{"id":1016222,"date":"2023-03-07T01:05:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T01:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.projectcensored.org\/?p=27808"},"modified":"2023-03-07T01:05:49","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T01:05:49","slug":"journalistic-malpractice-on-trial-what-the-dominion-voting-system-tells-us-about-how-the-media-sacrificed-their-credibility-to-partisan-falsehoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/03\/07\/journalistic-malpractice-on-trial-what-the-dominion-voting-system-tells-us-about-how-the-media-sacrificed-their-credibility-to-partisan-falsehoods\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalistic Malpractice on Trial: What the Dominion Voting System Tells Us About How the Media Sacrificed their Credibility to Partisan Falsehoods"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Nolan Higdon<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThis is direct evidence of knowing falsity\u201d exclaimed RonNell Anderson Jones<\/span><\/a>, Professor of Law at the University of Utah, in a February 2023 interview with Jon Stewart. Jones <\/span>noted that in most defamation cases \u201cthe likelihood that you will find evidence of them [news outlets] saying, \u2018We know this is a lie and we would like to move forward with it anyway is deeply unlikely.\u2019\u201d However, in the case of <\/span>Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News,<\/span> \u201cthe filing contains just this trove of evidence of emails and text messages<\/span> and internal memos that are \u2018rare\u2019 both in terms of the \u2018volume of the evidence and as to the directness of the evidence.\u2019\u201d This sentiment was echoed by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe<\/span><\/a> who noted, \u201cI have never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant admitted in writing that it was making up fake information in order to increase its viewership and its revenues.\u201d<\/p>\n In the $1.6 billion<\/span><\/a><\/span> defamation lawsuit<\/span><\/a><\/span>,<\/span> Dominion Voting Systems accuses <\/span>Fox News Channel of falsely reporting that Dominion\u2019s voting machines fraudulently delivered victory to Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Court documents attained by other media outlets reveal that hosts<\/span><\/a> and other high-ranking<\/span><\/a><\/span> Fox News Channel officials \u2013 including the <\/span>Chairman and CEO of Fox\u2019s parent company News Corporation,<\/span> Rupert Murdoch \u2013 knew these reports were false, <\/span>but aired them because<\/span> they were more concerned with confirming<\/span><\/a> their <\/span>audience\u2019s belief that Donald Trump won the election. <\/span><\/p>\n The evidence presented in the court documents speaks to the journalistic malpractice that plagues the cable news industry. Journalistic malpractice refers to professional journalists who privilege ideological bias and profits over truth in their reporting. Fox News Channel is patient zero for the plague of journalistic malpractice. It was created in 1996 by Rupert Murdoch<\/span><\/a> and the late Roger Ailes<\/span><\/a>, a media consultant for several Republican presidents,<\/span> as a political project to sell conservative culture and policy to the American public with pro-conservative propaganda disguised as journalism. For example, Fox News Channel has<\/p>\n Liberals were right to assert that such chicanery was propaganda, not journalism. But before liberal readers scold Fox News viewers, they should remind themselves that the plague of journalistic malpractice has also infected the liberal leaning cable networks such as <\/span>CNN and MSNBC<\/span>. Researchers<\/span><\/a> and scholars<\/span><\/a> have noted that the advent of cable and then the internet saw news media outlets shift from attaining the largest audience possible to focusing on a more specific or narrow demographic of the audience. While Fox News Channel sought to cater to Republican Party voting viewers, CNN and MSNBC did the same for Democratic Party voters. This gave the Democratic Party influence over programming that was tantamount to what the Republican Party long enjoyed at Fox.<\/span><\/p>\n When Senator U.S. Bernie Sanders\u2019 2016 Presidential bid posed a threat to their desired candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, leaders<\/span><\/a> from the Democratic Party<\/span><\/a> admitted they worked to undermine his campaign. <\/span>Pro-Democratic party outlets like MSNBC and CNN<\/span> aided in this effort by <\/span><\/p>\n Their smear of Sanders continued in 2020 when<\/p>\n Journalistic malpractice also plagued Covid-19 coverage. Starting in 2020, CNN\u2019s Chris Cuomo utilized his platform \u2013 with the approval of CNN leadership \u2013 to host his brother, then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The jovial segments seemed like campaign advertisements as Chris treated Andrew as the anti-thesis<\/span><\/a> to then President Trump: a competent executive who took decisive action to address the Covid-19 pandemic. Although, the Democratic versus Republican framing attracted partisan audiences, in reality, Andrew Cuomo and Trump were all too similar: both<\/span><\/a> concealed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0the actual number of Covid-19 deaths in their jurisdiction, both<\/span><\/a> put patients at risk with kickbacks<\/span><\/a> to industry partners, and both<\/span><\/a> utilized media contacts to stifle press reports about their alleged sexual crimes<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n The partisan falsehoods in cable news includes the production of powerful, long- running false stories designed to convince their audiences that the other<\/i> party is wrong and crazy. For years now, conservatives and Fox News Channel perpetuated the baseless Qanon conspiracy,<\/span> which alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles \u2013 mainly in the Democratic Party – runs global affairs but Trump will break up the conspiracy. The absurdity of this conspiracy is tantamount to liberal leaning news media\u2019s reporting on Russiagate, which sought to discredit Republicans. Since 2016, Russiagate – the story that Russia meddled in and influenced the outcome of the U.S. election in 2016, had direct connections to Donald Trump and his associates, and worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidency – was perpetuated by a series of false stories from Democratic Party-friendly media including <\/span><\/p>\n Conservatives rightly see this reporting and believe liberals are insane.<\/p>\n Both factions need to look in a mirror. While audiences can clearly see the insanity in other<\/i> networks\u2019 viewers, they rarely seem to see it in themselves. Indeed, in the same week that CNN and others were having a schadenfreude moment over the Dominion v. Fox case, they hosted a commentator on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio without disclosing that he had lobbied<\/span><\/a> for the train company Norfolk Southern<\/span>. This example of hypocrisy and journalistic malpractice is not only costly to CNN\u2019s credibility, but our democracy as well.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Without a robust media system that privileges truth over preaching to the choir, the public will have endless debates devoid of facts on key issues such as critical race theory, vaccine efficacy, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, climate change, transgender issues, Ukraine, mysterious balloons, and more. Democratic discourse will be reduced to seeing Republicans as MAGA-hat wearing, blue lives matter-flag waving, gun nuts, and Democrats as medical mask wearing, \u201cthis house cares about everything\u201d front-lawn sign adorning, professional victims and virtue signalers. These caricatures have never really been accurate, but as long as the nation is infected with the plague of journalist malpractice they will surely be perpetuated.<\/p>\n While the courts are unlikely to deliver solace from political party propaganda disguised as journalism, they have provided some wisdom. Both Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson<\/span><\/a> of MSNBC and Fox News Channel respectively, have been brought to court for spreading false information and were exonerated because the judges concluded that no reasonable person would believe either of them were telling the truth<\/span>. That is good advice, and viewers would be wise to remember it every time they consider watching cable news.<\/p>\n The post Journalistic Malpractice on Trial: What the Dominion Voting System Tells Us About How the Media Sacrificed their Credibility to Partisan Falsehoods<\/a> appeared first on Project Censored<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on Project Censored<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Nolan Higdon \u201cThis is direct evidence of knowing falsity\u201d exclaimed RonNell Anderson Jones, Professor of Law at the University of Utah, in a February 2023 interview with Jon Stewart.\u2026<\/p>\n The post Journalistic Malpractice on Trial: What the Dominion Voting System Tells Us About How the Media Sacrificed their Credibility to Partisan Falsehoods<\/a> appeared first on Project Censored<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2660,54271],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016222"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1526951,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016222\/revisions\/1526951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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