Eric Boehlert at Press Run Media has news that should draw the attention of everyone on the left. There may finally be some push-back on the failure of the press to do the job the Founders were counting on: providing accountability, AKA speaking truth to power. The Republican’s superpower is shamelessness; a press aggressively dedicated to accountability would be like kyptonite. Congressional hearings are being live streamed right now on how cable companies and others are allowing the spread of dangerous disinformation.
First a little context. (Skip to the header down below if you want to cut to the chase.)
A big problem for the Left is that we do not have anything like the massive disinformation machine the Right has put together — and mainstream media fails to counter. We just had four years when the networks would pre-empt normal programming every time a Trump shill promised to come out into the Rose Garden to push the latest BS — and there they were there.
I remember at least once where the cameras were pointed at an empty podium for a half hour while they waited for the White House to get its act together. We all remember that a standard feature of ‘briefings’ was attacks on the press — which largely sat there and took it. We all remember the press sessions where the most outrageous claims were made — and then no questions were taken. The White House got hours of free air time for what was disinformation and blatant political campaigning.
Today? Everyone wants ‘normal’ again — but ‘normal’ is how we got Trump, January 6, 2021, half a million dead from the pandemic, and more.
CNN has decided that a functioning White House attempting to provide real governance is not ‘newsworthy’ because it’s too ‘normal’. (Translation: isn’t delivering enough eyeballs to advertisers. Per Boehlert:
After creating new programming rules for the Trump administration and airing virtually every minute of every White House press briefing live and in its entirety, CNN has quietly cut the cord with the new Democratic administration.
Just one month into President Joe Biden's term, the all-news cable channel last week stopped airing the daily White House press briefings. Perhaps the events weren't entertaining enough, as White House spokesperson Jen Psaki has routinely declined to insert Biden into cultural war debates, refused to castigate reporters, and won’t make stuff up in the name of partisan warfare, the way her Republican predecessors did...
...CNN's move represents one of the most dramatic ways the press has changed the way it covers Biden, as compared to Trump. Suddenly gone is the nonstop, unfiltered coverage of White House briefings, which defined cable news during the past four years.
In January 2017, the rules changed overnight when Trump was inaugurated and suddenly the media sessions were treated as breaking news events. That, despite the fact that during the final six months of Barack Obama's presidency, just three percent of daily White House press briefings aired live, according to Media Matters.
In other words, Obama briefings were not aired. Trump's were. Now, Biden's are not. So much for liberal media bias.
Boehlert has more on this at his link above.
So, if you are a ‘normal’ American, all you hear/see about what the Biden administration and Democrats are doing is whatever snippets can be reduced to sound bites for the news. If you are a FOX, OAN, NewsMax addict, you get a constant stream of lies and attack messaging 24/7. You get the fringiest of fringe messages amplified and passed on to the mainstream media which picks them up for ‘balance’. You get Senator Ron Johnson spouting the Big Lies now coming out about the insurrection. Per Charles P. Pierce:
As an alumnus, long ago, of what eventually became the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, I’d like to state proudly that I associate myself with what the newspaper said about Senator Ron (Shreds of Freedom) Johnson last week, particularly in light of what he said on Tuesday, when ol’ Shreds took yet another opportunity to dance the tarantella on his own dick.
Johnson said at Tuesday’s hearing the violence that day was sickening and reprehensible. At the same time, he has dismissed the idea that the riot was an “armed insurrection,” because the rioters used flag poles and pipes, gas and chemicals, and hockey sticks, baseball bats and police shields instead of firearms to attack law enforcement defending the building. But one witness at the hearing, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, offered a different view, calling it a "military-style" attack, and saying, “These criminals came prepared for war.”Johnson also read aloud from a whackadoo “report” from The Federalist about how the insurrection was the product of agents provocateur and, possibly, moles from Antifa. Nobody on the committee interrupted this schizoid episode. Nobody on the committee hit Johnson in the face with a pie, although I would’ve supported this action with all my heart….
And, it’s still standard practice for Republican talking heads to appearing in mainstream media interviews to insist there was serious fraud in the 2020 election — the ‘excuse’ that drove the mob attacking the Capitol. Networks should consider adopting a policy of cutting off an interview with anyone who makes this claim, but they won’t. They don’t want to be accused of ‘cancel culture’. So what do we do?
Cutting the Cable
When it comes to right wing media, there is a problem. Eric Boehlert is looking at what will be happening today in the House.
The country's largest cable TV providers — the companies that deliver hundreds of channels into homes across the country — will be on the hot seat today. In the wake of the last month's deadly, military-style insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Democrats at a scheduled Energy and Commerce Committee hearing want to know what AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other media bosses are doing about the never-ending flow of lies and misinformation produced by right-wing outlets, such as Fox News.
Today, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are working to try to clamp down on far-right content that spreads dangerous lies about the election, which whipped up a bloodthirsty mob on January 6, as well as a year's worth of Covid-19 falsehoods. Now Democrats want to press the carriers on what can be done about cable television outlets, including Newsmax TV and OAN, that gleefully do the same thing.
"What moral or ethical principles (including those related to journalistic integrity, violence, medical information, and public health) do you apply in deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel?" asked two Democratic representatives from California, Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, in a letter sent to cable provider CEO's, as well as to the heads of Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu, digital companies that distribute cable programming. "Do you require, through contracts or otherwise, that the channels you carry abide by any content guidelines? If so, please provide a copy of the guidelines."
The Democrats have an interesting working title: Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media. Framing an issue sends a message right up front. It’s going to be an all-star show:
...members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter on Monday to Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice, asking about their role in “the spread of dangerous misinformation.”
The committee members also sent the letter to Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu, digital companies that distribute cable programming.
Why the focus on cable? Advertiser boycotts are one way to fight back against media bad actors, but as Boehlert explains, they have an out.
Those lies would never reach viewers if it weren't for the corporate carriers. And for Fox News, the carriers represent a key lifeblood of the channel's profitability. Every cable or satellite TV provider pays a subscriber fee of nearly $2 per-household to carry Fox News, a cost paid for directly by consumers, whether they watch Fox News or not. The network rakes in nearly $2 billion each year from the hidden subscriber fees, twice as much as CNN and three times as much as MSNBC. Those sky-high fees in turn protect Fox News when advertisers abandon the network.
Activists have learned over the years that trying to pressure Madison Avenue to drop Fox News and to not be associated with its dehumanizing programming, often doesn't work in terms of getting Fox News to change because most of the network's profits come from carriers fees.
Even though Tucker Carlson lost virtually all of his blue-chip advertisers years ago and now relies on the My Pillow guy to buy up the show's inventory, Carlson remains safely ensconced at Fox News spewing hatred and lies about the pandemic and the election. That’s because Murdoch's network can afford to take that hit thanks to the billions they receive in carrier fees, which dwarf the network's advertising base.
emphasis added
I live in the Land Without Cable, so at least I’m not contributing to the problem by subsidizing them, especially Fox News. (Kevin Drum has targeted Fox News as the big problem: Here, Here, and Here.)
The hearing is being live-streamed RIGHT NOW.
Republicans on the committee are already going to Whataboutism, as expected. They are also going all apeshit over “freedom of the press” and other performative art. They really hate the idea of putting a spotlight on this and they are attacking with full projection and every other weapon in their arsenal. The opening statements will be part of the record. Some of them are way over the top.
The Committee website is here. You might want to look up the members — especially if one of them is your representative — and drop them a line.
The cable companies are a big problem in their own right; they effectively have monopoly power in too many places. They restrict choice by forcing program bundles on a take it or leave it basis — and as we see here, you can end up supporting bad actors with your cable bill.
These hearings deserve a lot more attention than the news cycle will likely give them.
BONUS: Boehlert links to an article by Perry Bacon Jr. — What The Trump Era Taught Me About Covering Politics. It’s a mea culpa about how he and so many others in the press failed to grasp the appeal of Trump.
