UPDATE: Wednesday, Aug 2, 2023 · 8:23:18 PM +00:00
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J Keplar
My apologies for this late reply, but for what it’s worth by now I did want to answer @TexasTom ’s accusations.
@TexasTom believes I’m being deceptive because these executives worked at the Fox network and not Fox News, but nowhere in my diary do I say these men were Fox News execs. In my title I call them simply “Fox Execs”, which I’ll admit could be easily misconstrued to mean “Fox News Execs”. I concede that I could have made that distinction clearer.
However, it’s a distinction I don’t think would change or invalidate the central points of this post. Those being:
1. These men enabled the creation of Fox News.
- After all, they say as much in the title of their post: “How Our Efforts … Helped Create the Fox Disinformation Machine”.
2. They should have been aware early on that Fox News was not practicing honest journalism.
3. They should have said something when they actually had the power to do something about it.
- @TexasTom says as much: “… they should have spoken out sooner, since it has been obvious for years what Fox News is”
4. Saying something about it now, after they’ve left their positions, is sadly and angrily ineffectual.
Other than his notion that I was “lying”, I’m actually in agreement with @TexasTom on several other points he makes.
Preston Padden, Ken Solomon and Bill Reyner may not be familiar names to you, but their creation certainly is. Back in the 1990’s they helped get Fox News launched. Well now the trio appear to be suffering some “Frankenstein’s Regret” in an essay collectively published titled, “How Our Efforts to Bring Competition To Television Unknowingly Helped Create the Fox Disinformation Machine”.
The first few paragraphs explain their respective roles in bringing about the channel, often brimming with pride at their accomplishment. Then it turns sullen pretty quick:
We never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become.
…
In our opinion, the Fox News Channel has had many negative impacts on our society.
…
Many other veterans of the historic effort in the 1990’s … share our resentment that the reputation of the Fox brand we helped to build has been ruined by false news.
They’ll have to excuse me for being underwhelmed at their “historic effort” after having to live in a country that’s been, and is still being, torn apart by their creation.
There are those of us who were watching in horror, even in the 90’s, at the intellectual dishonesty, fallacious logic and bald-faced partisanship on display by this so-called “fair and balanced” news organization. We saw that they had taken the platform of Murrow, Cronkite and Rather, and twisted it into a 24/7 GOP infomercial. We watched as they manufactured consent; convincing the American electorate time and time again to vote against their own consciences and interests. We watched as they fed our now-estranged friends and family fantasies day after day until, finally, their viewers would grow to actively refuse real facts when they called the election for Biden in 2020. And some of those viewers believed those fantasies hard enough to travel to Washington DC on January 6th.
While it’s great to hear their honesty and remorse, the rest of us have had to live with the consequences of their creation over these past 25 years, and now have the 2024 election to look fearfully forward to as well. So unless these men are willing to make another “historic effort” and take steps to repair some of the “negative impacts on our society”, they can just lie in a nice meadow with their platitudes and rot.