RUTHFULLY YOURS

The sudden death of Roger Ailes (R.I.P.) yesterday is a grim omen for the network he envisioned and built. In the wake of the recent upheavals at Fox News, the conservative cable television network’s ratings are experiencing a precipitous decline from cable news leadership for the first time in the history of the channel. As the rest of the mainstream media continue their efforts to undermine and “resist” the Trump Administration, this development bodes ill for the future — not only of the unique kind of fair and balanced if right of center reporting pioneered by the Fox News Channel (FNC), but of the prospects for conservatives continuing to have a major media platform, maintain power, and advance their agenda in the months and years ahead.

The Fox News Channel launched on October 6, 1996. MSNBC, originally a collaboration between NBC News and Microsoft, had started three months earlier. Prior to mid-1996, CNN, the other competitor, was the exclusive cable news outlet in the United States, synonymous with “cable news.” It enjoyed a long monopoly in the field during which it was able to build its brand at home and abroad.

Lacking the backing of a huge well oiled news organzation like NBC or the tailwind legacy of a sixteen year international presence like CNN, FNC initially had a bit of a shaky start. But under the guidance of media and political genius Roger Ailes (the FNC CEO and Chairman), the financial support of international media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and with a clear agenda (“fair and balanced” reporting with a consistent respect for conservative viewpoints), after gaining wide cable and satellite distribution, Fox pulled ahead of its two rivals. By 2002, FNC had done the unthinkable, establishing itself as the #1 cable news channel in the United States. Notwithstanding its being constantly derided by the rest of the mainstream media, Fox News’s prime time ratings dominance went largely unchallenged for the next fourteen years.

The Fox News Channel’s innovative and successful approach to presenting the news in the new millennium helped to change the TV news landscape from one dominated by breaking hard news read by mostly interchangeable news readers to a model that relied on opinionated marquee personalities and colorful left/right debate. Prime time personalities Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, for example, both of whom debuted on FNC the night that it started, continued to host programs in prime time, seemingly in perpetuity. CNN’s “breaking news is king” strategy, and its aging prime time host Larry King, were caught off guard.

For its part, the ill-conceived MSNBC floundered during its first decade. The channel’s original plan for some kind of interactive cable TV-online collaboration with Microsoft (one of MSNBC’s early prime time shows was the laughable nightly tech program The Site with Soledad O’Brien) was soon scuttled, and it experimented with both left and right wing hosts and anchors (Phil Donahue, Keith Olbermann, Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, and even Michael Savage for a short time) before settling on a hard left approach that corresponded with the rise of Barack Obama in 2008.

The seventeen month campaign trek of Donald Trump from his announcement on June 16, 2015 to his election victory appeared to institutionalize Fox’s hegemony. FNC, it was widely assumed, now had its man in the White House and it had helped to put him there. Ironically, what happened during the first Republican candidates’ debate on August 6, 2015, carried exclusively on FNC, presaged the channel’s eventual decline.

The debate was co-hosted by Fox News’s newest star, prime time anchor and special events coverage co-anchor Megyn Kelly. Her first question, directed to Trump, was provocative and incendiary:

Kelly: “Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’”

Trump: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

Kelly: “No, it wasn’t. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?”

In a flash, Fox News’s popular celebrity anchor had thrown down a gauntlet, unfairly in the opinion of many, right in the face of a candidate who was quickly gaining attention and momentum with conservatives – the core of the FNC audience – and in the very first Republican debate of the 2016 election season seen by a record 24 million viewers!

The ensuing undercurrent of bad feeling between Trump and Kelly – often breaking out into the open on social media – dragged on for months. It soured many viewers on Kelly and diminished her appeal as the attractive and smart face of Fox News.

Kelly supposedly made up with Trump for a much-hyped, hour long prime time Fox broadcast network special. The forced détente, however, seemed fake. Later in 2016, Kelly wrote negatively about Trump in her memoir Settle for More, for which she was paid around $11 million according to deadline.com. In interviews to promote the book, Kelly said that she felt such fear during 2016 that she and her husband hired or were provided with armed bodyguards to protect her and her family from perceived dangers arising from her to-do with Trump.

The Women of Fox News

“The on-air dynamic of an older, not necessarily attractive, male authority figure and his lovely female guest (look, she’s beautiful and smart too!) is such a trademark of Fox News” opined LA Times television critic Lorraine Ali in an April 6, 2017 Times feature story “Scandal, sexism and the role of women at Fox News.”

Indeed, anyone with eyes and sensibility had to take note that very early on the Fox News channel was appealing to male viewers with a lineup of very attractive young women correspondents, anchors, and guests who, as Ali noted, were “smart too!”

As Chelsea Schilling writes at WND (May 2, 2017), “It’s no secret that Fox News has some of the most attractive female hosts in the business, and many fans have become accustomed to seeing beautiful, leggy women deliver the daily news. In fact, Google searches of almost every woman on Fox News reveal scores of images of the lady-hosts boldly baring their long legs.” Writing at Breitbart on April 27, 2017, Daniel Flynn refers to Fox News as a “hot-women-only cable news culture.”

Media fake news is everywhere.

No, the new health care bill does not treat rape as a pre-existing condition and Republicans did not celebrate its passage with beer.

The latest media outrage is driven by a Washington Post story about intelligence disclosures based on claims by anonymous sources. The Post’s big hit pieces are mainly based on anonymous sources.

Its latest hit piece runs a quote from, “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” That’s an anonymous source quoting hearsay from other anonymous sources.

This isn’t journalism. It’s a joke.

Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a story based on “the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House.” The fake news story falsely claimed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign.

Rod had a simple answer when asked about that piece of fake news. “No.”

So much for 30 anonymous sources and for the Washington Post’s credibility. But the media keeps shoveling out pieces based on anonymous sources and confirmed by anonymous sources while ignoring the disavowals by those public officials who are willing to go on the record.

The Comey memo story is based on, according to the New York Times, “two people who read the memo.” And then “one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.”

And his dog.

The supposed memo contradicts Comey’s own testimony to Congress under oath.

The Times hasn’t seen the memo. No one has seen the memo except the anonymous sources that may or may not exist. The media’s fake news infrastructure relies heavily on anonymous sources. And anonymous sources are the media’s way of saying, “Just trust us.”

The question is why would anyone trust the media?

Comey fake news is popular on the left because it is convinced that he is the key to reversing their election defeat. Recently CNN got its fake news fingers burned with a story claiming that the former FBI Director had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation before he was fired.

Where did CNN get its story from? Anonymous sources. Or, as the story put it, “two sources familiar with the discussion.”

Sources “familiar with the discussion” is up there with “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” And their neighbor’s dog who barks exclusively to CNN.

Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe both shot down CNN’s fake news. CNN’s headline was, “New Acting FBI Director Contradicts White House on Comey.” Its fake news was referenced only as, “Amid reports that Comey had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation, McCabe testified that he believed the bureau had adequate resources to complete the job.”

President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey was like a speedball for the media addicted to Trump-hatred. The Dems came out with the usual hallucinatory hyperbole––“Watergate,” “Saturday night massacre,” “obstruction of justice,” “Constitutional crisis,” “coup,” “impeachable offense,” “treason,” “terrifying attack,” “despot,” and various other verbal convulsions. The NeverTrumpers joined the shooting-gallery, high on their seething resentment of the man who kicked to the curb these self-appointed arbitri elegantiae of conservative political discourse.

Nearly two years since Trump announced his candidacy, the media savants still haven’t figured out that the rule-book they wrote to suit themselves is obsolete.

Once television and mass advertising came to dominate the coverage of politicians, the media determined the protocols and practices that governed their interactions with pols. Because they manufactured and monopolized the images and analyses that the voters used to create their politics, the opinion writers and television anchors wielded enormous power. And the politicians knew it. So both political parties accepted the media’s rituals and made obeisance to the the media’s power.

A prime example of this baleful dynamic came in 1968, in the early days of the North Vietnamese’s failed Tet Offensive. In his evening news show, CBS’s Walter Cronkite pronounced, “But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out [of Vietnam] then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” After hearing the supposed communicator of facts make a geopolitical political judgment based not on facts but on erroneous perceptions, President Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” In the end, nearly 60 thousand Americans and over a million South Vietnamese died for nothing.

The Watergate scandal, and the celebrity and wealth showered on reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, illustrated again that the media did not just report events, but interpreted them in a way that could bring down a president over electoral hijinks common in our history. Their egos inflated with self-importance, during the following decades the media’s biases, political prejudices, naked activism, and rank careerism dominated the news. It shaped the media’s coverage of political enemies like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as the policies like supply-side economics that offended the received wisdom of the left. The apex of media hubris was the groveling, worshipful coverage of Barack Obama, and the continuing apologia and encomia for his disastrous presidency.

Donald Trump’s presidency feels like it is in crisis. Reading the Washington Post is almost comical now. At least once a week we are treated to at least 18 — now 24, now 31! — sources within the White House reporting that Donald Trump had another very Trumpish day. He’s berating advisers. He’s cursing Barack Obama and the Deep State. He’s making decisions based on fake news. He’s bungling even routine jobs, such as an introductory phone call with the Australian prime minister. Everyone who works for him hates him. The press has the whiff of blood in their nares. They might just be able to take this guy down.

But it’s not Trump’s attempts at self-enrichment, the rank amateurism of his staff, or even his mismanaged relationships with his own party that are dragging him down. From the media’s perspective, it’s the Russia stuff that’s working. It flummoxes Trump, unmans him, and people love to share the latest conspiracy.

Granted, Donald Trump hasn’t helped himself. Russia and Trump seem to collect the same shady and deluded co-conspirators, and real second-raters at that. His former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his national-security adviser, General Michael Flynn, were pushed out over their dealings with Russian politicos. Trump’s habit of talking about foreign leaders in overly familiar ways — he has “great chemistry” with some — leads him to say too many admiring things about Vladimir Putin. And Trump Tower was notorious for leasing apartments to shady Russian characters associated with organized crime. Every time Trump tries to cauterize the wound, for example by firing the FBI director for not clearing his name, he makes things worse.

But now almost all of the justifiable anxiety about Trump’s character and behavior is transmuted into the Russian story. And frankly, we should be worried about how that plays out. For all the talk about how Russia is an unpleasant Eurasian gas station with a stunted economy, it’s still a nuclear power that feels itself humiliated. Our last two presidents both tried to improve relations with Moscow. And there are geopolitical situations where a president of the United States, Trump or someone else, would desperately need Russian help and cooperation. If the “get Trump” hysteria impedes that, it could do more harm than good.

And it is a matter of hysteria right now. Amateur conspiracy theories proliferate across Twitter and in the media. A viral story at the Washington Post alleged Russia had been involved in a sophisticated campaign to spread fake news. The evidence amounted to little more than what the Kremlin-funded RT network had tweeted over a few months. Another viral story alleged a secret back-door computer communication between the Trump campaign and its Russian masters; it was most likely a server sending spam and hotel promotions. There was the entertaining and prurient “dossier” on Trump, a document in which it seems intelligence agents shared rumors and fantasies about Donald Trump’s bizarre private forms of revenge on Barack Obama.

Good God, but Bathtub Boy* is bonkers.

On Twitter, GQ’s Keith Olbermann posted his “passionate appeal” to foreign spies to help him overthrow our duly elected president.

“I appeal to the intelligence agencies and the governments of what is left of the free world,” Olby began dramatically.

To them as entities, entireties as bureaucracies making official decisions, and to the individuals who make decisions of conscience. To GCHQ and MI6 in the UK, to the BND in Germany, the DGSE in France, the ASIS in Australia, and even of the GRU in Russia, where they must already be profoundly aware that they have not merely helped put an amoral cynic in power here, but an uncontrollable one, whose madness is genuine and whose usefulness—even to them—is at an end.

To all of them, and to the world’s journalists, I make this plea: We the citizens of the United States of America are the victims of a coup. We need your leaks, your information, your intelligence, your recordings, your videos, your conscience. The civilian government and the military of the United States are no longer in the hands of the people, nor in the control of any responsible individuals on whom you can rely….

It goes on and on, but you get the picture. He’s nuts.