Fox, Newsmax, and the danger of low expectations

On Thursday night—in the hours after President Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell convened a press conference and laundered spectacularly-deranged voter-fraud conspiracy theories involving Hugo Chávez, George Soros, and the Clintons—Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, said on air that he’d asked Powell for evidence, and that she hadn’t been able to provide any. “When we kept pressing she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson said, affecting the air of the dogged reporter. “We’re telling you this because it’s true, and in the end, that’s all that matters.” His words were quickly clipped and circulated online, where some mainstream journalists and observers hailed them as a damning, unexpected rebuke of Trump’s election lies, and many right-wingers excoriated his supposed treachery. Neither response was really justified: Carlson’s monologue cleared only an exceedingly low bar of reality acceptance, and the language he used to couch his call for evidence veered between the credulous (“We took Sidney Powell seriously, with no intention of fighting with her”; “We invited Sidney Powell on the show… we would have given her the entire week, actually, and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention”) and the downright bizarre. (“The louder the Yale political science department and the staff of The Atlantic magazine scream ‘conspiracy theory,’ the more interested we tend to be”; “We literally do UFO segments—not because we’re crazy or even... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-11-23 13:19:50 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "Fox, Newsmax, and the danger of low expectations"


Why Books Are The Ultimate New Business Card

“You don’t understand,” the three-time, big-six published author told me. “Books aren’t designed for you, the customer. Today, non-fiction books are business cards--for speaking, consulting, and deals.” I was meeting this friend for dinner in New York City and had mentioned a trend I had... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2012-09-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Why Increased Competition for Marketing Spend is Bad News for Print Media

The newspaper business’s reliance on the industrial machine of printing and distributing is often understated. It’s a delicate ecosystem that can have a real effect on publisher margins – as the fluctuation in newsprint ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher

[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-08-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Apple's iBooks Author EULA is more and less evil than you think

There's a strange concept in marketing that no publicity is really bad. If people talk about you, it broadly raises brand awareness. People eventually forget the bad news but not the brand. Who remembers last year's furor over Apple's onerous publisher subscription terms? That's the eventual... Continue reading at Betanews

[ Betanews | 2012-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this