Ernie's Point of View

Hidden

Evidence of False Reporting

Evidence that the Fox News Channel broadcasts false news stories was largely obtained as a consequence of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit. The Dominion defamation vs Fox Organization lawsuit’s discovery process both disclosed, and made public, a large trove of Fox Company internal text messages and emails:“Because Fox was subject to the pretrial discovery process, it was forced to share years of emails, texts, chats, and memos with Dominion. Through court filings Dominion ensured that thousands of documents were exposed to the public. For the first time in Fox history, outsiders were able to see how it worked on the inside.”

Steltzer also gathered information from the ‘Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol’, Fox memos, interviews, social media conversations, and Internet Archives of TV news databases.

Stelter, a former CNN anchor, and former host of Reliable Sources, leverages his journalism background to provide insights into the Fox News organization. Stelter does a stellar job of collecting, filtering, and organizing a vast amount of primary source information. The book presents a cohesive chronology of Fox News creating false news narratives that radicalized its’ viewers. The paper book is 376 pages, which is 11 hrs and 16 minutes for the Audible version. IMHO it is a bit too long, and a tad redundant.

The Players

‘Network of Lies’ provides direct quotes from texts, emails, Fox memos, court filings, interviews from Fox organization personnel, election pundits, Trump, and election fraud proponents.
Fox organization personnel include the Fox News Channel line-up of commentators: Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, and others. Fox organization management include: Fox News Media CEO, Suzanne Scott; Fox News Media President, Jay Wallace; Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, and his sons Lachlan Murdoch, and James Murdoch. The players also include some of the key 2020 election fraud proponents: in particular voting machine fraud charlatan, Sidney Powell, previous Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and provocative disruptor, Steve Banon, and some MAGA supporters.
Stelter devotes a lot time to Tucker Carlson. The reader gets an inside look at Carlson’s isolated home life, toxic work environment, vulgarity, nasty opinions of co-workers and bosses, extreme opinions of the Fox audience, and opinions of Trump – including ‘I hate him passionately.’
Seltzer provides numerous examples of Carlson’s opinions, for example, on Ukraine:

“Tucker Carlson’s strikingly pro-Putin monologues. He downplayed the conflict as a “border dispute,” criticized Ukraine ceaselessly, and parroted Kremlin propaganda, so much so that Russian state TV shows ran clips of his rants. Other Fox hosts had drifted toward pro-Putin commentary, but Carlson’s open disdain for Ukraine and defense of Putin commanded the most attention—just the way Carlson liked it’.
Carlson’s own words depict a personal and political unethical, scuzzy person. Similar quotes, of other Fox News hosts, document a lack of honesty and journalistic integrity among the Fox News Channel hosts.
“What Rupert and his hosts all had in common was selfishness and greed. By protecting their own personal brands, political futures, and self-interests, they put profits over patriotism and the public interest.”

Fox News Devolution from Journalistic Integrity

The Fox News Channel was created by Rupert Murdoch in October 1996. During the Trump years Fox News transitioned from news journalism, to opinion and analysis. More costly news journalism was replaced with money making sensationalism:
“Left unmentioned was the fact that Fox News had just laid off sixty to seventy people, largely from the reporting ranks, including the so-called Brain Room of researchers who tried to keep the network’s coverage somewhat straight. The Brain Room department was ‘always a reliable and unbiased source for us’ ”.
Seltzer states, “For the entirety of the Trump years, the story was the same: Opinion won, news lost”. Fox News commentary devolved into a money making propaganda machine.
Stelter does however, note that not all the Fox organization lacked journalistic integrity. The Fox organization continues to have journalists, referred to internally as ‘the brain room, that include Fox Business News personnel including Vice President Niel Cavuto, and reporter Chris Stirewalt.

Market Driven ‘News’ Stories

Journalistic, objective truthfulness, does not appear to be a prime tenet of The Fox News Channel. The Fox News Channel’s business model is based mostly on market performance. Using a viewer ratings scorecard people within the Fox organization assess, near real time, changes in Fox News viewership day by day, show by show:

‘I cannot overstate Fox’s fixation on ratings, on winning, on keeping viewers hooked around the clock. Every day Scott [Fox News CEO] and her lieutenants received an email titled “Fox News Executive Scorecard” with segment-by-segment breakdowns of which stories and which guests rated well. Spreadsheets and line graphs showed the audience’s hunger for Republican red meat and its distaste for anything remotely positive or respectful about Democrats. The preeminent question was rarely “was it true?”—it was instead “did it rate?’

This ‘viewers driven’ news story generation evolved from: stories with outlandish perspectives, to coverage of, for instance, non-existent election machine fraud, then perpetuation of QAnon and other baseless conspiracy theory falsehoods.

Fox Viewers – The Audience

‘A Network of Lies’ chronicles the development of ‘The Audience’. ‘The Audience’ refers to Fox News acolytes whom often are part of the Trump base. ‘The Audience’ was ’coparented’ by Trump, and Fox hosts.
Fox host, Carlson, avoids ‘insulting the audience’. The term ‘Insulting the audience’ as used by Fox News hosts meaning the cases of Fox doing fact checking. The term contrasts with the meaning of ‘respecting the audience’, i.e. leaving it to audience to decide veracity. The meanings of these terms are an interesting take on the Fox News Channel’s old slogan, ‘We Report. You Decide’.
A case in point, of Fox News viewers driving the the Fox News Channels news content, was the viewers response to the Fox News decision desk having accurately projecting that the Arizona state presidential election would be won by Joe Biden. ‘The audience’ was angry, and the Fox News hosts disparaged the brain desk, Trump lambasted Fox News, and espoused his audience changed the channel. ‘The Audience’ did change the channel, as shown by election night Nielsen Ratings:
“Trump publicly pressured Fox to be as irrational as OAN with tweets like this:

‘FoxNews daytime is not watchable. In a class with CNN & MSDNC. Check out @OANN, @newsmax and others that are picking up the slack. Even a boring football game, kneeling and all, is better!…’
In response to Trump’s social media texts:

“Carlson was furious at Fox’s management team. He asked VP of morning programming Gavin Hadden, “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real.”
“I hope so,” Hadden replied. “I’m worried.”
Fox was being confronted with a new paradigm: They don’t trust us anymore because this time we didn’t lie.
The Carlson – Hadden conversation continued:
Carlson: “Some of this will pass but once you lose people’s trust it’s tough.”
Hadden: “We certainly have gone against ‘the customer is always right.’ But hopefully our product is strong enough to withstand.”
Carlson: “I sure hope so. I sincerely believe it’s important to have a strong Fox News.”
Hadden: “There is no question.”
Hadden: “And Newsmax with all our castoffs is not the answer.”
Carlson: “With Trump behind it, an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
Carlson also wrote, “We worked really hard to build what we have,”, “Those fuckers [Fox’s brain desk] are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

Stelter notes that this twisted logic drove out some of Fox ‘actual’ News hosts.

The 2020 Election

In the the weeks after the 2020 election Stelter notes Rupert Murdoch attempted to encourage actual journalism by the Fox hosts:
“He [Rupert Murdoch] wrote to Scott [the Fox News CEO] that ‘everything seems to be moving to Biden, and if Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch [to make sure] Sean especially and others don’t sound the same. Not there yet, but a danger.’ Rupert wanted to warn against Trump dragging Hannity—and the rest of Fox-—down into the sewer of fabricated evidence with him.”
Stelter does not claim a conspiracy between Trump, and Fox News, indicating it is more of a codependency:
“For four years. Fox and Trump were deeply codependent. Trump needed Fox for access to his rabid followers; Fox needed Trump for popularity and enormous profits. … Fox could hurt Trump by puncturing his force field of audacious lying. Trump could hurt Fox by directing his legions of acolytes elsewhere”.

January 6 2021 Attack on the US Capitol

After the election Fox host’s and Trump’s network began asserting ‘The Big Lie’ – the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Stelter chronicles Fox News hosts and their guests introducing baseless claims of election fraud.
These are verbatim quotes of text conversations between Fox and the Trump organization people during the events leading up to and after the January 6th Capitol attack.
In addition, Stelter introduces raw testimony and interviews drawn from ‘January 6th Investigation Committee’.
Overall, Stelter provides an evidence based narrative supporting the assertion that:
“The coup attempt could not have happened without the help of Fox News, the cable network controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan.”
After the January 6 attack on the US capitol, Stelter notes that Fox News’s method for addressing ‘bad’ news became either attack it or ignore it: “Fox had two settings for an unwelcome story like the January 6 investigation: Attack and ignore.”

The Dominion Systems Voting Systems Evidence of Defamation

A central election fraud claim was that rigged voting machines, owned by various nefarious players, manipulated election votes.
Sydney Powell’s allegation against Dominion Voting Systems were first presented on the Fox News Bartiromo show:
“Bartiromo came back on camera and said ‘Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software. I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.’ Powell alleged fraud: ‘They were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.’
“Powell alleged, in her very first answer, ‘a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from We the People of the United States of America, to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump, to manufacture votes for Joe Biden.”
In my review of ‘Network of Lies’ I leave it to potential readers to find out what ‘report’ Bartiromo based Powell’s Dominion Systems Voting machine fraud claims on. For one, it was the first alleged instance of Dominion Voting Systems defamation, in addition it was “a gift to Dominion’s lawyers.”
Stelter notes that initially many people in the Fox organization expected, and hoped, that the January attack would finally take Trump off the public stage:
“Even Tucker Carlson couldn’t hold back his excitement at the prospect of Trump being off the public stage. He wrote to a colleague on January 4, ‘We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.’ ”
Next ‘Network of Lies’, focuses on Fox News rescripting the January 6th events. In particular, Tucker Carlson, progresses from claiming the January 6th events were: caused by ANTIFA, not caused by Trump supporters, were peaceful, were not the fault of Trump supporters, “eventually reframing January 6 as an unholy attack __on__ Trump supporters.”

Stelter observes:
“Thus, in the span of just one week, January 6 started to be reframed. It was no longer a coup attempt, but a conspiracy against conservatives. Carlson promised that ‘it was not your fault.’ Now Trump fans were the ‘victims’.”
Specifically, Stelter notes that Carlson’s disinformation escalated into his production of the documentary ‘Patriot Purge’. Stelter describes Patriot Purge as:
“Carlson took the story to its incendiary extreme with ‘Patriot Purge’, a three-part documentary-style series that cast January 6 as a “false flag” operation meant to entrap Trump fans.”
Similarly, Stelter’s quotes, even Geraldo Rivera, who left Fox News Channel in 2023, insight as:
“Rivera decided to speak publicly about Carlson’s “January 6 was an inside job” agitprop. It was “unforgivable,” he said, but Carlson did it because “that’s what the audience wants. In other words, it wasn’t the malevolent media leading the audience. It was the audience leading the malevolent media.” The more clearly this dynamic is understood, the more thoroughly it can be defeated.”

Fox Settles the Dominion Systems Defamation Suit

Initially, Fox executives, bolstered by their lawyer’s advice, and the success of legal defenses used in previous Fox organization defamation law suits, expected that the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit would be easily dismissed. “Fox’s executive team had dismissed Dominion’s chances (‘it’s a slam-dunk First Amendment case,’)”
However, the deposition of hosts and the suit discovery process gathered extensive defamation evidence. Fox hosts had not been vetting guests, nor attempting to verify outlandish claims:
“… the discovery process and the depositions did show the limits of exec oversight. On the day Biden became president-elect, Clark emailed Bartiromo and said, “Maria, I am asking that we reconsider the Rudy Giuliani booking tomorrow.” Clark attached an article titled “Giuliani releases bizarre video claiming Fox News won election for Biden.” The election was over; why book a conspiracy theorist to say otherwise? Because, Bartiromo said, “it was our show.” Carlson wasn’t the only host who believed he was bigger than the Fox brand.”
Throughout ‘Network of Lies’ Seltzer highlights incriminating revelations that led to the Fox settlement of the Dominion defamation case:
“.. on Tuesday [April 18, 2023] Fox paid big to avert the trial. Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, under intensifying threat of what the testimony might do to Fox’s already battered reputation, authorized a mind-blowing $787.5 million payment to Dominion. Carlson would not have to go through the wringer of testifying—and neither would Rupert or Lachlan.”
Note the wider Murdoch media organization made $14.9bn in revenue during its’ 2023 fiscal year.

Tucker Carlson is Fired from Fox News

Less than a week after the settlement Tucker Carlson was abruptly fired from Fox. Stelter presents numerous, inconclusive rationales for the firing. It is also uncertain whether the firing was driven by Rupert, Lachlan, or Suzanne Scott.

The Fox News Organizations Post Settlement

Stelter next points out that after the Dominion lawsuit settlement Fox organizations problems due to advocating ‘The Big Lie’ were not over:
“The Big Lie reckoning, however, was far from over for Fox. Another voting technology company, Smartmatic, was suing for even more money, and its case looked even stronger than Dominion’s.”
Stelter provides an explanation for the claim that Smartmatic’s, “case looked even stronger than Dominion’s.” My review excludes a spoiler here, leaving it to interested readers to find the very simple explanation.
Stelter does not believe that Fox losing Dominion Systems lawsuit positively impacted journalistic integrity at Fox Media.

“The Dominion Voting Systems case, with all its costs, did not change Fox one iota, at least in the category of pushing lies. In mid-May 2023 Rupert’s New York Post splashed a story titled “VETS KICKED OUT FOR MIGRANTS” across its front page.”
Stelter then continues and explains why the New York Post story had not been sufficiently vetted. It was a baseless false story… the vets in the story were paid to pose as displaced vets.
After the Dominion vs Fox settlement there remain significant differences, held by Rupert’s sons James, and Lachlan, regarding the direction the Fox News organization should pursue:
“After the deal dust settled, James [Murdoch] thought of the new Fox as just “an American political project.” Lachlan ostracized James as a deluded liberal. The two brothers stopped speaking. It became increasingly clear that James could not abide the reactionary, radical direction Fox News was heading in. He was disgusted by Fox’s prime-time hosts. “They’re spewing poison,” he told confidants.”

‘Network of Lies’ was published in November 2023, and remains germane regarding developments in the Fox News organization. Currently, August 2024, Rupert, at 92 is trying to guide the future direction of his Fox Media outlet upon his death. There is strong disagreement among his adult children, heirs, as Rupert tries to alter the irrevocable family trust to give son Lachlan full control of the media empire.

External Resources and the Kindle Version Tools

As per my typical ‘book reading’, I listened to the Audible version. After discovering the extensive, documented evidence of Fox organization misdeeds, I also got the Kindle version.
The Kindle version is very useful for perusing the book’s content. This is because the Kindle PC browser version provides useful functionality including:
— a Search function that returns a hyperlink that includes the search, and text surrounding search word;
— a Table of Contents with a pop-up pane to navigate between chapters;
— an Annotations (see uploaded photo) pop-up pane to filter by: highlighter color, Notes, or Bookmarks;
— an Index with hyperlinks to referenced pages;
— a Notes section (see uploaded photo) with hyperlinks from the books text to external footnotes;