This is an excellent look at why the Democrats/Liberals can't really duplicate what FoxNews does, but suggests what they could do instead.
It's from Brian Beutler, a really good political writer and thinker. I don't consider him a pundit because you never see him appear anywhere. But definitely someone to follow for really smart commentary. You should sign up for his weekly newsletter.
It’s fun (ok, “fun”) to think about how recent events would’ve played out differently if Democrats had a cable-news organ like Fox working on their behalf, devoted exclusively to promoting democracy and ginning up outrage over the GOP's heinous conduct.
This isn’t a novel thought by any means. Liberals have been kvetching about how hamstrung they are by the absence of a Fox counterpart since shortly after the network came into existence. And since we’re talking about liberals here, other liberals have exulted in the fact that Democrats aren’t poisoned by Fox-like propaganda for just as long.
That conversation about a liberal or progressive Fox usually proceeds pretty superficially, pitting people who imagine a left-leaning Fox emerging fully formed and operating at peak performance, against those who imagine that any effort to create such a thing would fail as past efforts have failed, because liberals are too consensus oriented by nature, or because liberal agitprop isn’t popular enough to find an audience, or because no liberal comedian can hope to compete with Gutfeld!.
But we can refine the thought experiment by breaking down exactly what it is that Fox does and reimagining its constituent elements in service of progressive or Democratic Party goals.
From my perspective, Fox does a few things well and quite intentionally:
Those (with some shameless lying thrown into the mix) are the central tenets of Foxism, and I think the on-and-off conversation about creating a Democratic Fox runs aground on point 1. There are a lot of old white people and Christians in America, which means Fox doesn’t have too many species of lizard brains to stimulate, or too many constituent groups to attract with different kinds of programming. Try to create a propaganda channel for Democrats, and you’ll run into the same difficulties the party has placating the usual logroll of stakeholders. There are only 24 hours in a day and only three primetime hours, and that’s not enough to satisfy all The Groups that they’re getting their fair share of airtime.
That problem is real, but much diminished, at least for now, by the rise of Donald Trump. The Fox cinematic universe doesn’t exist to provide perfectly proportional representation to right-wing interests; it exists to savage Democrats, limit damage to Republicans, and exert gravitational pull on the broader media environment. There may be no Democratic, War on Christmas-like gimmick that recurs predictably with the seasons, but there is more than enough right-wing depredation and Democratic squeamishness to scare and anger a large audience all day everyday without running out of material, and without requiring anyone to lie.
*snip*
An hour of Fox-for-Democrats programming just this week would struggle to cover everything that merits attention: An A-block segment on the Historic Biden Boom and the lamestream media’s partnership with Republicans to portray the economy in a negative light; another segment seeking to tally up all the people Trump most likely infected with coronavirus, mixed with some hounding of congressional Democrats for not demanding answers from Mark Meadows and Trump’s doctors about who knew what when; a What Are They Hiding segment, featuring a correspondent staked outside of Meadows’s house, aimed at fanning suspicions about the insurrection coverup. By then you’re almost out of time for Special Alerts on the latest Republican efforts to spread coronavirus or Republican failure to censure Lauren Boebert, marked perhaps by a recitation of various GOP corporate donors who might not relish being affiliated with bigotry or the anti-vax movement.
It's from Brian Beutler, a really good political writer and thinker. I don't consider him a pundit because you never see him appear anywhere. But definitely someone to follow for really smart commentary. You should sign up for his weekly newsletter.
Big Tent
Crooked Media’s Editor-in-Chief Brian Beutler is here to walk you through the big debates unfolding among Democrats in real time. New edition every Friday
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It’s fun (ok, “fun”) to think about how recent events would’ve played out differently if Democrats had a cable-news organ like Fox working on their behalf, devoted exclusively to promoting democracy and ginning up outrage over the GOP's heinous conduct.
This isn’t a novel thought by any means. Liberals have been kvetching about how hamstrung they are by the absence of a Fox counterpart since shortly after the network came into existence. And since we’re talking about liberals here, other liberals have exulted in the fact that Democrats aren’t poisoned by Fox-like propaganda for just as long.
That conversation about a liberal or progressive Fox usually proceeds pretty superficially, pitting people who imagine a left-leaning Fox emerging fully formed and operating at peak performance, against those who imagine that any effort to create such a thing would fail as past efforts have failed, because liberals are too consensus oriented by nature, or because liberal agitprop isn’t popular enough to find an audience, or because no liberal comedian can hope to compete with Gutfeld!.
But we can refine the thought experiment by breaking down exactly what it is that Fox does and reimagining its constituent elements in service of progressive or Democratic Party goals.
From my perspective, Fox does a few things well and quite intentionally:
- It keeps the right-wing base in a lather no matter what is happening in the real news environment (war on Christmas garbage, “caravans,” etc);
- It ignores (or at least heavily downplays) any news that paints Republicans in a bad light or reflects well on Democrats;
- It comically overhypes any news that might help Republicans or hurt Democrats, in the expectation that mainstream outlets will eventually bite; If they don’t bite (and even if they do!) it smears those outlets as tankies for the left.
- It enforces discipline among Republican Party actors, particularly those who appear to lack battlefield mentality, even for a moment.
Those (with some shameless lying thrown into the mix) are the central tenets of Foxism, and I think the on-and-off conversation about creating a Democratic Fox runs aground on point 1. There are a lot of old white people and Christians in America, which means Fox doesn’t have too many species of lizard brains to stimulate, or too many constituent groups to attract with different kinds of programming. Try to create a propaganda channel for Democrats, and you’ll run into the same difficulties the party has placating the usual logroll of stakeholders. There are only 24 hours in a day and only three primetime hours, and that’s not enough to satisfy all The Groups that they’re getting their fair share of airtime.
That problem is real, but much diminished, at least for now, by the rise of Donald Trump. The Fox cinematic universe doesn’t exist to provide perfectly proportional representation to right-wing interests; it exists to savage Democrats, limit damage to Republicans, and exert gravitational pull on the broader media environment. There may be no Democratic, War on Christmas-like gimmick that recurs predictably with the seasons, but there is more than enough right-wing depredation and Democratic squeamishness to scare and anger a large audience all day everyday without running out of material, and without requiring anyone to lie.
*snip*
An hour of Fox-for-Democrats programming just this week would struggle to cover everything that merits attention: An A-block segment on the Historic Biden Boom and the lamestream media’s partnership with Republicans to portray the economy in a negative light; another segment seeking to tally up all the people Trump most likely infected with coronavirus, mixed with some hounding of congressional Democrats for not demanding answers from Mark Meadows and Trump’s doctors about who knew what when; a What Are They Hiding segment, featuring a correspondent staked outside of Meadows’s house, aimed at fanning suspicions about the insurrection coverup. By then you’re almost out of time for Special Alerts on the latest Republican efforts to spread coronavirus or Republican failure to censure Lauren Boebert, marked perhaps by a recitation of various GOP corporate donors who might not relish being affiliated with bigotry or the anti-vax movement.
