Quotes and comments about an essay by Thomas L. Friedman about rights and responsibilities, and an article about what Fox News doesn’t cover.
I saw an essay a day or two ago (which of course I can’t find again) about how “pundits” in newspapers and magazines reach a peak early in their careers and then plateau, saying much the same thing over and over as their familiar themes apply to current circumstances. The writer seems to think this is a bad thing, but I’m inclined toward the opposite. I like Paul Krugman’s principles, for example, and I appreciate seeing how he applies them steadily to the changing political landscape (especially reminding us of the evidence *against* certain shibboleths of the right, e.g. how tax cuts for the rich generate trickle down economics — it never works).
The essay writer used Thomas L. Friedman, long time New York Times columnist, as an example, claiming he peaked around the time of his bestselling book The World is Flat (2005, later updated). The title meaning, of course, that the world was becoming more interconnected and globalized, not anything about the shape of the planet. (I have a copy of the first edition, somewhere, though I think I only sampled it, without reading it through.) Yes, I’m aware that Friedman’s critics point to his familiar quirks, e.g., basing entire columns on conversations he’s had with taxi drivers.
Yet here is Friedman in today’s paper, with an on-point observation. That is, he’s not an over-the-hill crank; he’s still paying attention.
NYT, Thomas L. Friedman, 8 Feb 2022: America 2022: Where Everyone Has Rights and No One Has Responsibilities.
As a journalist who relies on freedom of speech, I would never advocate tossing [Joe] Rogan off Spotify. But as a citizen, I sure appreciated [Neil] Young calling him out over the deeper issue: How is it that we have morphed into a country where people claim endless “rights” while fewer and fewer believe they have any “responsibilities.”
That was really Young’s message for Rogan and Spotify: Sure, you have the right to spread anti-vaccine misinformation, but where’s your sense of responsibility to your fellow citizens, and especially to the nurses and doctors who have to deal with the fallout for your words?
This pervasive claim that “I have my rights” but “I don’t have responsibilities” is unraveling our country today.
Does Joe Rogan, does Fox News, have no trace of consciousness that they are spreading misinformation that could cause people their lives, at the expense of their ratings? I can’t really believe they don’t understand vaccines and the good they can do. But apparently they just don’t care, eschewing any kind of “responsibility” for their actions, because they *can*. Freedom! Ratings!
This dovetails with the piece quoted yesterday about how trust in government and institutes is eroding.
When our trust in each other erodes, though, as is happening in America today, fewer people think they have responsibilities to the other — only rights that protect them from being told by the other what to do.
When Rogan exercised his right to spread misinformation about vaccines, and when Spotify stood behind its biggest star, they were doing nothing illegal.
They were just doing something shameful.
\\
Here’s a piece that’s not so much about Fox News, as about bubbles, and even more broadly, about how people form their views of the world, and how authoritarians filter the news.
The Atlantic, Molly Jong-Fast, 9 Feb 2022: The Stories Fox News Doesn’t Cover, subtitled, “In an alternate reality, what’s left out can matter as much as what’s made up.”
Now, the MSM (main-stream-media) delights in revealing the lies and hypocrisy of Fox News (how Tucker Carlson admits that he lies and shouldn’t be taken for anything more than entertainment, for example), but flipping sides, how much do fans of Fox News know of the MSM’s disdain, or that so many non-Fox viewers laugh at its fans’ gullibility? Likely not at all.
If a story doesn’t run on Fox, will Fox viewers even know it happened? While it may be true that liberals and conservatives each live in their own news bubble, Fox has created an alternative universe where all American cities are burning dystopian hellscapes and Democrats are just itching to give your stuff to immigrants unless you “save America” and vote Republican.
…
Sometimes Fox obsessively covers stories that clearly fit the Republican Party’s agenda. Before the 2018 midterms, the network devoted a ton of time to a migrant caravan nearing the Mexican border. Republicans, meanwhile, were running on racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and this coverage helped them make the case that outsiders were massing at the border. After the election, Fox largely cut its coverage of the caravan.
But what about the stories that don’t make it on air?
Speaking last Friday at a gathering of the Federalist Society, former Vice President Mike Pence disavowed (about 13 months late) Donald Trump’s plan to have him overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, saying, “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” The next day, I noticed this tweet from CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy: “Per transcripts, Fox has not covered Mike Pence rebuking Trump at all today. None of the channel’s prime time shows covered it last night either.”
I asked Darcy to share his views on what Fox does and does not choose to cover. “When stories are politically inconvenient for Fox, the network simply ignores them and leaves its viewers in the dark,” he told me. “Instead of informing viewers with news that might collide with their worldviews, Fox creates a safe space for its audience. It is a contemptible move for a channel that purports to be in the news business. But it makes sense when you consider that, at its heart, Fox is actually a right-wing talk channel—one that primarily seeks to reinforce the ideology of its viewers because it is terrified of alienating them and hurting its bottom line.”
The earlier example of this was the item about the anti-vax state trooper who was a hero to Fox News… until he died of Covid, covered in this post.
\
Of course this is a much broader issue that Fox News; it applies to any number of authoritarian regimes, especially China and Russia, whose news media are state-run, and so only publish the version of events that advantages the government. Their populations know nothing else.
Americans should *value* our “main-stream media” precisely because they are not beholden to any particular political party, much less the government.
\\
Enough for today. I have two other items, including one that has a different take about why American Covid deaths are so high, that has to do not with government mistrust, but with obesity.
Ls&Qs&Cs: Rights and Responsibilities; Authoritarian News Filters
Quotes and comments about an essay by Thomas L. Friedman about rights and responsibilities, and an article about what Fox News doesn’t cover.
I saw an essay a day or two ago (which of course I can’t find again) about how “pundits” in newspapers and magazines reach a peak early in their careers and then plateau, saying much the same thing over and over as their familiar themes apply to current circumstances. The writer seems to think this is a bad thing, but I’m inclined toward the opposite. I like Paul Krugman’s principles, for example, and I appreciate seeing how he applies them steadily to the changing political landscape (especially reminding us of the evidence *against* certain shibboleths of the right, e.g. how tax cuts for the rich generate trickle down economics — it never works).
The essay writer used Thomas L. Friedman, long time New York Times columnist, as an example, claiming he peaked around the time of his bestselling book The World is Flat (2005, later updated). The title meaning, of course, that the world was becoming more interconnected and globalized, not anything about the shape of the planet. (I have a copy of the first edition, somewhere, though I think I only sampled it, without reading it through.) Yes, I’m aware that Friedman’s critics point to his familiar quirks, e.g., basing entire columns on conversations he’s had with taxi drivers.
Yet here is Friedman in today’s paper, with an on-point observation. That is, he’s not an over-the-hill crank; he’s still paying attention.
NYT, Thomas L. Friedman, 8 Feb 2022: America 2022: Where Everyone Has Rights and No One Has Responsibilities.
Does Joe Rogan, does Fox News, have no trace of consciousness that they are spreading misinformation that could cause people their lives, at the expense of their ratings? I can’t really believe they don’t understand vaccines and the good they can do. But apparently they just don’t care, eschewing any kind of “responsibility” for their actions, because they *can*. Freedom! Ratings!
This dovetails with the piece quoted yesterday about how trust in government and institutes is eroding.
\\
Here’s a piece that’s not so much about Fox News, as about bubbles, and even more broadly, about how people form their views of the world, and how authoritarians filter the news.
The Atlantic, Molly Jong-Fast, 9 Feb 2022: The Stories Fox News Doesn’t Cover, subtitled, “In an alternate reality, what’s left out can matter as much as what’s made up.”
Now, the MSM (main-stream-media) delights in revealing the lies and hypocrisy of Fox News (how Tucker Carlson admits that he lies and shouldn’t be taken for anything more than entertainment, for example), but flipping sides, how much do fans of Fox News know of the MSM’s disdain, or that so many non-Fox viewers laugh at its fans’ gullibility? Likely not at all.
The earlier example of this was the item about the anti-vax state trooper who was a hero to Fox News… until he died of Covid, covered in this post.
\
Of course this is a much broader issue that Fox News; it applies to any number of authoritarian regimes, especially China and Russia, whose news media are state-run, and so only publish the version of events that advantages the government. Their populations know nothing else.
Americans should *value* our “main-stream media” precisely because they are not beholden to any particular political party, much less the government.
\\
Enough for today. I have two other items, including one that has a different take about why American Covid deaths are so high, that has to do not with government mistrust, but with obesity.