Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
When it comes to Big Media news, all eyes this week will be on the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News as it goes to trial in a Delaware courthouse.
It’s one of the most significant media trials in decades, with ramifications that strike at the heart of what we call a “free press.”
Somewhere in Journalism 101, or maybe it was 201, I learned that a news reporting operation can get away with not telling the truth if it was done without malice. To prosecute a news outlet for an unintended error in reporting would have a chilling effect on those who seek to uncover truths that others don’t want reported.
But to intentionally mislead your audience for the sake of higher ratings? That’s crossing a line that even the staunchest defenders of press freedoms abhor, which is why the news media aren’t rallying behind Fox in its defense against Dominion’s bold accusations.
In case you haven’t been paying attention to this issue: Dominion makes voting machines that are widely used from coast to coast in the U.S., and they are alleging that Fox News intentionally raised baseless doubts about the voting machines as part of unfounded accusations that the 2020 presidential election vote was miscounted and therefore stolen away from then-President Donald Trump.
And that Fox knew it was wrong, but they did it anyway.
Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6 billion and, based on the pre-trial revelations that Fox mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson knew the stolen-election charges were false, Dominion might just win.
The problem in our democracy today is that “fake news” runs rampant, with the purveyors of false and misleading information getting away with it by claiming the truth-telling news outlets are the fake ones. Fox is at the top of the cable-news ratings because it caters more to its audience’s preconceived notions than to actually telling the truth about what’s really going on. It’s not the only media outlet to do so, not by any means, but it is the biggest.
And while we’re on the subject of bad behavior in Big Media, I wonder what will become of Twitter’s latest falling out with National Public Radio. NPR is pulling its feeds to the social media giant after Twitter owner Elon Musk labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media” — a label that’s more typically applied to propaganda outlets in autocratic countries than to a publicly funded network that dominates radio news.
It’s laughable, really, how clueless Musk can be at times. Apparently, after talking with an NPR tech reporter about the label, NPR’s label was revised to “government-funded media,” even though NPR says it gets only 1% of its funds from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A lot of media organizations get a much higher percentage than that from government sources, mainly in the form of legal and display advertising, so the notion that NPR should be defined as a “government funded” operation is sort of absurd.
Here in rural New Mexico, through a network of public radio stations and substations, NPR can be heard all over the state. Meanwhile, Fox News dominates cable television news especially in southeastern New Mexico, where conservatives still rule the roost. So don’t think these Big Media issues are faraway concerns of no consequence to our small state.
More than ever before, it’s up to We The People to discern the truth behind the news. We should start by considering the real-world credibility of our trusted sources.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at: