This week the Economist wrote about the way American trust in institutions has collapsed over the past couple of decades. This is not news.
However, this is a very interesting comparison:
Collapse of trust in government is a purely American phenomenon. Why? Because we have Fox News and the others don't. Oh, they have tabloids and conservative newspapers and so forth, but nothing like Fox News, which makes its living by spreading outrage over the way the country is run.
The power of Fox News is truly spectacular. Outrage sells, and the fact that one of the two major parties amplifies Fox uncritically means it has a surprisingly large influence in setting the agenda for the mainstream media too.
The truth is that US institutions mostly operate about as well as they ever have. But Fox pushes outrage over Dr. Fauci and trust in the CDC plummets. They push outrage over Donald Trump's loss in 2020 and trust in elections plummets. They go all in on CRT and DEI and trust in schools plummets. They push climate denialism and trust in science plummets. They insist that the rest of the news media are liberal pawns and trust in the very institution that explains reality plummets.
Has there ever been an institution like Fox News that works so relentlessly from within to destroy faith in a country by its citizens? It's a real-life version of what conservatives thought the Communist Party was in the '50s. And we all just let it happen.
"But Fox pushes outrage over Dr. Fauci and trust in the CDC plummets. "
Trust plummeted because the 70% of Americans not brainwashed by CNN, NPR, The NY Times and The WaPo know that the CDC and Fauci have repeatedly lied over the past four years. Oncologist/epidemiologist Vinay Prasad has pointed this out many times, and he identifies as a progressive.
For the love of God, remember:
This was a moving scenario; we did not know the right answers and FOX deliberately undermined the public trust.
That weaponized new information instead of using it as part of scientific process.
So the answer depends upon when. And many of the purported lies disappear when we identify when the comment was made, in the face of new information.
Apologist to government lying to the end, eh?
What an idiotic fool.
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Re roboto: Insert giant eye roll here.
Please don't feed the troll. It only leaves its droppings to get attention. Starve the troll.
👍👍👍
I would literally pay Kevin money to institute a comment section where you can block people. So many smart people here - would be great to not see the trolls.
Don’t you gotta rehab that Achilles, Aaron?
You're part of the problem, and KD would be well advised to get rid of you.
Yeah, it would be nice if Kevin would get a new comment platform tht allows blocking and up/down voting.
Wow, "roboto" is right, it's like a knee-jerk reaction. "Upgrade your grey mater, cuz some day it may matter," a wise man once said.
Fox News is definitely part of the problem. It is not the sole cause of this problem, and monomaniacal focus on it will not get us out of this place.
No, there are lots of adversaries that find advantage in destroying confidence in government. Some of them are other governments, some of them are simply mega-rich people who don't want anything to exist that can stop them from doing what they want to do.
And sometimes those two categories kind of line up.
Seriously, this is much bigger than Fox News.
We also have rural farmers that have never trusted the government. They love hearing Fox News.
except the part where they get their farm supports
Wonder if someone could write a bill of farm supports- paid directly to the farmer who works the land, rather than the suits who own it. It's never get through but might expose the K-St ownership of the best congress money can buy
That's just an image thing.
Farmer's depend on the government, particularly the exchange service.
They just don't think it's the government.
I'm not sure who instigated this subterfuge, but it has had long lasting negative impact on our ability to govern our nation.
Along with Fox, add Gerrymandering and Citizen's United and you have the Trifecta
"Oncologist/epidemiologist Vinay Prasad has pointed this out many times, and he identifies as a progressive"
It is always best to get viral treatment advice from a single contrarian cancer doctor.
"And we all just let it happen."
With all due respect, please speak for yourself. We do not all just let it happen.
Some people are willing to resolve conflicting opinions. They are not just letting it happen. Quite the opposite. People otherwise say -- in word or in deed, "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over." But they aren't just letting it happen either. Instead, they are active participants in making it happen.
Fox News is not the problem. It is a symptom of the "please don't reveal my ignorance" disease. What's wrong with having your ignorance revealed? It means your knowledge just expanded.
The rich people who own and operate everything in the country made this happen because they cannot accept any limits on their wealth and power. FOX is just their most effective tool.
In most other countries, people compare outcomes and decide how they'll plan for the next potential pandemic.
Only in the US do we spend years, instead, trashing our own response while refusing to consider how other nations fared.
Confidence in institutions is gonna take a hit in the UK because of the Post Office scandal. Really, it's got everything.
The four part docudrama "Mr Bates vs the Post Office" is currently running on PBS, probably Sunday nights or any time if you subscribe. Episode 3 is next. And current hearings on it on all kinds of news reports on YouTube.
The whole thing began almost two decades ago but got to the top of the news because of the TV series, preceded by a book that it's based on. And the real Mr Bates (a sub postmaster who was affected and got others together on the issue) is actually smart and articulate in an understated British way.
It would be interesting to see year by year stats because I don't see trust in institutions increase in France, where I live, on the contrary. I suspect the rise is due to a comparison with 2006 which falls wihin the Sarkozy years. Similarly the trend in Italy may be due to Berlusconi no longer being in charge, and in Germany by the rise in trust during the Merkel years. No rise in the UK? Brexit. As for the US, I agree, probably Fox News. 2006 was the latterday of the GW Bush presidency and to go downhill from there takes some doing.
I recall the Economist writing about "the business of outrage" circa 2016, saying that (1) it had made some people a lot of money, and (2) it was started by Rush Limbaugh and perfected by Fox News.
The Gingrich/Limbaugh/Fox feedback loop was highly effective at conning the rubes.
The Limbaugh outrage machine dates back to the Clinton years.
Recall 'feminazis," of which Hillary was the world leader.
Rush is a low-down scumbag who deserves to rot in hell for what he did to Clinton, and so to the entire planet.
Fox News has been an important factor in the destruction of trust in national institutions, but it is not the primary cause. The primary cause is Republicans - or the people who are now Republicans. Ronald Reagan said "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem", and this was Republicans' message even before Reagan - with Goldwater if not Nixon. Republicans got the Fairness Doctrine repealed, which is what allowed both AM talk radio and Fox News.
This attitude in parts of the nation is a carryover from the times of slavery and Jim Crow. Whites in the South hated the Yankee federal government and obviously preferred their state governments - they still do. Have people in red states lost faith in their state governments? This is not something that is imposed on people by the propaganda of Fox News, it is something that both Republican politicians and the right-wing media tap into - they tell people what they want to hear. The antagonism was not something invented by either Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump, it is something that has always been there and exploited by someone - it was Southern Democrats before the national party repudiated racism.
The national division is partly regional but mostly based on religiosity and racism. Most of the other countries that Kevin cites do not have such a basic division (Canada has so far been able to work out its English/French divide). A country which did have major internal divisions was Yugoslavia, which exploded. Those other civilized countries just may not have the kind of raw material to work with that Fox News has.
Why weren't restraints somehow placed on Fox News? There were restraints, but Reagan and others won elections by reversing the Republican position on racism and causing the White Christian faction to switch sides, then they removed the existing restraints.
+1. The Republican Party influences far more people than Fox News, about which Kevin has a peculiar obsession. So also does talkback radio - Hannity's radio audience is 3-4 times bigger than his Fox one. But both Fox and the shock jocks have been following the Republican message since last century, not shaping it.
Conservative and inflammatory news outlets exist in other countries, too. But they only have niche audiences. We should probably ask ourselves why the outrage business draws a much larger audience here in the US.
Pretty much all other countries are actually "countries" with a shared culture. Thus, you can only blab endless insults at "poor Frenchmen," say, before you have gone too far and the audience thinks, "well, but they are Frenchmen."
Here, for obvious reasons, a typical Fox news audience member almost doesn't consider the poor, especially if someone is poor and brown, as actual Americans.
Hence, the opportunity.
While not disputing your point, we should note that diversity does not necessarily lead to distrust. Australia is just as diverse as we are but doesn't have the same market for outrage.
Canada too.
can't ignore those great MyPillow deals
Because it's peddled relentlessly by one of the only two significant political parties together with its massive network of websites, media outlets, "think tanks", PACs, "religious organisations" and all the rest of the giant right-wing propaganda machine.
Oh my. The conjecture presented in this post is overly simplistic and, frankly, embarrassing. This topic warrants a serious consideration. We should acknowledge the complexity of factors influencing public trust and avoid blaming the change to one single cause without substantial support. This post is pure, partisan shit.
It's surprising to see here!
Fox News is pure, partisan shit.
Witness the 2020 court ruling that Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News should not be taken seriously. Per the ruling, (by Justice Mary Kay Viskocil, a Trump appointee) Carlson was not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discussed and was instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.”
Or witness that civil settlement from one year ago yesterday, in which Fox News paid Dominion voting systems almost $800M for defamation.
I could go on. Fox is not a journalistic enterprise.
New to the internet, eh?
Fox News (or a similar entity) is successful in the US but not in our peers for two reasons:
1. Our freedom of speech is much stronger than other countries. Most other countries are stricter on what can be called "news," and what constitutes libel and slander of another person or entity. The US lets pretty much anyone say anything they like about anyone or anything else, especially if the other person/entity is a "public figure," and face absolutely no consequences or liability for it.
2. Our electoral structure practically guarantees conservatives significant political power even if vast majorities vote against their candidates. Something like only a sixth of the country's electorate needs to turn out for conservative candidates for the Republican Party to have control of the Senate, which is both half of the legislature and the body that confirms or vetoes political appointments in the executive branch and judges in the judicial branch. And the head of the executive branch is selected by the Electoral College, which is also heavily weighted in favor of conservatives. None of our peers afford so much built-in advantage to conservatives, so it means that it's nearly impossible for any individual conservative to be "too conservative to wield power." A conservative news channel in all those other countries would have to moderate its views to attract more political power, but here it can just ride on the floor that Senate malapportionment* and the Electoral College provide to the politicians it supports.
*not gonna mention House gerrymandering, but that too skews our government more conservative, and makes it that much more unlikely that Fox News can ever be "too conservative" for the US political market.
Agree with all this, but I'd add that America has become so big and so fragmented, it's virtually ungovernable as a single national entity. Consequently regular screw-ups by federal institutions are inevitable, ditto decisions and actions which piss off large segments of the population.
Just imagine trying to shut down faux news because it’s not healthy for the country….
This makes no sense, yet is another Drum hobby horse he can't let go of
Fox has been broadcast in Canada since 2003
Fox broadcast in the UK for several years, but Sky pulled the plug because no one watched. And because the UK has media regulator Ofcom.
Not only is Fox broadcast in Canada but most of Canada has access to American TV, including Fox, by cable or satellite. Fox has lousy ratings in Canada.
It's not (just) Fox. It's the American people's susceptibility to propaganda.
"It's a real-life version of what conservatives thought the Communist Party was in the '50s"
An excellent analogy
Mr.Drum is brilliant and insightful, but most people are not. Certainly I am not! Or so I’m told repeatedly. But most people are even worse than me. There are 200 million or more American adults who are batshit crazy!
Dear god almighty, Kevin, this post is so disqualifying stupid that it may simply be time for you to retire. I don’t want to silence anyone’s voice; but I do wish you would stop embarrassing yourself.
We are at a moment where Leftist professors at Ivy League universities declare the 10/7 terrorist and mass-rape atrocity committed by Hamas to be exhilarating.
Just recently a Leftist student at Columbia, surrounded by a mob of Leftist anarchists, screamed that he wanted 10,000 more 10/7 terrorist attacks.
We have a Leftist CEO of NPR (National Propaganda Radio) asserting that the first amendment is her biggest obstacle in deplatforming speech that she doesn’t like!
To simply ignore the spectacular self destruction of the far Left and then try to trace every problem in the USA back to Fox News is such a dumb approach that it might in fact indicate some kind of psychosis: it is an actual break from reality.
“The truth is that US institutions mostly operate about as well as they ever have.”
What an idiotic thing to say. Sorry not sorry, but a spade is a spade.
“But Fox pushes outrage ... They go all in on CRT and DEI and trust in schools plummets.”
Yes, right wing reactionaries at Fox did push outrage over CRT and DEI at colleges and universities, but Leftist nihilists are the ones pushing CRT and DEI at the expense of some bedrock fundamentals of our society (such as equality before the law, freedom of speech, and open inquiry).
Pretending or asserting that Fox News is the only guilty party in the incredibly sordid state of affairs at our schools is, quite frankly, a form of fanaticism.
Kevin isn’t just revealing a blind spot, I fear he’s revealing mental illness. Please, Kevin, get some rest. Take care of your health. And maybe consider closing up shop.
Easy solution: kill all idiots
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