Out-Foxed! Fox News and the Crisis of Contemporary Journalism

Fox news is trapped–ensnared not only in the basic contradictions that plague the news industry in general– by a business plan that increasingly reveals the impossibility of it serving as a legitimate news service while also pursuing it profit imperatives and its political goals.   The first Republican debate and how Fox treated Trump then and afterwards point to the coming crisis this national news service faces.
Back in 2000  I edited a book It’s Show Time: Media, Politics, and Popular Culture, in which I a penned a chapter entitled “The Cultural Contractions of the American Media.”  In it I described the four roles or functions that the news media performs in our country.  There is first the democratic function; that is the task of informing citizens about public affairs and serving as a watchdog.  It is this function which is at the heart of the First Amendment constitutionalizing a free press.
As the theory goes, a free press that critically reports the news is essential to a functioning democracy.  For many, this image of a free press was formed during the middle to second half of the twentieth century.  It was the era of Walter Cronkite who told us “that’s the way it is,” of Woodward and Bernstein relentlessly pursuing a story even if it meant that it would bring a president down, or the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers.  We expected the media to be politically neutral, but critical, and to evaluate all the facts and decide on what is the truth.  Truth was not telling one side and then the other; it was often times recognizing that truth might be something different.  This is what reporters once learned in journalism school.
But this image of the media is quaint and old-fashioned.  For one, it is an image that seldom existed, especially when we remember that the press the constitutional framers had in mind looked nothing like what it does today.  It was first handbills and pamphleteers such as Ben Franklin, and then small partisan-controlled papers which literally were the party organs.  But the creation of a national media, the search for audience share, and the large bell shaped distribution of public opinion made it reasonable for the news to search for the center.  But that era ended, with the media pulled by three other functions that compromise its democratic function.
Unlike even a generation ago, the news media is controlled by a small handful of corporate behemoths.   Journalism professor Ben Bagdikan once talked of the big 50 media companies in America, it is now the big six, with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox one of them.  Fox is also one of the principle drivers making news corporate, and with that structure it is a for-profit business.  At one time news was a lost leader for a company, now it is a revenue generator.  To make money, maximize market share.    But in a era where now (as opposed to the 1960s in a pre-cable, pre new media and pre social media 24/7 news cycle) there are many apparent choices for news, profitability is possible with market segmentation.  Fox news figured this out.  Develop a product niche, capture that audience, and make a ton of money.  Instead of profitability through news neutrality, profitability comes from appealing to a certain audience–be it liberal, conservative, or whatever.  Political neutrality and objectivity take a back seat to profitability.
But to maximize profitability and market share the media has had to become more entertaining.  Ben Barber, one of my former professors, talks of a world where we are increasingly distracted by many diversions.  We do not just have to watch the news–we can do a hundred other things to entertain us.  Thus corporate news in presented increasingly in a format to entertain us.  Thus the fine line between Comedy Central and legitimate news.  Watch morning “news” shows, they are more about entertainment or hyping other television shows or personalities.  This is the world too of politainment that I have written about.
Finally, as corporations they too have their own political interests.  They lobby the federal government, they support candidates, they have their ideological and political biases.  Taken together, the corporate, for-profit, entertainment driven aspect of contemporary news often all but makes the democratic function impossible.  “All the news that’s fit to make money” is what it is about.
So how does this apply to Fox national news?  They are trapped by these four conflicts as are the other major news services.  But Fox has a special problem–its business plan was more extreme than others, and it also had a fifth imperative constraining its behavior, specifically serving as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.  Fox has been profitable for years and has been able to hide behind the veneer or being real legitimate journalism, but the Republican debate last week laid bare all the problems it and much of the American media faces.
In going after Trump Fox stood to make the debate a ratings hit and it succeeded.  It might have also been a way to show it was a legitimate news service while also being a guardian of Republican orthodoxy.  Megyn Kelly too may have viewed the debate to show she was a real journalist, not simply the shrill conservative commentator that her nightly show reveals.  But now all of this has exploded on Fox and Kelly.  Post debate Trump’s poll numbers are up, Rogers Ailes effectively apologies to Donald Trump, and 20,000+ sign a petition demanding that Fox prevent Kelly from hosting another Republican debate because she is biased and instead she should question the Democrats instead.
What is at stake for Fox is its veneer of journalistic legitimacy which was always critical to its business plan.  The debate it hosted was a debacle and the backlash from it is not over.  Nothing here says that Fox will cease to exist or that it will lose money, but what we may conclude is that its product and business plan are forever damaged.  Fox is trapped and there may be no way out of the contradictions it faces.

Jerry Springer Without Jerry: Thoughts on the First Republican Presidential Debate

Let’s be serious–this was not a debate it was pure entertainment.  More accurately, the first Republican presidential debate (including the junior debate for the also-rans or wannabees) was pure politainment.  It was the spectacle of demonstrating what happens when we merge politics and entertainment, we get politainiment.  It is about the transformation of news into entertainment where the focus is on ratings and making money, and it is about the effort of candidates to become media personas to succeed in politics.  This is what Ronald Reagan did, as did Jesse Ventura.  Now we have FOX, Donald Trump, the first debate,  and might I say, the departure of Jon Stewart from Comedy Central all occurring on the same night.  Welcome to politainment and the 2016 election cycle.

Jon Stewart and Comedy Central never pretended to be real news but so many people treated like it was.  It was pure politainment representing the fine line between politics and entertainment.  But FOX national news (as opposed to the local FOX affiliates) has be pure partisan politics pretending to be news.  It has brilliantly figured out (in ways that MSNBC has yet to) how to break down the walls of partisanship, news, and entertainment and package it into a multi-billion dollar force that serves as the unofficial house organ for the Republican Party and often crackpot conservatives theories.   Thus Fox is conflicted with competing demands of pushing ideology, making money via ratings, and entertaining.  This is the context of the Thursday so-called debate.
Had this been a real debate the first question would not have been about honoring party endorsements and third party candidacies.  It would have been one asking candidates questions about global warming, ISIS, unemployment, or their stand of the treaty with Iran and what alternatives they had.  I heard so many people say the journalists did a good job asking tough questions.  No, they were terrible in terms of encouraging a debate on serious matters of public policy.  Instead they were provocateurs do their best to ask questions to hype ratings and get a fight started–no different than what Jerry Springer did so successfully.

The debate was made for Trump.  He is the ultimate politainer of our age.  Setting up with an opening question to get Trump mad was brilliant entertainment. It made for perfect theater.  And in setting up a format where Trump was the star–and also the object to be attacked–perhaps Fox was also trying to protect mainstream Republicanism from what it has become–Trump.
So much has been made of Trump’s racism with his immigration comments and sexism with comments about women and allusion to Ms. Kelly and her menstrual cycle (at least he did not say she was “on the rag” or was PMS but you knew he wanted to say that).  But the fact of the matter is that the other candidates are just as harsh on immigration.  They have all taken extreme positions on abortion and women’s health.  Even though no federal funds pay for abortion, they all want to cut Planned Parenthood off from federal funds that pay for women’s health.  Jeb Bush said too much money is being spent on women’s health.  Huckabee said he would send in federal troops to prevent abortions.  Rubio will not support abortions even when a woman’s life in endanger.
Trump scares the Republican Party because he actually is what the GOP has become, except he is not shy to run away from his racism and sexism.  The rest of the party wants the benefits of racism and sexism but without owning up to it.  They pretty up their policy positions–no immigration, no abortions, restrictions on voting–but want to deny the real reasons or implications of their policies.  Texas tried to justify its voting restrictions but a Fifth Circuit this past week upheld a lower court decision finding a racial impact to its voter ID laws.  Trump is laying bare where and what the Republican Party is and has become, and   faced with that reality FOX is trapped.  Does it come to the defense of the kinder and gentler Republicanism that wants and cake and eat it too or does it exploit Trump for all the money and ratings they can garner?  This is the problem for FOX and the Republican Party now.

What is Orthodox Republicanism?

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann’s formation of the congressional Tea Party caucus portends the Republican Party both a challenge and a confrontation. It is a battle for the soul of the GOP, suggesting a new definition of the party in light of its 2006-8 loses. Yet this remaking of the party is only the latest effort by the Republicans to define themselves, asking what in fact is orthodox Republicanism?

If the GOP takes over the House, the Tea bloc could hold the balance of power. If the Democrats retain control, the Tea caucus might force the Republican leadership into an ever more uncompromising ideological corner. But in either case, the formation of the caucus is the maturing of the Tea Party as it travels from a grassroots movement to an institutional force within the Republican Party. The real question though is whether the Tea caucus rebrands the GOP or the later coops the former.

This is not the first time the Republican Party has sought to remake itself. Think of the GOP at its inception as the party of Lincoln, committed to emancipation, civil rights, and economic freedom. Fast forward to Harding, Hoover, and Landon, the party of small government, business, and opposition to the New Deal. Then jump again to the 1950s and 60s. At the time I grew up in New York, Eisenhower was president building the interstate highway system, signing a major civil rights bill, and denouncing the military-industrial complex, while Governor Rockefeller, Senator Javits, and Democrat Senator Bobby Kennedy battled amongst themselves for the crown of who was more liberal.

The contemporary battle for the Republican orthodoxy begins in 1964 when Barry Goldwater challenged the Rockefeller wing of the GOP for dominance. Goldwater’s “Extremism in defense of liberty” speech was a repudiation of the accommodation with the New Deal that Eisenhower, Javits, and the Rockefeller wing had reached. Goldwater may have lost the election but he propelled the GOP in a direction that first triumphed with Reagan’s victory in 1980 and his inaugural speech declaration that government is the problem, not the solution.

The Reagan coalition blended together often contradictory movements of economic liberty and social conservatism. The former requires a minimalist state protecting individual choice, the later requires an activist one second-guessing freedom. While ideological, it was still willing to compromise within its party and with Democrats, producing notable and important legislation such as the 1986 tax reform and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. From 1980 to 2008 the Reagan brand is what defined the party. But beginning with the presidency of George Bush in 2001, and clearly by its end the Reagan brand had worn thin and when McCain ran and lost in 2008 it was clear that Reaganism was dead. Obama’s victory, along with Democratic gains in 06-08, signaled that change. For whatever it meant, it was preferred to Reaganism.

But the seeds of Reagan’s demise in McCain’s 2008 loss produced the heir of a new Republicanism in Sarah Palin. Palinism still seeks to balance the social conservatism and economic liberty of Reaganism, but it takes seriously the Goldwater extremism speech in its hyperactive purism and refusal to compromise. Palinism takes aim at the New Deal, combining it with nativism and constitutionalism that came to a head in the formation of the Tea Party and its mantra “I want my country back.”

The Palin makeover of the GOP combines Goldwaterism and Reaganism with a cult of personality, a multi-media advertising campaign, and a dose of Ayn Rand libertarianism. Palin, Fox news, conservative talk radio, and blogs have all produced less a coherent ideology or world view than it has yielded an attitude and brand. It is brand built on populist anger, anti-government feelings, opposition to immigration, gays, abortion, Democrats, and anything else that inspires fear. Partaking of that brand is Michelle Bachmann, and now the congressional Tea Party caucus.

While ideologically incoherent, Palinism has a deeper totalitarian aspect to it. Language describing some GOP members as RINOS (Republican in Name Only), talk of a 2009 conservative litmus test, and complaints that even Senators Bob Bennett and John McCain are not pure enough speak to a new orthodoxy.

So what is orthodox Republicanism now? It may be no more than a marketing brand or technique attempting to repackage a collection of contradictory ideas, some that have been part of the Republican Party for some time, others that are new. Palinism’s rebranding of the GOP offers little new, except for a multi-media cult of personality campaign that draws upon the anger and fear of many that their way of life is threatened and that someone else is to blame for it. If only government, gays, immigrants, abortionists, Democrats, and RINOS did not exist, we could take back our country and prosper again. This is orthodox Republicanism.