Why Fox News is not the liar cable network and The Washington Post is just an ordinary company
One could say I am a veteran in Dutch journalism. I worked for over 20 years as a senior editor for big daily newspapers. I was editor in chief for influential trade magazines on transportation and automotive. Everywhere my colleagues claimed that their work was undisputable the most trustworthy out there. The daily journalists felt superior over the newbies of the free newspaper Metro. The trade magazine-writers argued that their deep knowledge over the markets made them far better journalists. At Metro, the editors spoke disparagingly of those other old-style newspapers with boring articles.
Currently, I am a desk editor at the news agency ANP, the Dutch equivalent of Associated Press and Reuters. Things are slightly different here. We don’t sell newspapers and we don’t have ads or a branded content department. We sell only one thing: authority. If we hit publish, our customers, basically al news media in The Netherlands, should be able to use our articles in their newspapers or websites without any hesitation or doubt over the accuracy of the information.
Truth has economical value
Some say that media have a moral responsibility to be truthful. So one could argue that ANP is steering on that moral compass. But that is not the case at all. ANP is owned by the same multi-billionaire entrepreneur that created the tv- hits Big Brother and The Voice. This John de Mol owns a couple of national tv stations and his company Talpa is the dominant player in the Dutch radio market.
Making a healthy profit is the real driver at Talpa. And even when an ANP breaks a story on the misconduct of a former Talpa-executive De Mol will not pick up the phone and call the editor in chief to complain. Like Jeff Bezos probably never did when his own Washington Post wrote about his extramarital relationship with a former TV anchor and his 38 billion dollar divorce.
Autority is the key
The why here is simple. ANP and The Washington Post are all about authority. When readers lose their faith in these news media, they lose immediately importance and therefore economic value. If news outlets no longer dare to rely fully on the information from ANP, the wire loses value. And when Bezos tries to polish his image in The Post, no one will believe the next scoop on Tim Cook or Donald Trump. Bezos and De Mol didn’t buy those media just for fun. They really believe its a good investment. Truthful is for them nothing more than a business principle that is needed to make their news operations profitable.
Fox broke the news monopoly
Other people will argue that news outlets like Fox News prove that the truth is not a necessity for becoming profitable. (Tip: Watch The Loudest Voice with Russel Crowe as Fox News chairman Roger Ailes)
Sure, Fox News brings the news with a certain view on the world. Maybe some would say it twists with facts, some even would say they lie. But according to CEO Rupert Murdoch Fox News just cracked a news monopoly that was created by the big tv networks like CNN and MSNBC. He stated that large swaths of conservative America were ignored before Fox came along “Well I just had a hunch, you know, that there was room for another point of view…I don’t like monopolies when I see them.”
Communications professor Jeffrey McCal at DePauw University agrees: “They provided a source for news to a lot of folks who were disgruntled with their choices up to that point.” So Fox News gave lots of Americans news that they were missing.
“The audience determines what is true”
Fox News just pays more attention to what its audience thinks is important. It shows more radical insights on news events. Radical to other journalists maybe, but not for the Fox audience. For them, Fox News is as truthful as The Washington Post to us Dutch news wire journalists. Fox is just telling the stories their audience feels are right and should be told. In other words: whether something is true is decided by the audience that is targeted.
For ANP is the audience very limited and extremely critical. We have about 40 customers and they want all the basically the same: neutral wire news that they can use directly. The Washington Post has an incredibly big and widespread readership. Still, they know that the readers expect muckraking on The White House, breaking news and compelling stories on Iran, North Korea, and Boeing. So they do. And also Fox News just fulfills the needs of its audience: noisy news, pro-Trump-reports, and NHL-coverage. They just gave the audience what they expect.
In a way, Fox News is acting the same as my former colleagues at the big daily newspaper, at Metro or at the trade magazines. They all felt their articles and approach were undisputable the best. They took their responsibility to come with the truth. Their truth. Or better. The truth of their audience.