Term Paper: Fox News as Propaganda.
Charlie Nouihed
ID#:201403443
Media Law and Ethics
Term Paper
Fox News as Propaganda
1. Project Summary
The intention in this essay is not to focus on one single example of how media content might violate ethical standards or media law, but to concentrate on the role of a TV channel as the instrument of a never-ending assault on ethical standards. The intention here is to argue that Fox News has little to do with communicating objective information to the viewing public, and everything to do with propagandizing a Republican worldview of what is happening.
2. Background/Context
In the first place we need to be careful about the terms we use. The term propaganda “was first used in the sociological sense by the Roman Catholic Church [to mean] the spreading of ideas that would not occur naturally” (Wilkins & Christians, 2008, p.132). This definition is, in itself, problematic because we now have to explain what the “natural” occurrence of ideas would be like. A recent example might be Trump’s retweeting of three videos purportedly showing Muslims attacking people. The videos were placed on social media by the deputy leader of the far right Britain First party, Jayda Fransen, who, in 2016, was convicted of religiously aggravated harassment for shouting abuse at a Muslim woman wearing a hijab. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s retweets caused an international furor, including the first clear political attack on the American President by the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, whose uninflammatory rebuke read: “It is wrong for the president to have done this”. The videos were taken out of context with the deliberate aim of inciting hatred towards Muslims. The Dutch government even pointed out that the “Muslim” attacking a boy on crutches was born and raised in the Netherlands and no information as to his religion was ever divulged (Dunn, 2017). The doctoring of news with the intention of inciting hatred would clearly not occur “naturally”; it requires a commitment to alter the facts in order to get the required reaction.
Although Trump’s retweet was widely covered on the media, Fox News, for its part, remained largely silent on the issue:
“While the retweets were one of the top stories on other cable and broadcast morning shows on November 30, Fox & Friends never covered them in the entire three-hour program for its viewers, which evidently included Trump himself. Co-host Brian Kilmeade just once made a passing mention of the posts, asking Fox contributor and former GOP Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) if those tweets “get in the way” of Republicans’ chances to pass the tax bill.” (Malik, 2017)
Instead, Fox News viewers were treated to this kind of news:
3. The Ethical Challenge
The ethical challenge centers on the role of a TV channel. In particular, we should ask the question: Is it ethical for a TV channel that purports to transmit news to function as the propaganda machine of a political party? This essay answers “No” to the question, and examines Fox News as a propaganda machine. Inevitably, the communication of news requires some interpretation, but the very title of the channel is “Fox News”, so it is legitimate to expect that a channel with a sense of social responsibility to its audience would make the effort to communicate the facts as objectively as possible.
4. Evaluation/Analysis
The strategy is to drown out what most rational people would consider to be the important news with a bombardment of trivia, or other news items that can be magnified. This has long been the strategy of Trump and the Grand Old Party (GOP), which is why Hilary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails and the attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi are the go-to topics when the heat is on Trump and his administration.
Fox News’ selective reporting of the facts, in this case the failure to mention the gravity of the US president’s clear alignment with a far-right racist party, is one way of influencing the way people think — simply by not telling them. It would seem reasonable to assume that a news channel which seeks to prevent information from getting to the public is acting unethically. We think of propaganda as being an active attempt to twist information in such a way as to get people to think or act in a specific way. But this is like propaganda in reverse: by not giving people the facts, they do not have the information to think in a way that might be detrimental to our cause — in the case of Fox News, it is more like a crusade than a cause.
Whereas propaganda is a deliberate attempt to influence the opinions of others in order to get them to act in a specific way, “fake news” has been the go-to phrase that Trump uses whenever the truth is inconvenient for him. The phrase may not have originated with Trump, but Trump’s presidency is unprecedented insofar as never before has the president of the United States had to resort to the constant use of such language in public. This is fundamental. We know that Nixon hated the press, and cussed the media in the privacy of the Oval Office. We know this because many of his conversations were recorded on tape. But Nixon’s cussing was only exposed when the Watergate scandal started to unravel — it was unknown to the public beforehand. But with Trump, the labeling of TV channels as fake news has an immediate effect on the public, and, in particular, on his electoral base. If CNN broadcasts only fake news then it is not to be trusted. So the unravelling of the Trump-Russia connection can be, and is, characterized as a witch-hunt. When the Washington Post started to connect the Nixon administration with the Watergate breakin, Nixon was not tweeting “Fake news! SAD!”. Nixon was sweating it out and watching his support slip away. The credibility of traditional sources of news — radio, TV, and newspapers — has suffered as social media — Twitter, Facebook, etc., — have grown. But Trump has never labeled Fox News as fake.
A darling of Fox News is the Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway. She is the master of spin; so much so that few networks other than Fox News are willing to tolerate her blatant manipulation of facts. She was the person who invented the term “alternative facts” to try to justify Sean Spicer’s inflation of the numbers of people present at Trump’s inauguration. There is little point in arguing the pure stupidity of the concept of “alternative facts”: there are alternative interpretations of facts, but the facts themselves cannot have alternatives — that is why they are called “facts”, not “interpretations of facts”. Conway soon became the center of jokes on American media and wonderful material for Kate Mckinnon’s Saturday Night Live sketches. In a recent interview on CNN, Conway accused the CNN anchor, Brian Stelter, of being jealous of Fox News “and their ratings”. At one point, the anchor said:
“I think viewers see what you’re doing: pivoting. When I say Russia, you say Clinton, […] It’s part of the strategy, would you agree?” (Tani, 2017)
But perhaps Stelter was being optimistic. CNN has been labeled “fake news” by Trump and his acolytes on Fox News, so it is unlikely that many gun totin’ Fox News viewers would be watching, but the smoke and mirrors strategy used by Conway is typical of how Fox News addresses its rump audience. And that audience does not, by and large, see how they are being played.
As Wilkins and Christians argue, there is also a responsibility on the part of the consumer of propaganda to attempt to find out the truth (p.132). There is a kind of self-satisfaction in hearing only what you expect to hear and willfully not listening to the truth especially when it is uncomfortable. On Fox News even the music takes the form of propaganda. Do the viewers never get tired of country music? Do they never tire of the inane lyrics: “I’m proud to be an American ’cause at least I know I’m free”? For Fox News fans that means free to own a gun,
or, for that matter, an assault rifle, because Fox News pundits will tell you: “Guns don’t kill people; people do”. The shooting of 26 churchgoers in Texas is blamed on the incompetence of bureaucrats who should have done better background checks on the gunman (Bruce, 2017), and “liberals” (i.e., those who want to stop the bloodbaths that gun ownership has led to) are vilified
in bold letters:
For those willing to take a look at the statistics the truth is obvious: guns do kill people. Guns kill people much more efficiently than cars or trucks — that is why guns are made. But Fox News is not interested in statistics that disprove the claims of their pundits. The facts on murders by firearms are indisputable. The graph based on official statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show the US as living (and dying) in a different world to other developed nations.
There are too many examples to mention of Fox News’ attempts to pursue a right-wing agenda as the mouthpiece of the GOP: the round table discussions of topics they wish to keep the audience thinking about — Clinton’s emails, the Second Amendment, etc., — is one. In particular, The Five is a show where five white pundits, and the occasional token black guy, “discuss” topics in the news. Here they pedal “alternative statistics” such as the fact that “as gun ownership rates in America have increased, the homicide rates have decreased” (Jessie Watters, (Fox News, 2017)).
Even accepting such bland, dateless affirmations at face value, such statements are never challenged by the other members of the panel. The panel is there to agree with the gun lobby; not to voice serious objections to it. If Melinda Moyer had been on the panel, she might have argued:
“Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Also in 2015 a combined analysis of 15 different studies found that people who had access to firearms at home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered as people who did not.” (Moyer, 2017)
5. Discussion of the Ethical Dilemma or Harm
Ethical considerations depend on consensus. In other words, they do not exist in a vacuum, independent from the sociocultural norms which have created them. They also depend on personal views — what is unethical for me might not be so for my neighbor — but it is unethical to pursue an agenda by making the facts fit into a worldview. Fox News acts unethically by carefully cherry-picking the facts, drowning out inconvenient facts, using the Kellyanne Conways of this world for smoke and mirror spin, and making sure that round-table discussions do not challenge the GOP agenda. The passing off of political opinion as news and the drowning out of contention deprives the viewer of information which might permit him or her to act rationally.
Additionally, by allying itself with the GOP and with the gun lobby in the form of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Fox News has a real effect on people’s lives. The corollary to “Guns don’t kill people; people do” is “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” (NRA Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre) The futility of this argument was demonstrated in Las Vegas in October 2017 when a man armed with machine guns fired 1,100 rounds from the 32nd floor of a hotel into a crowd attending a music festival, killing 58 people and injuring 546. Would the “good guy” have been able to pick off the sniper on the 32nd floor?
Fox News’ cozying-up to the NRA effectively costs the lives of innocent people. Ironically, in the case of the Las Vegas massacre, many of those killed or injured would probably have been defenders of the Second Amendment, as the music they were listening to was Country.
6. Conclusion
It would be naive to argue that there is a simple solution to the unethical use of TV time to shape opinion rather than inform. The right to free speech is guaranteed in the US Constitution, so muzzling those who say things we disagree with would also be unethical. In my view, the only hope is for those who wish to get the truth across to use the same means — the media — but to tell the truth plain and simple.
References
Bruce, T. (2017, December 6). A basket of gun safety regulations means nothing if bureaucrats aren’t held unaccountable [Text.Article]. Retrieved December 6, 2017, from http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/12/06/basket-gun-safety-regulations-means-nothing-if-bureaucrats-arent-held-unaccountable.html
Dunn, L. (2017). Dutch Officials Dropped The Mic On Trump’s Fake Muslim Video Tweet, & It’s Perfect. Retrieved December 6, 2017, from https://www.elitedaily.com/p/the-dutch-governments-response-to-trumps-fake-muslim-video-tweet-is-just-perfect-6738792
Fox News. (2017, October 3). Gutfeld: Late night comics and gun control facts [MovingImage]. Retrieved December 8, 2017, from http://video.foxnews.com/v/5597101399001/
Malik, S. (2017, November 30). Fox & Friends gave almost no airtime to Trump’s anti-Muslim retweets. Retrieved December 6, 2017, from https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/11/30/fox-friends-gave-almost-no-airtime-trump-s-anti-muslim-retweets/218690
Moyer, M. W. (2017, October 1). More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1017-54
Tani, M. (2017, November 5). “Stop being so jealous of Fox News”: Kellyanne Conway clashes with CNN anchor in heated 20-minute interview. Retrieved December 7, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/kellyanne-conway-brian-stelter-trump-credibility-2017-11
Wilkins, L., & Christians, C. G. (Eds.). (2008). The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics (1 edition). New York: Routledge.