Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone cited a report from a fringe conspiracy theory website, InfoWars, to complain that Google was "changing its algorithm to bury stories like the 'Clinton body count' story," which is “a story that talks about a list of people tied to the Clintons who have died under mysterious circumstances.”...
CHERYL CASONE: ... Well Google is being accused of hiding negative stories about Hillary [Clinton] and her campaign by changing its algorithm to bury stories like the "Clinton body count" story. That's according to website InfoWars. If a Google user types in "Clinton body," they get car repair shop results instead of a story that talks about a list of people tied to the Clintons who have died under mysterious circumstances over the last three decades. Now, the latest story was the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered last month in an apparent robbery....
Fox is being tugged in many different directions now. As Michael Wolff has noted, Papa Rupert Murdoch doesn't want to fix what he thinks isn't broken, while his sons James and Lachlan, who were given nominal control of Fox a while back, want Fox to moderate and modernize (James wants Fox to be more like CNN, while Lachlan wants it to remain conservative, though less rabid). The sons think Fox would make more money, especially interntionally, if it were more digitally sophisticated and actually broke some news once in a while. But Fox as it exists now earns profits of more than $1 billion a year. So should it continue to serve its core audience the way it always has? Now, in the Trump era, that audience is gravitating toward full-on InfoWars conspiratorialism and Breitbart alt-right racism -- a combination of which might be the tone of a possible rival to Fox started by Trump and Breitbart's Steve Bannon after the election.
What to do, what to do? Well, Rupert made himself "acting CEO" of Fox after Ailes's departure, as Wolff reminds us, and gave an Ailes loyalist, Bill Shine, the job of running Fox day to day. The content is as bad as ever -- or worse. And I suspect that will be true until Rupert is no longer among us.
I have long felt that one great move Clinton and other Democrats could make is to give full support to legislation mandating a la carte cable TV ordering. 1. It'd be enormously popular, as it would give consumers more control over their service. 2. It'd croak all three cable news networks, which get low ratings comparatively but are part of every basic package.
ReplyDeleteFox's value doesn't come from being a news channel per se. It comes from being a right wing propaganda machine. Change the bias and they lose viewers and, more importantly, influence. James will be committed to a psychiatric ward before he is allowed to make Fox more CNN-like, not that CNN is the most respected name in news.
ReplyDeleteWith it's profits, (DUMB)FUX "news" can't and won't, easily change direction!
ReplyDeleteIt's like the Nazi's great battleship - the Bismark - the Captain couldn't turn it on a dime, which is what helped sink it.
@Alle G,
When I was a cable/telecommunications Trainer and Training Manager, if I agreed with what you said, I'd have been fired!
But I quietly agreed then, and loudly now!!!
A whole bunch of cable channels will cease to exist - because they're wrapped-up in cable bundles, like "BASIC," or, "Sports," or... blah, blah, blah...
But that would be the "Free Market" at work!
Something our half/dim/nit/fuck-witted conservatives claim to support.
Which, with a lot of their cronies working in the industry, they will, or course, want to maintain the status quo.
Shine's not as good as Ailes was at messaging (and still is at critiquing messaging, which is why Ailes is probably going to come up with some memorable zingers for Trump, who doesn't listen to a lot of folks, but listened to Roy Cohn and listens to Ailes), but Ailes was never good at or interested in administration. For all practical purposes, Shine's been running Fox News for years, with Ailes' influence over the last decade being mostly with personnel - hiring firing and moving around - and not helpful overall to the FNC bottom line. Ailes leaving may well - SHOULD - actually increase the channel's return to the owners over the next half decade, at least.
ReplyDeleteThe first REAL trouble for FNC will be when they lose O'Reilly.