In a presidency marked by a daily assault on the truth one set of figures stands out: by July this year, one third of Americans did not believe the official death toll from COVID-19, even as infections and hospitalisations surged to a new high.
The figures from polling company Ipsos are an indicator of the central role which misinformation and conspiracy theory have played in the United States election, as President Donald Trump has taken scepticism of official sources and honed it into a lethal political tool, combined with an appeal to the American ideal of individual freedom. Mask. No mask. Are you with us? Or against us? Do you believe in science or do you believe in me?
Perhaps the worst and most dangerous has been left until last, with Trump peddling the deadly fictions that he has already won the election and that it is now being “stolen” by the Democrats with “illegal” ballots.
In the face of Trump’s attack on the very fundamentals of democracy, Facebook has reacted by removing a Republican-linked account where people have been spreading misinformation about the election process and calling for violence.
The group, called “Stop the Steal”, gained more than 350,000 members in less than 24 hours starting on Wednesday before it was taken down on Thursday afternoon US time, according to US reports.
Meanwhile, Twitter suspended the account of Trump loyalist Steve Bannon who called for Dr Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray to be beheaded “as a warning to federal bureaucrats”.
In Maricopa county, Arizona, where ballots were being counted, the sight of a crazed Trump supporter denouncing “the Biden crime family” — a QAnon conspiracy catch-cry — was as good an epitaph as any of the Trump years.
In 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory was little more than a fevered idea with its central implausible tenet that Donald Trump was in the White House to cleanse the world of Satan-worshipping paedophiles who had infiltrated the institutions governing America.
Four years on it has mushroomed into a movement with up to 3 million followers according to a study conducted by Facebook. It has also been given the nod of approval by Trump himself.
QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor has been elected as a Republican party representative for Georgia. Among other things she has attacked the Black Lives Matter movement and the use of face masks to protect against COVID-19 as well as alleging that there has been an “Islamic invasion” of government offices and accusing Jewish billionaire George Soros of collaborating with Nazis. Other QAnoners are emerging at state level politics, with Arizona a hotspot.
But who needs QAnon when you’ve got Fox News — America’s most popular cable network?
The Ipsos poll which revealed that 30% of Americans did not believe official COVID-19 death figures also found that Fox News — owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp — had been a key accomplice in spreading the disinformation. Of Fox viewers, 62% doubted the official numbers.
The same poll showed that 30% of those who get their information from online sources doubted the official figures, a finding which suggests that Fox is just as culpable in the war on truth as online actors such as Breitbart and Alex Jones’ conspiracy website Infowars.
In Australia, Murdoch’s Sky News Australia has weighed in with its own Trump-aligned disinformation campaign. A week out from the US elections it ran a special “investigation” into the alleged dealings of Joe Biden’s son Hunter, a story which it claimed was “covered up” by social media.
The story, ignored by US networks, was viewed more than 600,000 times on YouTube drawing grateful comments from Americans complaining about “CNN, NBC, NPR, and the rest of the leftist fake news” who had not covered the story.
On election day, Sky commentators lined up to spout Trump rhetoric. Biden had cognitive issues. He was a lunatic, a prisoner of the left. Star commentator Miranda Devine, beamed in from New York, mimicked Trump’s dangerous line, without challenge, that mail-in ballots meant there would be electoral fraud.
So what of this pile-on? Is there anything to stop the gush of bias and bile? It would appear not.
As a subscription TV broadcaster, Sky News Australia is subject to almost no regulation. It is the closest you can get to a broadcast free-for-all.
Industry regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has done a deal whereby Sky and other subscription broadcasters operate under a code of practice which is drawn up with industry body the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association.
The deal makes special allowance for the nature of subscriber television, which the industry characterises as a “voluntary relationship” between the provider and subscriber, with the subscriber able to exercise freedom of choice.
“In this sense,” the code says, “subscription TV is in the nature of an invited guest, brought into the home in the full and prior knowledge of the guest’s character.”
In theory Sky News should be presented “accurately, fairly and impartially”. It should also “clearly distinguish” news from commentary and analysis. Beyond that Sky commentators are pretty well free to say whatever they like. And if you don’t like it you can cancel.
(Sky is also now available on the free to air WIN television network covering regional Australia. According to ACMA, Sky is subject to the slightly tighter controls of the free-to-air industry code when it is on WIN, but subject to the subscription code when broadcast on Foxtel.)
Sitting atop the disinformation factory that is Sky News Australia are three directors. One of them, Siobhan McKenna, has long had a close business association with Lachlan Murdoch. She is a director of his private investment company Illyria Pty Ltd and other of his interests.
In tandem with Fox, it would appear that subscription television, based on a model of unregulated far-right outrage and misinformation, is the way of the future for Murdoch the younger.
Fox Corp’s September quarter financial results as reported by Crikey yesterday revealed a 2% rise in revenue to US$2.7 billion with Fox News again the star, driving revenues in Fox’s cable business up by around 3% to US$1.325 billion for the quarter.
When it comes to the digital sewer of “news” and conspiracy peddled through Facebook and Twitter, ACMA has absolutely no power at all. Australian regulators have been working up a voluntary code of conduct with the tech giants for over a year, to establish some brake on the AI-driven mess of lies and distortions that are shaping views and actions.
Ultimately though it will be up to big digital to self-regulate — something it has struggled to do, as the Trump presidency has demonstrated.
Here then is the pointy end of decades of ‘balanced’ tolerance, by the ‘professionals’ of the Legacy Meeja, of bullsh*t. The logical endpoint of decades of pretending that lies aren’t lies if you call them ‘spin’, or ‘political messaging’, ‘clever tactics’, or a ‘strategy’, or an ‘opinion’, or ‘freedom of speech’, etc etc etc. All the convenient daily epistemological ‘conventions’ of ‘Journalism’ which have enabled and activated and excused lying in public for so long, but which – stripped back to their essence, as Trump is now, cornered – are impossible to call anything else but ‘lies’.
Journalists have internalised and rationalised their own indefensible self-dishonesty on public lies for so long that it’s only when they have no choice but to make a ‘truth judgement’ about a piece of information like an election result that you see how monumentally ersatz the entire information ecology of Journalism is. One great big simulacrum of crap information, including just enough reality and truth mixed in with the rest of it as to render it so very dangerously…uncanny.
It’s obvious when Trump says ‘I won’ that it’s a lie, and so journos finally – FINALLY – have absolutely no choice but to say so out loud, on camera, unin 90 point headlines (although I bet many more STILL wouldn’t be quite so blunt if…the result was looking better for Trump).
But once journalism finally – FINALLY – starts to call lies what they really are…then you look over your shoulder, and start to wonder about: why couldn’t they do that about the…Sports Rorts lies?
Having said the above…CNN’s coverage has been beyond redemptive. The very best of American Letters.
Spot on ,Jack , goes back a fair way.
Yes, the old dividing line between journalism and opinion or cheer leading has become wilfully grey to enable not just corporate PR but also political PR; through lack of journalistic or news media standards and compliance, opinions and how we think can be shaped more easily.
Simply repetition whether verbal reinforcement of the same old tropes and one liners, through to leading tabloid headlines next to sports scores…..
It is telling, Drew, that journalists that take a redundancy from their dying industry end up in PR roles in the corporate world, seamlessly. Or these days I think they call them ‘Comms’. Journos used to call them flacks, now there isn’t a cigarette paper between them.
Public discussion and information is only permissible in polite society within an increasingly narrow Overton window. The difference in treatment between Trump and Biden being just one ongoing example. Trump has been open field to anything anybody cared to write or publish whilst Biden has had a protective shield set about him. Crikey bless it for its existence sits within the window but to the critical analysis boundary. The Murdoch media sit at the other extreme and have the capacity, unlike Crikey to move the boundary, in their case even further to the right. It takes a disaster to break boundaries down and literally force a rethink, last years bushfires and Covid have challenged but so far not breached the walls to any fundamental rethink. Unfortunately War and catastrophic defeat seem to be the most effective means to forcing fundamental change. The Spanish Empire, the Ottomans, Austria-Hungarian empire, Germany twice are but examples. In theory Democracy should provide the means for change via full information and rational discussion to adopt best policy, unfortunately information has become a proprietary commodity and discussion significantly constrained, action even more so as the legal permissive framework has been massively restricted via legislation marketed under an ‘anti-terrorism banner. Not sure where we shall finish up but suspect we will wish we weren’t there.
Lies and corruption are endemic in the global Corporate regime. Trump and Murdoch are just a couple of chancers taking advantage of a situation that suits them.
Rather than parody Taylor (a QAnon Senator) or Trump for that matter, why not analyse their origins and perspectives in order to make
an effort to locate the source of the polarisation of American politics.
If news is to be presented “accurately, fairly and impartially” [your quotes] then we need to begin with an education system that gives a damn about empirical methodology and such a methodology OUGHT to begin in schools. However, we are not off to the best of beginnings with (1) The State of Tennessee v. John Scopes (1925) and (2) “No Child ..” of Bush (2001). Indeed such is what has occurred (USA and Australia) in respect of anti-empiricism where students are encouraged to “express themselves” (read chunder what they please) with no insistence to authoritative information.
From this perspective described, Asia, collectively, has a distinct educational advantage which is becoming all too apparent. The real test will be 15 years (another four USA terms) hence or so when the current middle high school moves into middle management.
Yet, for both Oz and the USA there isn’t the acumen to discuss major issues (trade, foreign and domestic affairs) with any form of coherency; i.e. based upon anything that looks like empiricism. The public is sedated with (e.g.) ‘hate speech legislation’ when the current laws of libel and slander did as well. I won’t bother with reflecting upon the “Arthur not knowing if he is Martha – or o/wise” stuff but it is amazing what the pollies in general take seriously; with an eye to the electorate of course!
If you have got this far it ought to be apparent, David, that the “problem” is NOT one-dimensional with some ideological crazies
governing what is printed (although there is a component) but with the electorate being utterly unable to make fundamental comparisons. If such was not the case your article would be superfluous – but one coiuld counter with FB.
As recently as yesterday a subscriber described Rundle as an “intellectual high brow” or very similar remark [I can’t be bothered
copying and pasting the actual claim] for an article that Rundle wrote which only illustrates the dismal absence of comprehensionon the part of the subscriber. That such people (who have read nothing of any educational value) constitute the majority (no argument there – look at the zealous supporters of any political parity) of the electorate *is* a major part of the problem David.
Both Begin and Shamir went to some trouble to describe the failure of the kibbutz system (developed at the turn of the 20th century) to Hawke. A few books have been written on the subject too. In essence, the system worked well when the community could create realistic long term goals and plot the progress to such goals. The system failed when point-scoring, disputes over parenting, and general pettiness prevailed.
Take a step back and consider just what kind of system WE live in David.
An important article , thank you.
So, even after Satan is forced to allow Rupert to enter Hell and stage a share take-over of Pandemonium, there will be no respite “..unregulated far-right outrage and misinformation, is the way of the future for Murdoch the younger” here on Earth?
To which Circle do you anticipate Murdoch to be assigned? According to Dante, Ovid and Aristotle did not do too badly in Limbo (which was reserved for those ignorant of the existence of Christ).
I was always amused by the route by which Dante finally exited the Ninth circle, Cocytus – the lake of ice for the treacherous, such as Rupert, beneath the Inferno – by climbing down Satan’s fur to enter his genitalia to leave via his mouth.