media matters

[Brooklyn]

Fox network - biggest liars anywhere:




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[Seacoaster(1)]

I'm actually a little surprised at how little discussion this story prompts, given its importance in the nation's division, and what it says about the state of the media sources on which we rely for information as a democracy. But here is more from the discovery in the Dominion suit, a Zoom call convened on November 16, 2020 to discuss "what went wrong" when Fox got the AZ call right. If nothing else, the call and actions in the days after the election expose Fox, and even the supposed "real journalists," like Baier as plain, ratings hungry hacks:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/us/p ... ction.html

"A little more than a week after television networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joseph R. Biden Jr., top executives and anchors at Fox News held an after-action meeting to figure out how they had messed up.

Not because they had gotten the key call wrong — but because they had gotten it right. And they had gotten it right before anyone else.

Typically, it is a point of pride for a news network to be the first to project election winners. But Fox is no typical news network, and in the days following the 2020 vote, it was besieged with angry protests not only from President Donald J. Trump’s camp but from its own viewers because it had called the battleground state of Arizona for Mr. Biden. Never mind that the call was correct; Fox executives worried that they would lose viewers to hard-right competitors like Newsmax.

And so, on Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, and Jay Wallace, the network’s president, convened a Zoom meeting for an extraordinary discussion with an unusual goal, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times: How to keep from angering the network’s conservative audience again by calling an election for a Democrat before the competition.

Maybe, the Fox executives mused, they should abandon the sophisticated new election-projecting system in which Fox had invested millions of dollars and revert to the slower, less accurate model. Or maybe they should base calls not solely on numbers but on how viewers might react. Or maybe they should delay calls, even if they were right, to keep the audience in suspense and boost viewership.

“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger,” Ms. Scott said. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”

Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the two main anchors, suggested it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations, but that viewer reaction should be considered. “In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, “the game is just very, very different.”

The conversation captured the sense of crisis enveloping Fox after the election and underscored its unique role in the conservative political ecosystem. The network’s conduct in this period has come under intense scrutiny in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.

Court filings in recent days revealed that Fox executives and hosts considered fraud claims by the Trump camp to be “really crazy stuff,” as Rupert Murdoch, the head of the Fox media empire, put it, yet pushed them on air anyway. The recording of the Nov. 16 meeting adds further context to the atmosphere inside the network at that time, when executives were on the defensive because of their Arizona call and feared alienating Mr. Trump and his supporters.

In a statement on Saturday, the network said: “Fox News stood by the Arizona call despite intense scrutiny. Given the extremely narrow 0.3 percent margin and a new projection mechanism that no other network had, of course there would be a wide-ranging post-mortem surrounding the call and how it was executed no matter the candidates.”

In the cross hairs now is Ms. Scott, who joined the network at its inception in 1996 as a programming assistant and worked her way up to become chief executive in 2018. Media analysts have speculated that she may take the fall; Mr. Murdoch testified in a deposition that executives who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast “should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.” But Fox later put out word that she was not in danger.

Ms. Scott was among the executives who grew alarmed after the network’s Decision Desk called Arizona for Mr. Biden at 11:20 p.m. on election night on Nov. 3, 2020, a projection that infuriated Mr. Trump and his aides because it was a swing state that could foreshadow the overall result. No other network called Arizona that night, although The Associated Press did several hours later, and the Fox journalists who made the call stood by their judgment.

At 8:30 the next morning, Ms. Scott suggested Fox not call any more states until certified by authorities, a formal process that could take days or weeks. She was talked out of that. But the next day, with Mr. Biden’s lead in Arizona narrowing, Mr. Baier noted that Mr. Trump’s campaign was angry and suggested reversing the call. “It’s hurting us,” he wrote Mr. Wallace and others in a previously reported email. “The sooner we pull it even if it gives us major egg. And put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”

Arizona had never been in Mr. Trump’s column, and the Decision Desk overseen by Bill Sammon, the managing editor for Washington, resisted giving it “back” to a candidate who was losing just to satisfy critics.

But on Friday night, Nov. 6, when Mr. Sammon’s team was ready to call Nevada for Mr. Biden, sealing his victory, Mr. Wallace refused to air it. “I’m not there yet since it’s for all the marbles — just a heavier burden than an individual state call,” Mr. Wallace wrote in a text message obtained by The Times.

Rather than be the first to call the election winner, Fox became the last. CNN declared Mr. Biden the victor the next day at 11:24 a.m., followed by the other networks. Fox did not concur until 11:40 a.m., some 14 hours after Mr. Sammon’s election team internally concluded the race was over.

While Mr. Biden held onto Arizona by 10,000 votes, the explosive fallout from the Fox call panicked the network. Viewers erupted. Ratings fell. “I’ve never seen a reaction like this, to any media company,” Tucker Carlson told Ms. Scott in a Nov. 9 message released in a court filing. Ms. Scott complained to a colleague that Mr. Sammon did not understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling AZ” and it was his job “to protect the brand.”

On Nov. 16, Ms. Scott and Mr. Wallace convened the Zoom meeting to discuss the Arizona decision. Mr. Sammon and Arnon Mishkin, the director of the Decision Desk, were included. Chris Stirewalt, the political editor who had gone on air to defend the call, was not.

Ms. Scott invited Mr. Baier and Ms. MacCallum, “the face” of the network, as she called them, to describe the heat they were taking, according to the recording reviewed by The Times.

“We are still getting bombarded,” Mr. Baier said. “It became really hurtful.” He said projections were not enough to call a state when it would be so sensitive. “I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer” so they could “think beyond, about the implications.”

Ms. MacCallum agreed: “There’s just obviously been a tremendous amount of backlash, which is, I think, more than any of us anticipated. And so there’s that layer between statistics and news judgment about timing that I think is a factor.” For “a loud faction of our viewership,” she said, the call was a blow.

Neither she nor Mr. Baier explained exactly what they meant by another “layer.” A person who was in the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said on Saturday that Mr. Baier had been talking about process because he was upset the Decision Desk had made the Arizona call without letting the anchors know first.

Fox reached its call earlier than other networks because of the cutting-edge system that it developed after the 2016 election, a system tested during the 2018 midterm elections with great success — Fox projected that Democrats would capture the House before its competitors. But now Mr. Wallace was having second thoughts.

“We created a new mousetrap,” he said. But he asked, “Was the mousetrap too good?” He added: “Part of me is like: Oh, should we have been more conservative and should we have stuck with N.E.P.,” the National Election Pool used by other networks. “Would that have changed things? Would there still be this ire?”

Mr. Mishkin acknowledged that the Arizona call seemed “premature” but noted that “it did land correctly” and that Fox rightly made clear it was “a dogfight in the Electoral College.” Mr. Sammon stood by the call. “If I may defend the Decision Desk for a moment, they got all 50 states right,” he said. “We called Arizona. It was a good call. It held up.”

Ms. Scott pressed Mr. Sammon to admit that Arizona “became much closer than even you anticipated it becoming.”

He pushed back. “From a statistical standpoint,” he said, “I literally never worried about the Arizona call. From a lot of other standpoints it was very painful for reasons that we’re all aware of. But statistically, I really was very confident in that call. That’s just the truth.”

Ms. Scott agreed it was important to be right. “But I think we’re living in a new world in a sense, where half of the voting population doesn’t believe in big corporations, big tech, big media,” she said. “There’s a lack of trust. And when they feel like things are being done behind closed doors in rooms that they can’t understand, it exacerbates the emotion and how they feel about the process.”

Tom Lowell, the managing editor for news, said Fox had been left “as the canary in this nasty coal mine,” suggesting other networks had deliberately delayed calls out of malice. “I think some outlets willfully held back calls that they probably could have made to watch us twist in the wind,” he said.

Ms. Scott asserted that CNN had delayed to hold viewer attention. “CNN historically I think has always been late because — purely for ratings,” she said. “And I think you have to ask yourself, is that a good enough reason? Trust, public trust, viewership, I mean there’s different parameters.”

She added that she was merely “raising the questions” about holding back calls. “There is a philosophy around that.” (Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesman, on Saturday denied holding back calls for ratings, saying its journalists “make calls as soon as we’re confident they’re right.”)

The Arizona dispute was not an abstract discussion. Georgia would soon hold runoff elections for two Senate seats that would determine control of the chamber. The question was raised about how to call those races given that Republicans seemed favored to win.

“If we’re going to be first to call the Senate for G.O.P. control, that’s OK too,” Mr. Baier said, prompting awkward laughs. (The person in the meeting said Mr. Baier was joking.)

What no one said at the meeting was that Ms. Scott would not let Mr. Sammon’s team risk the network’s brand again. She decided to push out Mr. Sammon and Mr. Stirewalt, but fearing criticism for firing journalists who had gotten the call right, opted to wait until after Georgia.

Mr. Murdoch was not keen on waiting. On Nov. 20, four days after the Zoom meeting, according to documents filed by Dominion, he told Ms. Scott, “Maybe best to let Bill go right away,” which would “be a big message with Trump people.”

Mr. Sammon, who had called every election correctly over 12 years at Fox and had just been offered a new three-year contract, was told that same day that his contract would not be renewed after all. He heard not from Fox but from his lawyer, Robert Barnett. Mr. Stirewalt was out too.

Fox would, in the end, wait until after Georgia to announce the purge, without attributing it to the Arizona call. Mr. Sammon, who negotiated a severance package, would call his departure a “retirement,” while Stirewalt’s dismissal was characterized as a “restructuring.”

Three weeks later, Fox announced a new multiyear contract extension for Ms. Scott."

[njbill]

With all of these incredibly damning documents coming out from the Dominion litigation, I am somewhat surprised that Fox did not settle early on, either before producing the documents or at least before they became public as exhibits to motions. (I am assuming the documents, after having been produced in discovery, were subject to a protective order or confidentiality agreement, precluding their public dissemination unless or until they were attached as exhibits to publicly filed pleadings or motions.)

This suggests to me one of two things. Either Fox is so supremely arrogant that they think the publication of these documents won’t hurt their brand or turn off their viewers, or Dominion’s settlement demand has too many zeros attached to it.

I imagine sometime down the road there will be a fascinating book written about this litigation, revealing some or all of the above.

[Typical Lax Dad]

With all of these incredibly damning documents coming out from the Dominion litigation, I am somewhat surprised that Fox did not settle early on, either before producing the documents or at least before they became public as exhibits to motions. (I am assuming the documents, after having been produced in discovery, were subject to a protective order or confidentiality agreement, precluding their public dissemination unless or until they were attached as exhibits to publicly filed pleadings or motions.)

This suggests to me one of two things. Either Fox is so supremely arrogant that they think the publication of these documents won’t hurt their brand or turn off their viewers, or Dominion’s settlement demand has too many zeros attached to it.

I imagine sometime down the road there will be a fascinating book written about this litigation, revealing some or all of the above.

I hope this cripples FoxNews. It has been very bad for the country. I never imagined a major news organization would be a propaganda arm of a political party and people wouldn’t care.

[njbill]

We’ll see. All along people have speculated about the amount of Dominion’s damages if they prove liability. My understanding is they are a relatively small company with a fairly narrow business. What would their compensatory damages be? Millions? Tens of millions? Just my guess, but I’d be surprised if they could put up a number in the hundreds of millions on the whiteboard. Tens of millions isn’t going to harm Fox.

The real question in my mind is punitive damages. Can they really ring the bell with a huge punitive damages award that stands up on appeal?

We have a long way to go in this litigation.

[old salt]

If nothing else, the call and actions in the days after the election expose Fox, and even the supposed "real journalists," like Baier as plain, ratings hungry hacks:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/us/p ... ction.html


Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the two main anchors, suggested it was not enough to call a state based on numerical calculations, the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations, but that viewer reaction should be considered. “In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, “the game is just very, very different.”

In a statement on Saturday, the network said: “Fox News stood by the Arizona call despite intense scrutiny. Given the extremely narrow 0.3 percent margin and a new projection mechanism that no other network had, of course there would be a wide-ranging post-mortem surrounding the call and how it was executed no matter the candidates.”

Ms. Scott was among the executives who grew alarmed after the network’s Decision Desk called Arizona for Mr. Biden at 11:20 p.m. on election night on Nov. 3, 2020, a projection that infuriated Mr. Trump and his aides because it was a swing state that could foreshadow the overall result. No other network called Arizona that night, although The Associated Press did several hours later, and the Fox journalists who made the call stood by their judgment.

At 8:30 the next morning, Ms. Scott suggested Fox not call any more states until certified by authorities, a formal process that could take days or weeks. She was talked out of that. But the next day, with Mr. Biden’s lead in Arizona narrowing, Mr. Baier noted that Mr. Trump’s campaign was angry and suggested reversing the call. “It’s hurting us,” he wrote Mr. Wallace and others in a previously reported email. “The sooner we pull it even if it gives us major egg. And put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”


While Mr. Biden held onto Arizona by 10,000 votes, the explosive fallout from the Fox call panicked the network. Viewers erupted. Ratings fell. “I’ve never seen a reaction like this, to any media company,” Tucker Carlson told Ms. Scott in a Nov. 9 message released in a court filing. Ms. Scott complained to a colleague that Mr. Sammon did not understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling AZ” and it was his job “to protect the brand.”

Ms. Scott invited Mr. Baier and Ms. MacCallum, “the face” of the network, as she called them, to describe the heat they were taking, according to the recording reviewed by The Times.

“We are still getting bombarded,” Mr. Baier said. “It became really hurtful.” He said projections were not enough to call a state when it would be so sensitive. “I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer” so they could “think beyond, about the implications.”

Ms. MacCallum agreed: “There’s just obviously been a tremendous amount of backlash, which is, I think, more than any of us anticipated. And so there’s that layer between statistics and news judgment about timing that I think is a factor.” For “a loud faction of our viewership,” she said, the call was a blow.

Neither she nor Mr. Baier explained exactly what they meant by another “layer.” A person who was in the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said on Saturday that Mr. Baier had been talking about process because he was upset the Decision Desk had made the Arizona call without letting the anchors know first.

Fox reached its call earlier than other networks because of the cutting-edge system that it developed after the 2016 election, a system tested during the 2018 midterm elections with great success — Fox projected that Democrats would capture the House before its competitors. But now Mr. Wallace was having second thoughts.

“We created a new mousetrap,” he said. But he asked, “Was the mousetrap too good?” He added: “Part of me is like: Oh, should we have been more conservative and should we have stuck with N.E.P.,” the National Election Pool used by other networks. “Would that have changed things? Would there still be this ire?”

Mr. Mishkin acknowledged that the Arizona call seemed “premature” but noted that “it did land correctly” and that Fox rightly made clear it was “a dogfight in the Electoral College.” Mr. Sammon stood by the call. “If I may defend the Decision Desk for a moment, they got all 50 states right,” he said. “We called Arizona. It was a good call. It held up.”

Ms. Scott pressed Mr. Sammon to admit that Arizona “became much closer than even you anticipated it becoming.”\

He pushed back. “From a statistical standpoint,” he said, “I literally never worried about the Arizona call. From a lot of other standpoints it was very painful for reasons that we’re all aware of. But statistically, I really was very confident in that call. That’s just the truth.”

Ms. Scott agreed it was important to be right. “But I think we’re living in a new world in a sense, where half of the voting population doesn’t believe in big corporations, big tech, big media,” she said. “There’s a lack of trust. And when they feel like things are being done behind closed doors in rooms that they can’t understand, it exacerbates the emotion and how they feel about the process.”

It was reasonable for Baier & McCallum to question calling it before the other networks. Fox was using their unique "mousetrap" methodolgy, different from the other networks. What if they got it wrong ?

Given the stakes, it would have been perfectly reasonable, even prudent, to wait for the other networks to reach the same conclusion before making the call. They could have warned that it's not looking good for Trump in AZ without making the call.

[njbill]

But it’s not their job to question the calls of their decision desk. They don’t have enough information or expertise to do so.

There would’ve been nothing wrong with the anchors interviewing the Fox decision desk people and asking how and why they decided to call Arizona for Trump. I don’t think they did that, however. As I recall, they did something like that in 2016, when Megyn Kelly, with great fanfare, marched through the halls of Fox, with camera in tow, until she got to the decision desk office.

But let’s be real. They weren’t questioning the call on the merits. They didn’t have any substantive information suggesting the call was wrong. Rather, they were questioning the call because it was counter to what their viewers wanted to hear. Evidently Fox viewers can’t handle the truth.

If they got it wrong, then we would have had Florida 2000 all over again. But they didn’t get it wrong. Evidently, they had a better system than the other networks did and were able to make the call days earlier. All of the networks certainly remember Florida and have been careful about making calls.

The “stakes” were being first as long as the call was correct. The networks always compete with one another trying to be first on calls. That’s just the nature of the business. I actually don’t remember any network or other organization reversing a call since 2000. As it turned out, Fox was first in calling Arizona, a call that proved to be correct.

[old salt]

But it’s not their job to question the calls of their decision desk. They don’t have enough information or expertise to do so.

There would’ve been nothing wrong with the anchors interviewing the Fox decision desk people and asking how and why they decided to call Arizona for Trump. I don’t think they did that, however. As I recall, they did something like that in 2016, when Megyn Kelly, with great fanfare, marched through the halls of Fox, with camera in tow, until she got to the decision desk office.

But let’s be real. They weren’t questioning the call on the merits. They didn’t have any substantive information suggesting the call was wrong. Rather, they were questioning the call because it was counter to what their viewers wanted to hear. Evidently Fox viewers can’t handle the truth.

If they got it wrong, then we would have had Florida 2000 all over again. But they didn’t get it wrong. Evidently, they had a better system than the other networks did and were able to make the call days earlier. All of the networks certainly remember Florida and have been careful about making calls.

The “stakes” were being first as long as the call was correct. The networks always compete with one another trying to be first on calls. That’s just the nature of the business. I actually don’t remember any network or other organization reversing a call since 2000. As it turned out, Fox was first in calling Arizona, a call that proved to be correct.

As I recall, they did question the decision desk, on air. I remember Stirewalt defending the decision & another geek,I think Sammon.
The anchors & panelists were questioning the call because none of the other networks were making it.

I was watching in real time. When Fox called AZ, I concluded that Biden had won.
Overall, it was a gutsy call by Fox & they took heat from their audience for making the call so far in advance.
I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

[njbill]

I stand corrected then. I wasn’t watching Fox on election night.

[a fan]

I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

You're going to comment on the Fox lawsuit at some point, right? Outright lies....knowing they were lying.....and deliberately lying to their audience?

Comment?

[old salt]

I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

You're going to comment on the Fox lawsuit at some point, right? Outright lies....knowing they were lying.....and deliberately lying to their audience?

Comment?

I did :

Here is Dominion's Memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment on liability:

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ ... f/full.pdf

The fact section on Newsmax capitalizing on the Fox call on Arizona, Fox's effort to fight back for viewers through support of the Big Lie and defamation of Dominion, even when they knew is was false and crazy.

But here's what they did, even when they knew the information they were getting was false:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1626387262274428928

This is really bad for Fox. I recall on election night, when Fox called AZ for Biden, I knew it was over & went to bed. I respected Fox for being the first to make a call that would disappoint their audience.

I don't know if Fox can win the defamation case, but I'm surprised they didn't try to settle the suit to keep all this evidence from coming out.
I note that some straight shooters are still there at Fox -- Baier, Cavuto, Hume, Heinrich, Griffin, MacCallum, Bream, Faulkner, Tomlison, Yingst & others. I hope this prompts some changes.

[Farfromgeneva]

With all of these incredibly damning documents coming out from the Dominion litigation, I am somewhat surprised that Fox did not settle early on, either before producing the documents or at least before they became public as exhibits to motions. (I am assuming the documents, after having been produced in discovery, were subject to a protective order or confidentiality agreement, precluding their public dissemination unless or until they were attached as exhibits to publicly filed pleadings or motions.)

This suggests to me one of two things. Either Fox is so supremely arrogant that they think the publication of these documents won’t hurt their brand or turn off their viewers, or Dominion’s settlement demand has too many zeros attached to it.

I imagine sometime down the road there will be a fascinating book written about this litigation, revealing some or all of the above.

I hope this cripples FoxNews. It has been very bad for the country. I never imagined a major news organization would be a propaganda arm of a political party and people wouldn’t care.

I imagine someone like, say, Kurt Vonnegut wrote about this ages ago. While Player Piano is a tech story unlike anything Black Mirror could’ve dreamt up so far in advance, it fits this as well. Animal in Man (see my Dead Prez on that one)

Setting aside Murdoch’s template of fake journalism in tabloid centric England (which works because it doesn’t Brexit, hot turns of PMs, collapse of the Sterling twice in 30yrs which is LDC level stuff-and Meghan p’owning Harry)-where was his first hit in broadcast TV in the US?

Married w Children…he foreshadowed this 35yrs ago and no one noticed.

[Farfromgeneva]

But it’s not their job to question the calls of their decision desk. They don’t have enough information or expertise to do so.

There would’ve been nothing wrong with the anchors interviewing the Fox decision desk people and asking how and why they decided to call Arizona for Trump. I don’t think they did that, however. As I recall, they did something like that in 2016, when Megyn Kelly, with great fanfare, marched through the halls of Fox, with camera in tow, until she got to the decision desk office.

But let’s be real. They weren’t questioning the call on the merits. They didn’t have any substantive information suggesting the call was wrong. Rather, they were questioning the call because it was counter to what their viewers wanted to hear. Evidently Fox viewers can’t handle the truth.

If they got it wrong, then we would have had Florida 2000 all over again. But they didn’t get it wrong. Evidently, they had a better system than the other networks did and were able to make the call days earlier. All of the networks certainly remember Florida and have been careful about making calls.

The “stakes” were being first as long as the call was correct. The networks always compete with one another trying to be first on calls. That’s just the nature of the business. I actually don’t remember any network or other organization reversing a call since 2000. As it turned out, Fox was first in calling Arizona, a call that proved to be correct.

Should be more concerned they have a better mousetrap and have flat out colluded with a President sitting in office…

[Farfromgeneva]

I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

You're going to comment on the Fox lawsuit at some point, right? Outright lies....knowing they were lying.....and deliberately lying to their audience?

Comment?

I did :

Here is Dominion's Memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment on liability:

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ ... f/full.pdf

The fact section on Newsmax capitalizing on the Fox call on Arizona, Fox's effort to fight back for viewers through support of the Big Lie and defamation of Dominion, even when they knew is was false and crazy.

But here's what they did, even when they knew the information they were getting was false:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1626387262274428928

This is really bad for Fox. I recall on election night, when Fox called AZ for Biden, I knew it was over & went to bed. I respected Fox for being the first to make a call that would disappoint their audience.

I don't know if Fox can win the defamation case, but I'm surprised they didn't try to settle the suit to keep all this evidence from coming out.
I note that some straight shooters are still there at Fox -- Baier, Cavuto, Hume, Heinrich, Griffin, MacCallum, Bream, Faulkner, Tomlison, Yingst & others. I hope this prompts some changes.

Still think Maccallum, third rate on CNBC, and Baier are straight shooters or did you mean shooting American citizens in the back accurately by straight shooters?

[Seacoaster(1)]

But it’s not their job to question the calls of their decision desk. They don’t have enough information or expertise to do so.

There would’ve been nothing wrong with the anchors interviewing the Fox decision desk people and asking how and why they decided to call Arizona for Trump. I don’t think they did that, however. As I recall, they did something like that in 2016, when Megyn Kelly, with great fanfare, marched through the halls of Fox, with camera in tow, until she got to the decision desk office.

But let’s be real. They weren’t questioning the call on the merits. They didn’t have any substantive information suggesting the call was wrong. Rather, they were questioning the call because it was counter to what their viewers wanted to hear. Evidently Fox viewers can’t handle the truth.

If they got it wrong, then we would have had Florida 2000 all over again. But they didn’t get it wrong. Evidently, they had a better system than the other networks did and were able to make the call days earlier. All of the networks certainly remember Florida and have been careful about making calls.

The “stakes” were being first as long as the call was correct. The networks always compete with one another trying to be first on calls. That’s just the nature of the business. I actually don’t remember any network or other organization reversing a call since 2000. As it turned out, Fox was first in calling Arizona, a call that proved to be correct.

As I recall, they did question the decision desk, on air. I remember Stirewalt defending the decision & another geek,I think Sammon.
The anchors & panelists were questioning the call because none of the other networks were making it.

I was watching in real time. When Fox called AZ, I concluded that Biden had won.
Overall, it was a gutsy call by Fox & they took heat from their audience for making the call so far in advance.
I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

The report of the Zoom call -- which was recorded -- makes pretty clear that Baier and MacCallum traded in their "journalist" caps for their "protect the brand" hats. It's fine to ask the decision desk people why and how, and to do so on air. It is a different kettle of fish to withhold a desk determination for perhaps days for the purpose of figuring out ways not to "disappoint" viewers with the truth.

The whole thing is a disgrace, of course, and the network may have, with its co-conspirators -- Trump, his campaign, all his facilitators, Powell, Wood, Giuliani, Lindell -- irrevocably damaged the country's confidence in basic institutions, not just elections. They swept in to help discredit the courts, the DOJ, the FBI, elections officials in numerous states. Stop the dance. We all know the truth. The Right and its Network enablers -- there is no equivalent to the toxicity unleashed, husbanded and pushed by these folks.

[Kismet]

With all of these incredibly damning documents coming out from the Dominion litigation, I am somewhat surprised that Fox did not settle early on, either before producing the documents or at least before they became public as exhibits to motions. (I am assuming the documents, after having been produced in discovery, were subject to a protective order or confidentiality agreement, precluding their public dissemination unless or until they were attached as exhibits to publicly filed pleadings or motions.)

This suggests to me one of two things. Either Fox is so supremely arrogant that they think the publication of these documents won’t hurt their brand or turn off their viewers, or Dominion’s settlement demand has too many zeros attached to it.

I imagine sometime down the road there will be a fascinating book written about this litigation, revealing some or all of the above.

Hubris....gets you all of the time...in the end.

Media vs. Propaganda - Goebbels would LOVE it.

[Typical Lax Dad]

But it’s not their job to question the calls of their decision desk. They don’t have enough information or expertise to do so.

There would’ve been nothing wrong with the anchors interviewing the Fox decision desk people and asking how and why they decided to call Arizona for Trump. I don’t think they did that, however. As I recall, they did something like that in 2016, when Megyn Kelly, with great fanfare, marched through the halls of Fox, with camera in tow, until she got to the decision desk office.

But let’s be real. They weren’t questioning the call on the merits. They didn’t have any substantive information suggesting the call was wrong. Rather, they were questioning the call because it was counter to what their viewers wanted to hear. Evidently Fox viewers can’t handle the truth.

If they got it wrong, then we would have had Florida 2000 all over again. But they didn’t get it wrong. Evidently, they had a better system than the other networks did and were able to make the call days earlier. All of the networks certainly remember Florida and have been careful about making calls.

The “stakes” were being first as long as the call was correct. The networks always compete with one another trying to be first on calls. That’s just the nature of the business. I actually don’t remember any network or other organization reversing a call since 2000. As it turned out, Fox was first in calling Arizona, a call that proved to be correct.

As I recall, they did question the decision desk, on air. I remember Stirewalt defending the decision & another geek,I think Sammon.
The anchors & panelists were questioning the call because none of the other networks were making it.

I was watching in real time. When Fox called AZ, I concluded that Biden had won.
Overall, it was a gutsy call by Fox & they took heat from their audience for making the call so far in advance.
I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

The report of the Zoom call -- which was recorded -- makes pretty clear that Baier and MacCallum traded in their "journalist" caps for their "protect the brand" hats. It's fine to ask the decision desk people why and how, and to do so on air. It is a different kettle of fish to withhold a desk determination for perhaps days for the purpose of figuring out ways not to "disappoint" viewers with the truth.

The whole thing is a disgrace, of course, and the network may have, with its co-conspirators -- Trump, his campaign, all his facilitators, Powell, Wood, Giuliani, Lindell -- irrevocably damaged the country's confidence in basic institutions, not just elections. They swept in to help discredit the courts, the DOJ, the FBI, elections officials in numerous states. Stop the dance. We all know the truth. The Right and its Network enablers -- there is no equivalent to the toxicity unleashed, husbanded and pushed by these folks.

But MSNBC and CNN does it too!

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... chs-assets

If the west could find the courage, it would order an immediate freeze of Rupert Murdoch’s assets. His Fox News presenters and Russia’s propagandists are so intermeshed that separating the two is as impossible as unbaking a cake.
On Russian state news, as on Fox, bawling ideologues scream threats then whine about their victimhood as they incite anger and self-pity in equal measures. Its arguments range from the appropriation of anti-fascism by Greater Russian imperialists – the 40 countries supporting Ukraine were “today’s collective Hitler”, viewers were told last week – to the apocalyptic delirium of the boss of RT (Russia Today) Margarita Simonyan. Nuclear war is my “horror”, she shuddered, “but we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak”.

[a fan]

I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

You're going to comment on the Fox lawsuit at some point, right? Outright lies....knowing they were lying.....and deliberately lying to their audience?

Comment?

I did :

Here is Dominion's Memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment on liability:

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ ... f/full.pdf

The fact section on Newsmax capitalizing on the Fox call on Arizona, Fox's effort to fight back for viewers through support of the Big Lie and defamation of Dominion, even when they knew is was false and crazy.

But here's what they did, even when they knew the information they were getting was false:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1626387262274428928

This is really bad for Fox. I recall on election night, when Fox called AZ for Biden, I knew it was over & went to bed. I respected Fox for being the first to make a call that would disappoint their audience.

I don't know if Fox can win the defamation case, but I'm surprised they didn't try to settle the suit to keep all this evidence from coming out.
I note that some straight shooters are still there at Fox -- Baier, Cavuto, Hume, Heinrich, Griffin, MacCallum, Bream, Faulkner, Tomlison, Yingst & others. I hope this prompts some changes.

"I hope this prompts some changes". That's it?

I guess I just have accept that this is how you are. Scream bloody murder when you think the media isn't running a story the way you want.....and then "i hope this prompts some changes" when the media deliberately lies to the their viewers, leading to many of them getting jail time for what they did on Jan 6th, having taken FoxNews at their word.

I'll learn to let it go.

[Typical Lax Dad]

I'd love to see the internal emails from MSNBC & CNN about their audience reaction & ratings driven by their reporting decisions.

You're going to comment on the Fox lawsuit at some point, right? Outright lies....knowing they were lying.....and deliberately lying to their audience?

Comment?

I did :

Here is Dominion's Memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment on liability:

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ ... f/full.pdf

The fact section on Newsmax capitalizing on the Fox call on Arizona, Fox's effort to fight back for viewers through support of the Big Lie and defamation of Dominion, even when they knew is was false and crazy.

But here's what they did, even when they knew the information they were getting was false:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1626387262274428928

This is really bad for Fox. I recall on election night, when Fox called AZ for Biden, I knew it was over & went to bed. I respected Fox for being the first to make a call that would disappoint their audience.

I don't know if Fox can win the defamation case, but I'm surprised they didn't try to settle the suit to keep all this evidence from coming out.
I note that some straight shooters are still there at Fox -- Baier, Cavuto, Hume, Heinrich, Griffin, MacCallum, Bream, Faulkner, Tomlison, Yingst & others. I hope this prompts some changes.

"I hope this prompts some changes". That's it?

I guess I just have accept that this is how you are. Scream bloody murder when you think the media isn't running a story the way you want.....and then "i hope this prompts some changes" when the media deliberately lies to the their viewers, leading to many of them getting jail time for what they did on Jan 6th, having taken FoxNews at their word.

I'll learn to let it go.

I “hope”…. I believe this man has “demanded” answers in the past….a phony.