Climate Change in Europe: On the Culpability of the Media

A report by the E.U. Copernicus Climate-Change Service in 2024 contains the finding that “Europe is the continent with the fastest-rising temperatures on Earth, having warmed twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s.”[1] In spite of “fastest-rising” and “twice as fast” are alarming expressions, no such corresponding sense of urgency had translated into a political will capable of pushing through game-changing legislation and regulations in the European Union. The short-term financial interests of industry, cost-conscious consumers, workers not wanting to be laid off, and taxpayers would pale in comparison were a sense of emergency to take hold the domain of politics. “Weak” states (i.e., governments) that are not willing or even able to resist short-term political pressures from an electorate exacerbate the problem even in the midst of climate change, which scientists decades earlier had predicted would really begin to move the needle on air-temperatures globally in the 2020s (and just wait until the oceans become saturated with CO₂!). You ain’t seen nothin yet may be the mantra for the 2030s.

It seems to be a case of the proverbial oblivious frog in gradually yet steadily warming water in a cooking pan on a stove, as the editors at journalistic media companies have been orienting their news to reporting on specific climate-related events that are disasters only in particular locales and thus do not point explicitly to global warming. For instance, on 4 July, 2025, a wildfire in the E.U. state of Greece “prompted evacuations in coastal areas south of Athens” and mobilized “75 firefighters, including five elite ground teams . . . alongside fire engines, volunteers, four helicopters, and two aircraft” as well as municipal water trucks.[2] “(O)ngoing heatwaves, drought and strong winds” kept the fire-risk high in the area.[3] Only at the end of Euronews’ article on the fire is climate change mentioned, and then only as an attenuating factor: “While fires are common in the area, experts say climate change is exacerbating them.”[4] That is to say: Oh, by the way, the warming of the planet’s atmosphere and oceans is in play here. Even as climate change is relegated thusly, that it is only exacerbating wildfires in the southern states such as Greece is a way of deflating claims that climate change ought to be handled as an emergency in terms of public policy. The media has thus been culpable.  

1. David O’Sullivan, “Firefighters Battle Wildfires in Greece and Turkey, Prompting Evacuations and Emergency Response,” Euronews.com, July 4, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

On the Decadence of American Journalism: Journalists as Celebrities

I submit that when a conveyer of the news becomes the story, something is wrong; in typing this sentence initially, I did not include I submit that. To state my thesis statement as if it were a fact of reason (Kant’s phrase) seemed to me rather heavy-handed (i.e., arrogant). Similarly, when some Americans insisted after the U.S. presidential that Don Trump had won as if the asseveration were a fact of reason, I could sense aggressiveness along with the presumptuousness in treating one’s own opinion as a declaration of fact, especially if the actual fact—Joe Biden being sworn into the office—was otherwise. Opinion is one thing; fact is another. When a person misconstrues one’s opinion with fact, something is wrong. I believe this happens so often that it may be due to a problem innate in the human brain. Religious folks would not have to reach far to point out that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the sin of pride manifests in wanting to be omniscient; eating of that proverbial apple of the knowledge of good and evil ushers in original sin. A person perceiving one’s own opinion as fact, or even as important as fact, implicitly regards oneself as God. A journalist who interlards one’s role in conveying the news with one’s own commentary, and an editor who then makes that commentary the point of a story both treat a means (i.e., the conveyer of news) as an end (i.e., the news itself). I contend that at least by 2023, American journalism had fallen into this hole with impunity, which involved a lack of industry self-regulation and individual self-discipline.   

On July 4, 2023, The Huffington Post ran a story, “CNN Journalist Responds to Brazen Trump Campaign Claim with Disbelief.” The story begins with the following statement: “CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Monday couldn’t quite believe a Trump campaign response to a Washington Post question about the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.”[1] Why should it matter whether a journalist can’t quite believe a statement made by a person being interviewed? CNN also ran the story, "Anderson Cooper Is Dumbfounded by Ron DeSantis' Bad Polling Excuse." The news network reported that the "CNN anchor was confused by the 2024 Republican presidential candidate's reason for falling behind Donald Trump." Why should it matter that the journalist was confused? Maybe he was not the brightest lightbulb. The network's message was obviously that DeSantis was to blame for the journalist's confusion, so the intent was to bias the viewers and readers against the presidential candidate. The inclusion of the word, excuse, in the story's title indicates the tenor of the bias in the "news" story.  

Is it ethical for a journalist to sway or bias the reactions of viewers or readers? Euronews, a E.U. rather than a U.S. news network, explicitly espouses impartiality so viewers can form their own opinions unimpeded by that of a journalist. That network even has a feature in which video is shown of events going on around the world, such as a political protest, with “No Comment” showing at the end. What a contrast to the American news media!

CNN’s obsession with the visible reactions of one of its news anchors, Anderson Cooper, to political statements even of people being interviewed illustrates my thesis. From his “news” show, Anderson Cooper 360, the network posted a video on CNN.com entitled “Watch Cooper’s Reaction to What Sondland Told Trump.” His reaction was visibly nothing spectacular. 

Another video had the title, “See Anderson Cooper’s Reaction to Ted Cruz ‘Groveling’ on Fox.” Again, the reaction was hardly noteworthy. 

Nevertheless, his show on the new network all about the anchor, as the very name of the show makes explicit. CNN’s CEO must have thought that the anchor’s reactions would make good promotional material for the network. Strangely, a magazine’s editor even thought that Anderson Cooper’s reactions were of value apart from promotional purposes. People posted a story online about the CNN anchor’s reactions in a New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square in New York City. The story, “Anderson Cooper Was All of Us with His Hilarious Reactions as He Took Shots to Bid 2020 Farewell,” featured the celebrity’s reaction to drinking a shot of alcohol on live television. After he and the other host drank a shot, “Cooper pursed his lips and coughed in seemingly slight discomfort, though he otherwise held it together.”[2] Hilarious.

It may be that Anderson Cooper’s minute reactions were such important fodder for publications because the anchor’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was an heiress of an illustrious (and very rich) American family. She was a businesswoman, fashion designer, socialite, and writer in her own right. Interestingly, she had offered at the age of 85 to carry a baby for her gay son. That in itself was more newsworthy than any of her son’s muted political reactions on air. Of course, when Anderson Cooper had come out as gay on air, that too was deemed to be newsworthy in spite the journalistic standard that the sexual orientation (or race, gender, or political ideology) of a conveyer of news shouldn’t have an impact on the presentation of the news.

When a journalist becomes the story, especially in expressing a personal opinion, news itself (and journalism) becomes obfuscated, diluted, and even toxic from the standpoint of the role of an electorate in a democracy. The societal justification in giving journalists an outsized mouthpiece in public discourse is predicated on their function in conveying the news. This does not extend to molding public opinion and being the news themselves. In a culture in which reality-shows spawn celebrities, perhaps it is only natural that anyone on television could be made into one even for displaying muted visible reactions.

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1. Lee Moran, “CNN Journalist Responds to Brazen Trump Campaign Claim with Disbelief,” The Huffington Post, July 4, 2023.

2. Jen Juneau, “Anderson Cooper Was All of Us with His Hilarious Reactions as He Took Shots to Bid 2020 Farewell,” People, January 1, 2021.

Connecting the Dots: Zuckerberg's Facebook Stock

Why did Mark Zuckerberg unload $2.3 billion of his Facebook stock? The complete answer likely involves more than meets the eye, at least relative to what business reporters and editors had to say publicly in 2013. What was not said is itself a story worth publishing. Beyond Zuckerberg’s stratagem, what the media didn't say might be more significant than what made it through the filters.
Part of the answer concerning Zuckerberg’s sell-off involves his need for cash at the time to pay taxes that would be due from his exercising an option to purchase 60 million Class B shares in 2013. This move likely implies a belief that Facebook stock would not go much higher. Had Zuckerberg strongly believed at the time that Facebook was yet to cash in on advertising revenue beyond that which the market had already factored into the company’s stock price, the CEO would not have exercised the options in expectation of a wider spread. Even with the taxes coming due, the billionaire could probably have found an alternative way to come up with the cash. 
Like a deer frozen in an oncoming car’s headlights, the media did not analyze Zuckerberg’s motives beyond his public statements. Instead, the herd animals let themselves be led along, prancing in the tracks of positive correlation, which is does not in itself connote causation. That two things tend to occur together does not necessarily mean that one caused the other to act some way. For instance, we see umbrellas on rainy days. This does not mean that umbrellas cause rain, or that rain rather than manufacturing causes umbrellas. To assume causation from two things tending to occur at the same time is to commit what David Hume calls the naturalistic fallacy. 
So the media’s report that Zuckerberg’s stock sale and exercise came as the CEO was donating $1 billion worth of shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to “boost his philanthropic efforts in education,” and Facebook was selling 27 million shares to raise an expected $1.46 billion for general purposes all count only as positive correlation; causation cannot be assumed.[1] In other words, we cannot conclude that Zuckerberg decided to sell off a chunk of his stock and exercise an option because he had decided to donate some stock and Facebook was raising more capital. In other words, the additional information conveniently provided does not get us any closer to a full answer. Worse still, Zuckerberg and his PR staff might have been throwing the media a tantalizing, diverting bone. This would have been in keeping with claims that Facebook's management was unethical.
One reporter took the bait, writing that with cash and marketable securities of $9.3 billion as of September 30, 2013, Facebook may not have needed another $1.46 billion.[2] Off reporter’s radar screen was the possibility that Zuckerberg had designed his philanthropy and the company’s additional stock offering as luring camouflage that would use even criticism of his company to keep the eye off his own trades and especially what they imply about his view of the company’s future. That shares of Facebook dropped only 1% to $55.05 in trading on the news suggests that investors were swallowing what Zuckerberg and the media were serving as dessert.
What of the market insiders? Were they also biting? As John Shinal puts it, “More important, insiders have detailed knowledge of a public company’s near-term prospects and thus are in a better position to know when to sell.”[3] I suspect that “people in the know” may have connected the dots. Two months earlier, a poll revealed that as the most important social media site for teenagers, Facebook fell from 42% in the autumn of 2012 to 23% a year later.[4] Can we suppose this poll somehow missed Zuckerberg’s attention? The media certainly did not connect the dots.
The theory behind my analysis is not financial; rather, I consider Mintzberg’s theory of the organizational life-cycle to be more revealing in this particular case. The theory suggests that just as empires rise and fall, so too do companies. Once past their peak, a “hardening of the arteries” sets in.

The organizational lifecycle. When Zuckerberg decided to sell a block of shares and exercise options, he already had a picture of Facebook already on the downward slope without much chance of revitalization. Image Source: www.sourcingideas.blogspot.com

The aging (i.e., a decreasing willingness or ability to adapt to a changing environment, and increasing dead weight internally) can be delayed as the downward slope bides its time; but like entropy as a final destination, the end is inevitable for humans and our organizational artifices. I suspect that Zuckerberg had come to view his company as past its prime, given the leading indicator shown in the poll. If I am right, the game has already changed to keeping the illusion alive long enough for the Facebook insiders to get out under the black shimmering cover of the Styx.

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Sources:

1. Scott Martin, “Zuckerberg’s in Mood to Sell,” USA Today, December 20, 2013; John Shinal, “Facebook Shares May Underperform,” USA Today, December 20, 2013.

2. John Shinal, “Facebook Shares May Underperform,” USA Today, December 20, 2013.

3.Ibid.

4. Bianca Bosker, “Facebook’s Rapidly Declining Popularity with Teens in 1 Chart,” The Huffington Post, October 23, 2013.

Naked Royalty: Prince Harry and the Sun

In publishing naked pictures of Prince Harry on holiday in Nevada, the Sun in Britain ignored the warning from the press watchdog that had warned the Sun that it would be breaching a privacy provision in the state of Britain’s press code. That the warning followed an appeal to the Press Complaints Commission from St. James’s Palace, which is Prince Charles’s home and office in London, suggests that the warning came from “the firm” itself to protect one of its own.

                   

A naked royal hits the newsstands in Britain.         Tony Melville/Reuters

As for the Sun, the value in printing pictures that had already been widely published by TMZ and other parties on the internet may lie more in revenge than in a bump in immediate revenue. If so, it is nonetheless striking that the Murdoch paper would defy the palace in the wake of the government investigation of phone-hacking and illegal payments to police employees and public officials centered on Murdoch. In ignoring the warning, he might have been giving the state the finger (i.e., payback). Given the charges against one of Murdoch's tabloids, the publisher's motive could not have been moralistic.

“The Sun is not making any moral judgment about Harry’s nude frolics,” the newspaper said. “Far from it. He often sails close to the wind for a royal — but he’s 27, single and a soldier. We like him.” Indeed, as a single man at the peak of his physiological prowess, Harry Windsor should not be expected to conduct himself as would be fitting for an eighty-five-year-old monarch. 

A few weeks after Harry's pictures were published, Kate Middleton awoke to find topless pictures of herself published on the front page of an out-of-state tabloid. She had been on holiday at a secluded house in the south of France with her husband, Prince William, who promptly began efforts to sue the publication after learning of the pictures. The editor of the tabloid then hinted that she had pictures of the royal couple engaged in sex while at the house. 

Again, the issue is not so much of morality, but, rather, of the right of privacy of not just public figures, but members of a head of state. When not engaged in duties or otherwise in public, such members (and perhaps the problem is to have an entire family included under "head of state," but such is the nature of royalty) are, after all, people. As human beings, they need and deserve some privacy at the very least to unwind. Considering the arrogance that can come with celibrity, it is in our interest that public figures are grounded in some sense of a normal existence, at least periodically. In fact, the whole royalty thing can be regarded as artificial--that of placing a few human beings so far "above" the rest. The gulf from God to man dwarfs any distance we think we see between ourselves. Indeed, perhaps the distance we create and enforce between ourselves is that gulf between humanity and God.

Moreover, it goes against the Golden Rule to cause another person to feel shame for something that is rather normal in ordinary life. Young people have parties, and newlyweds should feel secure in being intimate with each other or at the very least "letting their hair down" when it is reasonable to assume they are alone and "on their own time." Staking William and Kate out--spying on their private affairs--is underhanded and violates their right to "normal lives" as much as is possible given their "jobs." In other words, the press over-extend the artificial life of celebs and thus violate the human persons themselves. We ought to be encouraging celebs to be down-to-earth and we should relate as much as possible to them as we do to other people in our everyday lives. I have little interest in meeting a royal at a "function," but I would enjoy chatting under normal conditions with one. Fundamentally, celebs are simply other human beings, and I suspect that they crave to be treated as such. At least this is what I have found in talking one-on-one to a few during their "off-time." Tim Russert, the late host of NBC's political talk-show, "Meet the Press," was for example incredibly down-to-earth in chatting with me in a hallway before he was to speak to a group. Our impromptu chat was spontaneous and natural. In making such normal interactions more difficult by violating privacy, the press extenuates artificiality at the expense of that which is natural. There is already far too much social distance between human beings; we don't need to encourage it by making people who are well-known afraid of people. 

Sources:

John F. Burns, “Murdoch Paper Defies a Warning and Exposes Prince Harry,” The New York Times, August 24, 2012. 

Scott Sayare, "French Court Rules Against Magazine on Royal Photos," The New York Times, September 18, 2012.

The Commercial Media as Gate-Keepers Looking Down on Bloggers as "Non-Journalists"

In a few days during July in 2010, the American media was obsessed with Shirley Sherrod, who in a tightly edited video clip had made apparently-racist statements about not helping a caucasion farmer because he was caucasion. She was quickly fired by Tom Vilsak, the US Secretary of Agriculture, who, like the journalists and the NAACP, had failed to look at the full video.  The day after Sherrod was fired, the NAACP looked at the full video and realized that she was actually a racial healer rather than racist.  In the fuller video, she said, “I have come to realize that we have to work together … we have to overcome the divisions we have.”  Even as she used questionable language, such as “his own kind,” it should not be forgotten that the clan killed her father.  In other words, she deserves some slack.  At any rate, it was not long after the NAACP’s about-face that the agriculture department and the media were doing also doing an about-face. According to the NYT, “the White House and Mr. Vilsack offered their profuse apologies to her for the way she had been humiliated and forced to resign after a conservative blogger put out a misleading video clip that seemed to show her admitting antipathy toward a white farmer.”

Bill O’Reilly of Fox apologized—though while suggesting that Sherrod “very well could have seen things through a racial prism” and had been “blatantly partisan” on the job possibly in violation of the Hatch Act so she should not work in government.  O’Reilly was apologizing for not having done due diligence in “reporting” the story by watching the entire video before making a judgement. Like so many other journalists, he lept at the story without adequately checking the source—the video or Sherrod herself.  Even as the journalists were apologizing for their bad work, they wanted to distinguish themselves as journalists from the “blogger” or “activist” who had posted the edited video clip in the first place. O’Reilly promised his viewers that they could still come to him for good journalism even as he had gotten the story wrong.

Beyond the momentary obsession that the media enjoyed at Sherrod’s expense—the obsession itself being a problem missed by the journalists themselves—this case allows us to glimpse how journalism changed so much in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The case put journalists in the position of distinguishing themselves from bloggers when both had engaged in bad judgment. Hence Bill O’Reilly’s statement that his viewers could come to him for good reporting (rather than have to rely on bloggers) in spite of the fact that he had just engaged in bad journalism and may have done Sherrod another injustice even in his apology. To be sure, the blogger had erred in posting such an edited video clip without providing the context.  However, given the opining of many mainstream journalists who work for media companies and the actual news provided on blogs, the line between “journalist” and blogger are blurred.  Hence the journalists working for media companies were sure to distance themselves from the blogger, who they said was not a real journalist, even though they had all made the same mistake. Were there a clear distinction to be made between the journalists and the bloggers, the former would have done better work—but they didn’t.

Back in 1984 when Daniel Schorr was working at CNN, he objected to the network’s plan to couple him with John Connally, who had been the Governor of Texas and a Secretary of the Treasury, to cover the Republican Convention. It was improper, Mr. Schorr said, to mix a politician with a journalist. In 2010, journalists were saying that it was improper to mix a journalist with a blogger. By then, many television journalists were giving opinions, and were thus closer being politicians, while many bloggers were providing news even before the networks. Lest the journalists point to their educational credentials from schools of journalism, how many American journalists in the nineteenth or even the twentieth century majored in journalism?  Is learning on the job at a newspaper so much different than the entrepreneurs who free lance at their own blogs to provide news?  If these are so different, why didn’t the “journalists” in the Sherrod case catch rather than perpetuate the blogger’s mistake? The proof is in the pudding.

The fact is that many bloggers are able to provide news because a person does not have to study journalism to have access to some information that is new. As a blogger myself, I have not found myself in this position—hence I confine myself to providing analysis based on my years of formal education and on the news provided by others—bloggers or “journalists.”  I must admit that I am more apt to trust the news from a company simply because there are institutional requirements for verifying stories, though as the Sherrod case shows, a media company’s procedures are not always sufficient. The difference between a news company and a blogger is perhaps in the checking or verification function, rather than so much in the getting of news (though the companies have more resources).  Even so, news can come from a variety of sources—not just from people who have a BA in journalism.  As a consequence, there is more of a need for verification—precisely because there are so many blogger/entrepreneurs operating. To dismiss them by saying they are not really journalists is an over-reaction and ill-founded. However, to insist on due diligence and verification on any report is even more pressing. Perhaps rather than have their journalists invoke artificial diremptions, news organizations could hire or contract per piece with many of the bloggers who are providing news so the latter could have access to the organizational wherewithal to verify stories.  These bloggers would then have the advantages of being entrepreneurs and of having the wherewithal to do due diligence.

Daniel Schorr, a protégé of Edward R. Murrow at CBS News and an aggressive reporter who got into conflict with censors, the Nixon administration and network superiors would likely see the advantages that bloggers have in terms of freedom, while being worried (as I am as well) concerning the due diligence limitations faced by the entrepreneurs. He got his first scoop, which earned him $5, when he was 12. A woman fell or jumped from the roof of the apartment house where he lived, and he called the police, interviewed them about the victim and then called The Bronx Home News, which paid for news tips.  Had there been an internet, he likely would have been a blogger. Would that have made a difference?

While good to a point, a profession’s gate-keeping can be readily subverted into simply keeping people out who are otherwise doing good work. In spite of the Sherrod blogger, other bloggers have been providing news—otherwise, the media companies would not be citing them as sources. Rather than fighting the bloggers, the “journalists” who got the Sherrod story wrong might offer a hand; they might just find that they will be helped in return. News is like water in a stream—there are many feeder streams.  Moreover, the nature of news is freedom,which is inherently broad rather than circumscribed.  This is particularly so in a high-tech world where the internet has had a democratizing effect in expanding the sources of news and analysis.  In this context, we might be wise to remember Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson concerning the need for an educated electorate rather than try to monopolize information-getting to those in the club.

Source on Schoor: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/media/24schorr.html?_r=1&hp
Source on Sherrod: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/us/politics/22sherrod.html?scp=1&sq=sherrod&st=cse

Who Won the Kentucky Derby?

This might seem like a simple question. California Chrome won the race in 2014. That is to say, the horse by that name won. As the Derby is a race, a jockey would have played a decisive part in the win. The aptitude may well be in the horse, but the racing skill lies with the person perched on the animal. So the jockey, Victor Espinoza, won the race. If his role was essentially that of coaching or directing the horse, which unlike a racing car is a living creature with a brain to boot, then could the argument be made that the horse’s trainer—in this case Art Sherman—also won? Although Sherman quipped during a post-race interview that he had felt like he was on the horse for the last 75 years, surely a distinction can be drawn between a player and a coach. After all, Babe Ruth hit all those homeruns—not his coach. To win a race, the winner must presumably be in the race—and not vicariously. Least of all can it be said that the “horse’s owner”—an expression like “slave owner” in that a living being is “owned”—won the race. Otherwise, a person could simply wave money around in lieu of actually running to qualify for an Olympic context in track and field. To give wealth such power—coming at the expense of reason itself—would surely point to a rather distorted set of societal values. I contend that both NBC Sports’ post-race coverage and the Derby’s trophy ceremony reflect and in fact affirm the hegemony of business values in American society.

Just before interviewing the jockey, a NBC Sports journalist prefaced, “We interviewed the owner, then the trainer, and now the jockey.” Lest it be pointed out that the jockey had been busy, the trophy ceremony followed the same pattern. Kentucky’s head of state handed to trophy to Steve Coburn, who with the other owner, Perry Martin, were all too pleased to speak on their win. In fact, the governor made it quite explicit by announcing, “To the Martins, to the Coburns, our victor.” The horse and jockey were not even in the camera shot. Wealth had won the race without breaking a sweat. Next came the trainer’s turn, and then, last and apparently least, the jockey.

Imagine running a race, and winning it only to watch the metal being given to your sponsor. “To Coke, our victor.” In enabling a runner, horse, or jockey to train, a sponsor is not the winner (for otherwise the sponsor would be enabling itself). While it is understandable that wealth is highly esteemed in the business sector, the imposing of this “top dog” in society itself distorts non-business activities into the prism of commerce. In the context of managerial capitalism, particularly where managers style themselves as “coaches,” it is no accident that coaches and trainers in sports come to be treated  as ends rather than means—as the winners rather than as facilitators on the sideline. It is important to remember that Art Sherman was not on the horse that won the Derby in 2014.  

In short, the priorities evinced by NBC Sports and the Derby reflect those in the business world at the expense of the world of sports; overreach can thus be seen rather clearly. Put another way, the horse race provides us with a snapshot of just how much American society has formed around the ideological crucible of Wall Street. At least from the jockey’s standpoint, the over-reach both in terms of ownership and managerialism violates the ethical principle of fairness (i.e., the trophy should have gone to the jockey, as he is the person who actually raced). Sadly, the exaggeration or over-reach was already so engrained in American society even before the race that I bet few if any Americans even noticed how very odd the trophy sequence is.   

The Huffington Post Gilds the Lily: Facebook’s IPO Plummets?

On the day of its IPO, Facebook issued at $38 and went to a high of $45 before returning to near its issue price (closing at $38.23). On the next trading day, the price fell to about $34 in the early afternoon. This represents about 10% off the issue price. The Huffington Post headlined “Stock Plummets,” which must have been irresistible to anyone who had bought the stock. The Huff was using the $45 high as its benchmark, from which the $34 price represents a 25% drop. As if that were a plummeting, using the 10% off figure would have made the self-aggrandizing headline too obvious. At the very least, the headline detracts from the credibility of the Huffington Post.

The full essay is at "Taking the Face Off Facebook."

Partisan Journalism at Fox News: Stockholders and Democracy

Roger Ailes “is the most successful executive in television by a wide margin, and he has been so for more than a decade. He is also, in a sense, the head of the Republican Party, having employed five prospective presidential candidates and done perhaps more than anyone to alter the balance of power in the national media in favor of the Republicans. ‘Because of his political work’—Ailes was a media strategist for Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush—‘he understood there was an audience,’ Ed Rollins, the veteran GOP consultant, [said in 2011]. [Ailes] knew there were a couple million conservatives who were a potential audience, and he built Fox to reach them.’ For most of his tenure, the roles of network chief and GOP kingmaker have been in perfect synergy. Ailes’s network has dominated the cable news race for most of the past decade, and for much of that time, Fox News attracted more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. Throughout the George W. Bush years, the network’s patriotic cheerleading helped to marginalize the Democrats. . . . The problem wasn’t that ratings had been slipping that much— [Glenn] Beck’s show declined by 30 percent from record highs, but the ratings were still nearly double those from before he joined the network. It was that, with an actual presidential election on the horizon, the Fox candidates’ poll numbers remain dismally low (Sarah Palin is polling 12 percent; Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively). Ailes’s ­candidates-in-­waiting were coming up small. And, for all his programming genius, he was more interested in a real narrative than a television narrative—he wanted to elect a president.”[1] The last sentence of the quoted passage is particularly revealing: “(H)e wanted to elect a president.”  With Beck’s 30% drop in ratings still leaving him with a profitable rating, Ailes’ motive was not commercial, neither was it to improve the network’s journalism. Typically, news networks are criticized for sacrificing good journalism for commercial interests. Here, journalistic integrity and profit played second fiddle to partisan objectives. 

The full essay is at "Partisan Journalism."

1, Gabriel Sherman, “The Elephant in the Green Room,” New York Magazine, May 22, 2011.