By Greg Sargent
Columnist |
June 8, 2022 at 11:50 a.m. EDT
The not-so-shocking revelation that Fox News will not carry House committee hearings about the insurrection is yet another sign that right-wing media will go to extraordinary lengths to shield the GOP base from brutal truths about Jan. 6, 2021.
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That partly reflects a serious political problem for Republicans. The hearings starting Thursday will feature a documentary filmmaker who has new video evidence of the violent mob assault incited by Donald Trump and extensive advance planning among paramilitary-type groups. Riveting material about Trump’s corruption and the GOP’s enabling of it will follow.
By contrast, Fox hosts are gearing up to substitute a propagandistic alternative story in which the only real victims related to Jan. 6 and the hearings are Trump and his supporters. House Republicans allied with Trump will manufacture material for this disinformation push designed to keep the truth from the base at all costs.
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Yet Fox’s blackout also highlights severe information challenges that Democrats will face for the foreseeable future. The fact that Republicans enjoy a massive media apparatus that manufactures a separate reality for the base, even as Democrats rely on traditional news organizations to communicate with voters, creates deep information asymmetries that continue to bedevil them.
I reached out to Dan Pfeiffer, the longtime communications adviser to former president Barack Obama, who experienced the evolution of this situation firsthand. Pfeiffer has a new book about the depths of this problem and how to counter it.
An edited and condensed version of our exchange follows:
Greg Sargent: You write that Republicans have a massive propaganda apparatus on their side while Democrats mostly get their information out to their voters via traditional news organizations that cover both sides of debates.
The Fox blackout of the Jan. 6 hearings is a case in point. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have already telegraphed that they’re going to offer a completely contrary fake propagandistic narrative, in which the primary victims of the Jan. 6 investigation are Trump and Republicans.
Dan Pfeiffer: If there is one last human being in Washington D.C. who clung to the idea that Fox is a center-right journalistic institution with opinion at night, this should be the end of that. They are going to ensure that their audience not only doesn’t see the hearings, but also gets conspiracy theories about what happened.
Sargent: The other side of this is that the right-wing media also exerts gravitational pull on the mainstream media.
Pfeiffer: When I worked at the White House, this right-wing operation existed, but it was a fraction of the size. Our biggest concern was not what was on Fox. It was that Fox was helping dictate what the rest of the press was covering.
We were living in this world where the pseudo-scandal du jour was infecting the larger media environment. Once Facebook reached a tipping point in 2014, this was now happening at hyper speed, at scale.
Sargent: It’s almost a deviously designed self-reinforcing loop. Right-wing media and Republican politicians beat up on mainstream media for not covering the concerns of “Real Americans” as expressed through right-wing media, which in turn leads major news organizations to say, “We’d better pay closer attention to what’s on Fox.”
That in turn allows right-wing disinformation to pollute the mainstream news information environment.
Pfeiffer: That’s been the goal since the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s a three-part process: One is to sow distrust in the mainstream media among Republicans. Two is to create this media environment for those people where you now control what comes into the hermetically sealed information bubble.
The third part is to influence the press. [The late Fox executive] Roger Ailes was a political ad maker. He had this insight that if Fox was a pseudo news organization, it would have a greater influence on what other news organizations covered.
Columnist |
June 8, 2022 at 11:50 a.m. EDT
The not-so-shocking revelation that Fox News will not carry House committee hearings about the insurrection is yet another sign that right-wing media will go to extraordinary lengths to shield the GOP base from brutal truths about Jan. 6, 2021.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
That partly reflects a serious political problem for Republicans. The hearings starting Thursday will feature a documentary filmmaker who has new video evidence of the violent mob assault incited by Donald Trump and extensive advance planning among paramilitary-type groups. Riveting material about Trump’s corruption and the GOP’s enabling of it will follow.
By contrast, Fox hosts are gearing up to substitute a propagandistic alternative story in which the only real victims related to Jan. 6 and the hearings are Trump and his supporters. House Republicans allied with Trump will manufacture material for this disinformation push designed to keep the truth from the base at all costs.
ADVERTISING
Yet Fox’s blackout also highlights severe information challenges that Democrats will face for the foreseeable future. The fact that Republicans enjoy a massive media apparatus that manufactures a separate reality for the base, even as Democrats rely on traditional news organizations to communicate with voters, creates deep information asymmetries that continue to bedevil them.
I reached out to Dan Pfeiffer, the longtime communications adviser to former president Barack Obama, who experienced the evolution of this situation firsthand. Pfeiffer has a new book about the depths of this problem and how to counter it.
An edited and condensed version of our exchange follows:
Greg Sargent: You write that Republicans have a massive propaganda apparatus on their side while Democrats mostly get their information out to their voters via traditional news organizations that cover both sides of debates.
The Fox blackout of the Jan. 6 hearings is a case in point. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have already telegraphed that they’re going to offer a completely contrary fake propagandistic narrative, in which the primary victims of the Jan. 6 investigation are Trump and Republicans.
Dan Pfeiffer: If there is one last human being in Washington D.C. who clung to the idea that Fox is a center-right journalistic institution with opinion at night, this should be the end of that. They are going to ensure that their audience not only doesn’t see the hearings, but also gets conspiracy theories about what happened.
Sargent: The other side of this is that the right-wing media also exerts gravitational pull on the mainstream media.
Pfeiffer: When I worked at the White House, this right-wing operation existed, but it was a fraction of the size. Our biggest concern was not what was on Fox. It was that Fox was helping dictate what the rest of the press was covering.
We were living in this world where the pseudo-scandal du jour was infecting the larger media environment. Once Facebook reached a tipping point in 2014, this was now happening at hyper speed, at scale.
Sargent: It’s almost a deviously designed self-reinforcing loop. Right-wing media and Republican politicians beat up on mainstream media for not covering the concerns of “Real Americans” as expressed through right-wing media, which in turn leads major news organizations to say, “We’d better pay closer attention to what’s on Fox.”
That in turn allows right-wing disinformation to pollute the mainstream news information environment.
Pfeiffer: That’s been the goal since the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s a three-part process: One is to sow distrust in the mainstream media among Republicans. Two is to create this media environment for those people where you now control what comes into the hermetically sealed information bubble.
The third part is to influence the press. [The late Fox executive] Roger Ailes was a political ad maker. He had this insight that if Fox was a pseudo news organization, it would have a greater influence on what other news organizations covered.