IT’S NOT FOX WOT WON IT
One of the most famous front pages in modern British history ran on April 11, 1992. It wasn’t a report on world-historic events but a newspaper puffing out its chest. “IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT,” read the headline on the front of the Sun, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid that at the time was the most read paper in the country. Published two days after a general election in which the Conservatives unexpectedly clung on to power, the story boasted that the paper’s relentless anti-Labour campaign (including a famous election-day front page asking, in reference to the possibility of a Labour victory, “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?”) had proved decisive.
I thought of that front page while reading the disclosures that have come out of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox in recent weeks. The most recent court documents, released Monday, include Rupert Murdoch himself answering question under oath about how Fox News handled the days and weeks after the 2020 election. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” said Murdoch. “They endorsed,” he said, when asked about Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, but he denied that Fox News as an organization did the same thing. “We thought everything was on the up and up,” he said.
Other revelations show Fox News executives and on-air talent not engaged in a ploy designed to help Trump by duping the American people, but panicked about the gap that was opening up between the world as they presented it and the world as their viewers saw it. In particular, they were worried about getting on the wrong side of Trump, on the wrong side of his supporters — and leaving an opening for upstart competitors on the right.
Shortly after the election, Fox News president Jay Wallace said in a message to his CEO, “The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling — truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored. Trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on a war footing.” In another message Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott warned: “The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us… We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.”
Fox’s enemies have jumped on the released messages as clear evidence of bad people doing cynical things or embarrassing themselves. Few seem to have paused and thought about what these messages show. For one, they explode the idea — an article of faith on the American left — of Fox News’s omnipotence. It evidently does not have the magical power over its viewers that so many seem to assume. What they instead show is the complicated two-way relationship that exists between network and viewer, or newspaper and reader. And for media barons like Murdoch, wielding influence and making money don’t always go hand in hand.
Shortly after the Sun endorsed the Conservatives and claimed victory in 1992, the Tories conducted an investigation into the paper’s influence and concluded that the paper wasn’t all that important to the win. Five years later, with the polls predicted a Labour landslide, the Sun switched sides, heralding Tony Blair’s New Labour as being ready to lead Britain into the twenty-first century. The move had more to do with the paper staying on the right side of its 10 million readers than trying to sway an election result.
Fast forward to the Brexit referendum in 2016 and Murdoch’s newspapers took a range of stances: the Sun was in favor, The Times was opposed. In fact, even the Sun’s editorial line depended on whether you were reading the English edition (anti-EU) or Scottish edition (pro-EU). In Britain, Murdoch’s newspapers have always seemed to appreciate that the ultimate boss is the reader. At Fox, they know it’s the viewer.
On our radar
Hobbs bombs Arizona governor Katie Hobbs tried a light-hearted approach to the start of a press conference yesterday. “I know you all have one burning question. I’m only going to answer it once,” she said. “No, I am not involved in the Sinaloa cartel, I’m not taking bribes from them and I’m not laundering their money. Just kidding.” Wait, is she kidding? “That was a joke,” she said.
Bitter Lemon Cockburn wishes Don Lemon a very happy birthday. The CNN host turns fifty-seven today. Does that mean he is past his prime?
It’s all in your head Havana Syndrome is not the result of an attack by foreign adversaries, according to a report by US intelligence agencies published today.
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Bernie the traveling salesman
Bernie Sanders is back — and the scourge of the free market has some product to peddle. His new book is called It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, which if nothing else seems like an unnecessary assurance. Those who are angry about capitalism are not known to keep it quiet. They tend to express it constantly, at length — and on occasion by throwing the odd stone and Molotov cocktail.
Yet in the event that you’ve been repressing rage over having to work for a paycheck all these years, Sanders has the ticket for you. Speaking of tickets, the Vermont senator recently found himself in hot water for charging $95 on Ticketmaster to see him lecture about the evils of capitalism. The event will take place this month in Washington, DC’s glitzy Wharf neighborhood, which itself is a whole additional layer of irony. As any Washingtonian will tell you, the Wharf is the very epitome of late-stage capitalism. Think celeb-chef restaurants pushing out local watering holes. Cantina Marina, we hardly knew ye.
Sanders defended himself by saying he had nothing to do with the ticket prices — and that’s surely true. Yet it’s still hard to see him as anything other than a traveling salesman for socialism. Elsewhere, Sanders was spotted taking his act abroad for a UK book tour. Fans of his transatlantic soulmate Jeremy Corbyn were thrilled, though for the Labour Party’s cautious and centrist leader Keir Starmer, the intervention may have been less than welcome.
–Matt Purple
Lori Lightfoot gets the boot
When Chicago went to the polls on Tuesday, the voters made one thing abundantly clear: they wanted to see the back of Lori Lightfoot, the current mayor. She had come into office on a landslide in 2019, winning some three-quarters of the vote against a well-known, well-liked opponent. Four years later, all that support was gone. She received only 17 percent in 2023, a distant third in a race where only the top two candidates enter the runoff (since none received 50 percent).
The candidates going into that runoff are Paul Vallas, with about 34 percent of the vote (twice that of the incumbent), and Brandon Johnson, with about 20 percent. Vallas and Johnson offer voters stark contrasts on policy, administrative experience and core support. Vallas is essentially a center-left candidate. His campaign focused on restoring public safety, as well as his extensive experience managing city budgets and urban school systems. He has firm backing and considerable financial support from the city’s business community, who are deeply concerned about the loss of several corporate headquarters, weakness in the downtown retail and commercial sectors, rising crime, and ebbing population. They want competent, professional, centrist management to turn around those troubling trajectories. The police union supports him because he promises more cops on the beat to replenish a force hit hard by retirements and low morale.
Johnson, running as a fervent progressive, is the nightmare of the business community and the police. He has worked as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union and a strike leader. His only public office has been as commissioner (since 2018) on the Cook County Board, which covers the Chicago metro area.
–Charles Lipson
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Poll watch
President Biden job approval
Approve 44.3% | Disapprove 51.4% | Net Approval -7.1 (RCP average)
Hypothetical 2024 Arizona Senate race
Ruben Gallego (D): 32 percent
Doug Ducey (R): 27 percent
Undecided: 23 percent
Kyrsten Sinema (I): 17 percent (OH Predictive Insights)
