonstop since last November, the filing is necessarily lengthy. Much of it highlights statements that were delivered by the defendants that made it clear they were stating facts, rather than simply offering their opinion on perceived election irregularities.
It also points out a long list of facts that would have been verifiable if any of the defendants had felt the slightest inkling to engage in the truth for a change.
Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not widely used in the 2020 U.S. election. They were only used in Los Angeles County.
Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not used by Dominion during the 2020 U.S. election. The companies are competitors.
Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not used to steal the 2020 U.S. election. Nor could they have been, given that Smartmatic’s role was limited to Los Angeles County.
Smartmatic’s election technology and software did not send votes to foreign countries for tabulation and manipulation during the 2020 U.S. election. The votes were tabulated in Los Angeles County.
Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not compromised and hacked during the 2020 U.S. election. No one has identified a shred of evidence that there were cyber-security issues in Los Angeles County.
Smartmatic has not been banned from being used in U.S. elections. Other election technology companies may have been banned but not Smartmatic.
Smartmatic is not a Venezuelan company and was not founded and funded by corrupt dictators from socialist and communist countries. Smartmatic USA Corp is based in Florida, and its parent company is based in the United Kingdom. No dictators – corrupt or otherwise, from communist/socialist countries or otherwise – were involved in founding or funding the company. Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not designed to rig and fix elections.
Smartmatic’s election technology and software were designed for security, reliability, and auditability. No after-the-fact audit has ever found that Smartmatic’s technology or software were used to rig, fix, or steal an election.
At the end of all of this, there’s a $2.7 billion damage demand. This is mostly performative and Smartmatic still has an uphill battle. Truth is the best defense against libel claims but none of these defendants have that option. But they can still bat away this lawsuit by showing the court no one really takes them seriously as pontificators or legal advisors. Admitting they’re nothing more than idiots in the entertainment business might be tough on their egos but it’s far less expensive than being forced to admit they knew they were lying or, at best, unwilling to vet any of these wild-ass claims before airing them publicly.
It’s widely recognized that there’s been a widespread backlash against the big tech companies over the last few years. Politicians on both sides of the aisle in the US have been calling for massive, sometimes crippling, regulations, fines or even antitrust breakups of the companies. Regulators around the globe have been fining the companies billions of dollars.
Apparently all of that is news to Fox News contributor Juan Williams, who has taken to the august pages of The Hill to publish an op-ed calling for a backlash to big tech. Dude, it’s already happening. Still, perhaps Williams has a new argument that is worth considering? I mean, there are legitimate points to be made about competition, privacy and the like. But… nope. Williams is mad that Wikileaks — which, last I checked, is not considered a member of “big tech” — leaked his cell phone number in a cache of John Podesta emails:
Tell the truth ? you love Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the rest.
I did, too. Then it got personal for me.
In 2016, Russian hackers, using WikiLeaks, ?doxed? me.
They published my private cell phone number in a dump of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta?s stolen emails. I gave him my number in a private email to set up an interview.
Once the number was out, my phone blew up. Pranksters harassed me. Thuggish partisans threatened me. I had to get a new phone as I was covering the final weeks of the campaign.
So, uh, what does that have to do with “Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the rest”? I have absolutely no clue. And neither does Williams. But apparently, it’s a reason to attack them. Oh, also because some asshole troll wrote negative reviews on his upcoming book on Amazon.
Then, in 2018, a smiling man came up after I hosted a television show in Dallas to tell me how much he enjoyed ?trolling? me online with racist language.
I couldn?t believe he was saying this to my face. His smile made it weird.
He then bragged about how he and his pals wrote phony reviews of a book I wrote on President Trump?s history of racism. He wanted to bring down the book?s rating on Amazon, even though it had not yet been released and he had not read it.
And get this ? this guy then asked for a selfie.
That’s certainly a good example of an asshole troll doing asshole trollish things. But according to Williams, it’s proof of why we need to attack social media companies?
This is just one horrible way the world has been transformed for the worse by social media.
Huh?
Then he just blames them all for recent mass shootings.
The recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton reminded the nation of the damage done by Big Tech’s refusal to take responsibility for hate speech, racism and calls to violence.
Wait. What did any of those sites have to do with the mass shootings in either place? This is just a random slur for no reason at all. There is no connection at all. Indeed, there’s a much stronger connection between those shootings and… wait for it, Williams’ own employer:
There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month.
[….]
An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer?s written statement ? a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.
So, uh, Juan Williams, perhaps there should be a “backlash” against your own house, before you start throwing stones at others. But, nope. It’s important for Fox News to keep the narrative focused on the tech companies, lest anyone take a look at its own efforts. And one way to fuel the narrative is to lie about it and then poll the public you fooled. Williams plays along:
Polls now show a sharp increase in Americans who are furious with big technology companies that rake in millions while refusing to take any responsibility for the spread of hateful language, bizarre conspiracy theories, financial scams and trolls ? as well as the derailing of honest political discourse.
Funny, but it’s Williams buddies at Fox News who keep arguing that these platforms take too much responsibility on the site and are supposedly “banning conservatives,” and that’s why Senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz keep threatening laws to stop these sites from taking down any speech. Meanwhile, you have to be horrifically and totally out of touch to argue that these sites have not been trying to deal with “hateful language, bizarre conspiracy theories, financial scams and trolls.” They’ve been trying. They’ve been failing, but part of that is the impossibility of the task. And part of it is the intellectually dishonest claims by folks like Williams.
Start with the big tech companies? refusal to stop Russia from interfering in the 2016 election with a deluge of phony online posts designed to tear the country apart by race, religion, sexual preference, and fear of immigrants.
“Refusal to stop” is an interesting way to rewrite history. First off, according to Fox News, all that Russia stuff is a hoax and we should be holding people responsible for “years of lies” about it. But now, Williams is claiming that tech companies should be held liable for not stopping what his colleagues insist is a total hoax? Second, it is absolutely true that social media companies were caught unaware of the extent of Russian operations on social media during the 2016 election. But it’s also true that detailed data analysis showed that it was Fox News and not Russian trolls who were more successful in spreading the kind of bogus propaganda the Russians were pushing.
Again, Mr. Williams, perhaps check your own house first.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a leading candidate for the White House in 2020, is following Hughes? lead by campaigning on a plan to break up the big tech companies.
And Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has introduced legislation to hold tech companies accountable for the fact that consumers ? especially young children ? are becoming addicted to tech products and harming their health in the process.
Williams is so clueless he doesn’t even realize that Hawley’s other recently introduced bill would literally ban what Williams is requesting in terms of having companies “take responsibility” for hate speech online.
Back in December, I wrote in this column:
?An honest 2020 election is not possible without Congress getting its hands dirty by confronting Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, the tech corporations often referred to by the acronym ?FAANG.??
The problem has only gotten worse.
Congress ? for the future of our democracy, please bring on the tech backlash!
Again, all of the evidence says that Fox News had significantly more impact than any of the big internet companies, and Williams’ sole point of complaint is that Wikileaks — not a big tech company — released an email with his phone number, and some random asshole online trolled him. Maybe, next time, Mr. Williams can take a look at his own employer first.
Last year, we wrote about a big fair use win by TV monitoring company TVEyes — a service used by governments, news companies and more to record, index and store TV broadcasts and make them searchable. Fox, a company that sometimes relies on fair use itself, sued TVEyes, alleging infringement and a violation of the infamous hot news doctrine. The court ruled pretty unambiguously in favor of fair use (yes, even as TVEyes is storing everything) for most of TVEyes basic operation (searching and indexing), and completely rejected the hot news claim. However, it did leave aside one area for further investigation: the features provided by TVEyes that allows users to save, archive, download, email and share clips as well as the feature for doing a “date-time search” (allowing users to retrieve video from a specific network based on the date and time of the broadcast. For those, the court wanted more evidence before deciding.
It has now ruled on that aspect and it’s a partial win for fair use and a partial loss, which may be troubling. The court declared the archiving function to be fair use. But the downloading and “date time search” functions are not fair use. The emailing feature could be fair use, “but only if TVEyes develops and implements adequate protective measures.”
Let’s look at the details. First, the court decides that the archiving function is fair use because it is integral to TVEyes’ overall service:
Democracy works best when public
discourse is vibrant and debate thriving. But debate cannot thrive when the message itself (in this
case, the broadcast) disappears after airing into an abyss. TVEyes’ service allows researchers to
study Fox News’ coverage of an issue and compare it to other news stations; it allows targets of
Fox News commentators to learn what is said about them on the network and respond; it allows
other media networks to monitor Fox’s coverage in order to criticize it. TVEyes helps promote
the free exchange of ideas, and its archiving feature aids that purpose.
Archiving video clips to remain stored beyond 32 days and to facilitate successive
reference is integral to TVEyes’ service and its transformational purpose of media monitoring.
And Fox has not identified any actual or potential market harm arising from archiving. I hold
that the archiving function is fair use, complementing TVEyes’ searching and indexing
functions.
As for emailing and sharing, there the court says it is fair use… if TVEyes includes a few protections:
I agree that to prohibit e-mail sharing would prevent TVEyes users from realizing
much of the benefit of its transformative service. For example, members of Congress rely on
TVEyes to be made aware of what the media has to say about the issues of the day and about
them. But their interns and staffers, not they, sit at computers querying keywords of interest
through the TVEyes portal, and then e-mail the results up the chain of command. Without e-mail,
the Congressman would be limited to either sharing a computer with his staffer or else having the
staffer describe the contents of the clip to the Congressman without showing him the clip. In
practice, the former is unrealistic and the latter fails to deliver “the full spectrum of information .
. . [including] what was said, [and] how it was said with subtext body language, tone of voice,
and facial expression-all crucial aspects of the presentation of, and commentary on, the news.”
[….]
However, there is also substantial potential for abuse. In its current incarnation,
TVEyes’ e-mailing feature cannot discriminate between sharing with a boss and sharing with a
friend, nor between sharing for inclusion in a study and sharing a clip for inclusion in a client
sales pitch. Fair use cannot be found unless TVEyes develops necessary protections. What limits
should be placed on subscribers who share links through social media? What can prevent
subscribers from sharing for purposes not protected by § 107? If TVEyes cannot prevent
indiscriminate sharing, it risks becoming a substitute for Fox’s own website, thereby depriving
Fox of advertising revenue.
This seems a bit strange to me, frankly. You still have to be a subscriber to make use of TVEyes, but then you can share clips freely online, which would seem to be a part of a reasonable news function, which should support fair use. But the court seems to think it’s only fair use if it’s kept “internally” via email.
Moving on to downloading, here, the court is not convinced that this is “integral” to the purpose of the product, citing a bunch of famed copyright cases, including the cases against Napster, ReDigi and MP3.com. Basically “downloading,” according to the court, must be infringing, and thus not fair use.
I believe that TVEyes’ downloading function goes well beyond TVEyes’
transformative services of searching and indexing…. TVEyes is transformative because it allows users to search and monitor television
news. Allowing them also to download unlimited clips to keep forever and distribute freely may
be an attractive feature but it is not essential. Downloading also is not sufficiently related to the
functions that make TVEyes valuable to the public, and poses undue danger to content-owners’
copyrights.
The court completely rejects TVEyes argument that downloading is essential for offline use, because the court insists that broadband is basically available anywhere, so it’s unlikely anyone will really need the service online.
Finally, there’s the “date-time search” feature, which apparently is used in nearly 6% of all TVEyes’ searches. Again, the court doesn’t buy the fair use argument, saying that the date-time search isn’t so much a “search” as it is a way for people to find something they already know is there, and that makes it much closer to the original programming and thus less “transformative.”
The feature is not as much a “search” tool as a content delivery tool for users who
already know what they seek. In such cases, TVEyes is not so transformational, since users
should be able to procure the desired clip from Fox News or its licensing agents, albeit for a fee.
Put simply, if a user wants to watch the first half of last Thursday’s 0 ‘Reilly Factor, the Court
sees no reason why he should not be asked to buy the DVD/
Unlike TVEyes’ core business, its “Date-Time search” function duplicates Fox’s
existing functionality. Fox’s contention that TVEyes’ Date-Time search is likely to cannibalize
Fox News website traffic and sales by its licensing agents is persuasive.
It does seem a bit worrying when courts get to decide which features of your service are okay and which are not. We generally want markets determining innovative features, rather than judges. And this ruling seems… particularly subjective on a number of points. There is no four factors test being done in any of these. It basically just takes the original ruling that the search and indexing is fair use, and then just focuses on whether these features are “essential” to that service to determine if they, too, are fair use. Again, it’s troubling when a court is deciding if a feature that customers clearly like is “essential.” That’s not how innovation is supposed to work.
This case is still early and I expect that there will be appeals on both sides, so this ruling, by itself, isn’t that important yet. What happens next, in terms of how the appeals court rules, is where things will get really interesting.
