Media Misinformation and Distrust – Fox News – Rupert Murdoch – Roger Ailes – Vladimir Putin

Relevant article from the past on methods of media communication, misinformation and shared techniques between Putin’s Russia e.g. IRA Internet Research Agency troll farm, Fox News and related media outlets.

While Roger Ailes was apparently not well liked by Lachlan or James Murdoch, he was left to his own devices at Fox News by Rupert Murdoch to assist in creating narratives and talking points for the right and profits, especially amongst the GOP Republicans, developing mistrust amongst voters.

From The Washington Monthly:

‘What Vladimir Putin Learned From Roger Ailes

The focus is not on facts, but on building a narrative of distrust.

by Nancy LeTourneau

September 6, 2016

A couple of weeks ago, Josh Marshall wrote about “how Russia’s new defense doctrine is like Fox News.” He pointed out that because of Russia’s economic weakness, they can’t engage in the world via military muscle and have, instead, focused on the asymmetric warfare of psy-ops and disruption campaigns.

As  Neil MacFarquhar writes, this goes beyond the possible hacking of the server at the DNC that we heard so much about just before the Democratic Convention. He begins with an example about how Sweden was bombarded with “a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media” as the country was considering whether to enter into a military partnership with NATO. We also know that the same kind of campaign was launched in Britain to spread misinformation about membership in the EU. He points out that Russia uses both conventional media sources – Sputnik and RT – as well as covert channels that are hard to trace.

When it comes to covert channels, you’ll want to read this fascinating piece by Adrian Chen titled simply, “The Agency” to get a picture of what is happening. Chen went to St. Petersburg, Russia to track down one of the locations that seemed to be the source of bizarre stories here in the U.S. about a non-existent Ebola outbreak and a refinery natural disaster. In the end, Chen’s digging into this story wound up leading to him being an actual target of a misinformation campaign.

You may wonder why Russia would want to spread false stories about things like an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. MacFarquhar explains the goal.

The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis…

“The dynamic is always the same: It originates somewhere in Russia, on Russia state media sites, or different websites or somewhere in that kind of context,” said Anders Lindberg, a Swedish journalist and lawyer.

“Then the fake document becomes the source of a news story distributed on far-left or far-right-wing websites,” he said. “Those who rely on those sites for news link to the story, and it spreads. Nobody can say where they come from, but they end up as key issues in a security policy decision.”

Although the topics may vary, the goal is the same, Mr. Lindberg and others suggested. “What the Russians are doing is building narratives; they are not building facts,” he said.

 “The underlying narrative is, ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”

While Josh Marshall’s piece about all this focused on similar motives for that led to the formation of Fox News and Russia’s disruption efforts, this is what struck me about the similarities. The focus is not on facts, but on building a narrative of distrust – especially in the media. Let’s take a look at how they do that. There is an example of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange being interviewed on RT.

I noticed that one because it was shared on Facebook by someone who is a huge Trump supporter. It’s been interesting to note how many times he shares stories that either originate at RT and/or have clear Russian points of view.

If you watch that video you’ll see Assange creating a whole false narrative about why Hillary Clinton chose Tim Kaine (rather than Bernie Sanders) as her VP running mate. He has a few actual events that he spins into a story that has absolutely zero factual basis. I could do the same thing and suggest (as I’ve seen some actually do) that Assange recruited Edward Snowden to steal secrets from the NSA which were then passed on to China and Russia. In doing so, I could spin a few real events into an explosive story of subterfuge without any actual facts to back it up.

This is the more nefarious side of the “merchants of doubt” that we’re seeing so much of in the media these days. In too many places it has gone from being a Fox News phenomenon to standard practice. All one has to do is tell an explosive story that is wrapped around some actual events and claim that you are simply concerned about the questions that are raised or the “appearance of corruption.” Facts that prove/disprove the narrative are unnecessary. It is very reminiscent of how Heather Digby Parton described the efforts of the group Citizens United.

Citizens United became a clearinghouse for all this shady material, alternating between spoon feeding enticing tidbits to the press and dumping vast amounts of incomprehensible material that sounded bad but ended up being misleading at best when the facts were untangled. This was the essence of ’90s-style “smell test” politics in which many people observed the sheer volume of complicated accusations, threw up their hands and assumed that where there’s this much smoke there must be a fire somewhere.

This is precisely why, over the weekend, Paul Krugman wrote that Hillary Clinton is getting “Gored.” The difference this time is that it is not just Fox News and right wing media that is priming the pump. They now have a partner in Vladimir Putin. If you doubt that, take a look at what Adrian Chen said about what is happening with the social media accounts he’s been tracking for a while now that led to his original story.

Because we value freedom of speech and the press, there is no acceptable way to stop this sort of thing from happening. The best defense is to always look for and demand the facts before buying into a narrative. That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to provide here at the Washington Monthly…and will continue to bring to the table.’

For more related articles on Ageing Democracy, Koch Network, Media, Political Strategy, Russia and Tanton Network click through:

Russian Influence and Propaganda in Anglosphere – GOP Republicans, UK Conservatives, Media and Think Tanks

Posted on April 12, 2024

Analysis via Rolling Stone article on GOP Representatives being informed by and using Russian talking points e.g. to denigrate Ukraine, EU European Union, the west and liberal democracy.

However, this assumes that the same GOP representatives have always been informed well, while avoiding media, influencers, Christian groups and think tanks?

One would argue that no man or woman is an island, let alone purely objective and original as most of our knowledge is gained from media, especially in US and Anglosphere, that is informed by Atlas – Koch Network think tanks, Murdoch led right wing media e.g. Fox News and influencers, while many Christian groups have had long term links with Russia from Soviet times (and influence operations?).

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch – Fox News and Ultra Conservative Grifters – Putin, Brexit, Trump, GOP and Orban

Posted on March 7, 2024

Repost of article about Rupert Murdoch in Australia by Sean Kelly in Mother Jones January 2024.

US or UK Sanctions on Murdoch’s Fox News Support for Putin’s Russia?

Posted on May 8, 2022

Interesting article by Nick Cohen suggesting sanctions for Murdoch’s Fox News, and highlighting influence through to the left in the Anglosphere, where there is support for Putin’s Russia and his interests.  

Seems to be shared white Christian nationalist interests and issues between Putin’s Russia, the GOP representing business, libertarian ideology of Koch Network think tanks and also the left, not to forget many Conservative and some Labour MPs compromised by Russian influence, like many of the far right in Europe.

Murdochs, FoxNews, Tucker Carlson, Anglo Conservatives and Hungary

Posted on November 19, 2023

Fox owner Rupert Murdoch allegedly fired FoxNews’ Tucker Carlson which may be plausible, but not credible if one observes other allegations apart from Christian beliefs that have emerged?

Anglosphere News Media – Objectivity – Political Interference – Fair & Balanced

Posted on April 8, 2023

Following are excerpts from an interesting article written by Stephen Cushion in The Conversation ‘How UK broadcasting’s key principle of impartiality has been eroded over the years’ with focus and excerpts including BBC, Fox News, US fairness principle, Ofcom, GB News, personalities and public confidence.

Nigel Farage – Julian Assange – Wikileaks – Trump Campaign – Russian Influence

Posted on November 2, 2023

In the Anglosphere there is still much confusion around Assange, Wikileaks, stolen DNC emails, Russian influence, Russia Report, Mueller Report, Trump campaign, Murdoch’s Fox News, Nigel Farage, Roger Stone, Cambridge Analytica, Tufton St. think tanks linked to Atlas or Koch Network, Steve Bannon  and right wing grifters, out to defeat Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Presidential Campaign in 2016.

Anglosphere Antipathy To Refugees, Immigrants and Sovereign Nations – White Nativism, Autocracy and Eugenics

Late news is that the former Labour MP, then Conservative MP and now Reform, Lee Anderson, has quite xenophobic views on both foreigners and fellow citizens, the new normal that is being actively promoted?

Repost from ByLine Times of AC Grayling article on Anglo, western and other nations negative attitudes that lack empathy, shared experience or understanding of refugees, asylum seekers and immigration history.

Nowadays with above median age voter dominated by less educated, less diverse, low info and more often regional voter, they are targeted by right wing nativist or white nationalist talking points for suboptimal outcomes e.g. Brexit, Trump, The Voice and those demanding no support for Ukraine vs. Russia’s invasion or ‘special operation’.

‘In Fighting for the Cause of Refugees and Migrants, We Fight For Ourselves’

AC Grayling reflects on what immigration really means, how right-wing politicians are twisting that meaning to exploit xenophobia, and what can be done to counteract their rhetoric

AC Grayling 12 December 2023

If Trump wins next year’s US Presidential Election, as Robert Kagan in The Washington Post both terrifiedly and terrifyingly says is now inevitable, will there be a flow of intellectuals and scientists out of the United States in a reverse of the flow of intellectuals and scientists from Europe into the US in the 1930s?

A flow of US refugees – genuine refugees, fleeing the collapse of their country into an illiberal, mean-spirited, even perhaps dangerous place for anyone not of the MAGA persuasion – is not inconceivable. Who with a sense of decency could stomach a situation of Donald Trump’s making?

The triumph of the US began in economic power before the Second World War and was sustained and enhanced after it by those refugees from European fascism. What will the world be like with wealth-powerful bullying states overshadowing it and bridling against each other – a Trumpian US; an irredentist, expansionist China; a world dominated by dictators?

This speculation invites analysis, given that the likelihood is that this is our future. But for present purposes let us focus on the word ‘refugees’ just used in this unexpected connection: ‘refugees from the US’. And let us consider that the refugee crises of recent years are as nothing – are as mere Sunday picnics – in comparison to the vast displacements of populations soon to be precipitated by climate change: a catastrophe of hundreds of millions of refugees, not mere millions, into regions unprepared and unwilling.

We have grown used to refugees from the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the future’s refugees will be different, from different places, and far more numerous, than those we see today.

In the far-right rhetoric of Victor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Suella Braverman, ‘immigrants’ are lumped together – whether they are refugees or migrants – in one unwelcome mass of moving populations seeking (in the case of refugees) safety or (in the case of migrants) opportunity. But as this distinction illustrates, refugees and migrants are not the same.

Many refugees are anxious to return home when peace is restored; migrants are in quest of a new home. Does this distinction show up in the numbers on ‘immigration’, in the provisions made for them, in the way they are dealt with? No. They are all lumped into the category ‘immigration’ because would-be immigrants, when their numbers reach a critical mass, trouble native populations, which – everywhere in the world, when left to unreflective tribalist instincts – are naturally xenophobic if not downright racist.

The resurgence in recent years of far-right politics in Europe and the US is based on the exploitation of xenophobia as the tool of choice for gaining power. Once got, that power is used to roll-back democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, aimed at reducing the state from a structure of governance on behalf of the people to a structure for wielding coercive power over the people. It is a familiar story to anyone who bothers to read history.

In the UK today, a desperate Conservative Party is flogging the immigration horse as hard as it can to try to save its skin – because it sees how the right elsewhere is gaining ground by means of the anti-immigration agenda. It has not yet finished delivering the state into private pockets and completing its agenda of creating a subject population unable to protest, strike, or expect decent public services. It wants to finish the job of asset-stripping the country for themselves and the masters behind them in the media and tax-havens and board rooms.

That the citizenry of the UK is not pouring onto the streets in protest at the screaming hypocrisy of a UK government stuffed out with the offspring of immigrants is testament to the dazement induced by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of these immigrant children. But what is worse is that the rhetoric is so effective in switching off thought on the part of so many.

For if they did pause to consider, just for a moment, what the individual units of ‘immigration’ actually are – ie: human beings; men, women, fathers, mothers, children – how could they persist in accepting the bemusement of their faculties? Readers of these words won’t need reminding, but here is the distinction between a refugee and a migrant, and what each is.

‘Asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’. What is such a person? A human being fleeing persecution, danger, death, struggle, terror, horror. A human being fleeing guns and bombs, prisons, torture, cruelty, murder. A human being traumatised, shaking with fear, desperate. A human being who has heard, who has emitted, screams and cries of pain and grief, who has run away from a nightmare. A human being in dire need of safety.

‘Migrant’ What is such a person? A human being quitting places of hunger, futurelessness, who wants a chance to make a life, for himself or herself and his and her children, who wants stability, opportunity, who wants a new life, who wants a job, a home, security, a chance to grow into something they feel they can be.

People leave places because they are pushed and because they are pulled. The refugees are pushed by danger, the migrant by sterility of opportunity. Both are pulled by places that are better, safer, far more promising. Their situation in either case is so bad where they are that they risk much, often everything, to reach better places. However unfamiliar the new place, the strange language, the uncertainty of their reception, it is better by far than the place they leave.

Their action takes immense courage, resolve and effort. They do what human beings have always done, from the moment that homo sapiens trekked out of Africa 60,000 years ago – indeed, from the moment that homo erectus trekked out of Africa two million years ago – to find better places to be.

And here is the clincher: immigrants add, they do not take away. Look at the US in the years 1880-1939 and ask whether the huge waves of immigration in those decades was a bad thing for it. Well, was it?

In today’s UK there are 165,000 vacancies in the care industry – yet the politicians, to pander to ignorance and prejudice, bring down the shutters. Our NHS, our universities, our small business sector (99% of British businesses are small to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs), profit hugely from ‘incomers’. Germany and Australia need net immigration lest their economies stall; whereas the saner political parties in the former understand the problem, politicians in the latter play the same tattered card on both sides of the aisle. It is madness.

Among the solutions to the ‘problem’ of immigration are these: (a) educate the home population on the facts: immigrants add value; (b) invest in the countries that drive migrants outward because of the economic insufficiencies there, so that talent remains there and the impulse to leave is lessened.

And as to refugees and asylum seekers: chief among the solutions to this different problem are: (c) work to bring peace and stability to the regions that drive their terrified populations out; (d) be humane, be kind, welcome them when they stagger onto our shores, succour them.

Note always: migrants are those who explicitly seek to be immigrants. Not all refugees, indeed, perhaps not many of them, wish to be immigrants. Do not discriminate against either of them; discriminate between them and treat them accordingly – which with regard to both means decently.

It is essential to recognise, and not be fooled by, the use of the ‘immigration’ canard to blind us to the real agenda of the far-right. The far-right stir up hostility to an easily demonised ‘other’ as a mask for the rest of their wider and equally bad agenda. They are at present winning this nasty game. We must not let them. In fighting for the cause of refugees and migrants, we fight for ourselves.

AC Grayling is a philosopher, Master of the New College of the Humanities, and Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College at Oxford University’

For more related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Australian Immigration News, Conservative, Demography, Eugenics, Immigration, Media, Nativism, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian, Tanton Network & White Nationalism click through

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch – Fox News and Ultra Conservative Grifters – Putin, Brexit, Trump, GOP and Orban

Posted on March 7, 2024

Repost of article about Rupert Murdoch in Australia by Sean Kelly in Mother Jones January 2024.

‘AUSTRALIA VS. RUPERT MURDOCH 

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF THE AGING MOGUL’S GLOBAL EMPIRE? LOOK TO THE PLACE WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.

Radical Right in the West – Fossil Fuel Atlas Koch Network – Nativist Tanton Network – Murdoch Media – Putin’s Russia – Brexit – Trump

Posted on March 6, 2024

Radical right in Anglosphere and Europe is cited here by Scott in Politico, including the ‘great replacement’ and Renaud Camus, climate science and Covid 19 scepticism. 

Symptoms of fossil fuels, oligarchs and <1% supporting corrupt nativist authoritarianism found around (mostly) right wing parties with ageing and low info constituents, informed by talking points prompted by mainstream media, social media and influencers.

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Posted on September 1, 2022

Excerpts from an article by Brooke Binkowski in Unicorn Riot outlining the history of the population control movement of Tanton Network which informs immigration in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe

Smoking Gun Memo – Warning to US GOP Republicans on Eugenics Masquerading as Conservative Immigration and Environmental Policies

Posted on January 31, 2023

Almost a decade ago in 2013 the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ circulated a memo below to warn the GOP of the danger of being misled by ‘Tanton Network’, but it disappeared? Below outlines some of the lobbying for immigration restrictions, while in the background Tanton Network has a history of faux environmentalism, population control, fossil fuels oligarch support e.g. ZPG Zero Population Growth, white nationalism and right wing astroturfing.

Brexit, Conservatives, Nativism, Libertarian Strategy, Single Market and the European Union

Posted on June 9, 2022

US or Anglo led nativism operates in a parallel universe with the, often fossil fueled, libertarian socio economic ideology promoted by The Republican or GOP, UK Conservatives or Tories and Australian LNP Liberal National Conservative Parties, along with many others in media and/or have influence e.g. climate science denial and blaming ‘immigrants’ for environmental ‘hygiene’ issues.

Polls Used for Snapshots are neither Research nor News Events

Article by Molly Jong-Fast in Vanity Fair on prolific polling and polls on Biden versus Trump in the 2024 Presidential elections, appearing daily in media outlets, but she explains what’s wrong with focus upon polls.

Selective questions, snapshots conducted a year out from an election, media cherry picking outcomes, polls are now deemed to be media ‘events’, ‘horse race coverage’ that ignore substantive policy issues, measurement error and sampling eg. people not picking up phones vs. those who do which is only 1/100.

One would also add, that hollowed out media and resources for reporting not only leads to desk based scraping social media for news, but too much reliance upon polling for ‘news’; becomes circular when media no longer informs citizenry?  

Let’s Stop Treating Polls as Actual News Events

The stakes of 2024 are too important for the media to obsess over every “snapshot” of the electorate.

By Molly Jong-Fast NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Pick up a newspaper, turn on cable news, click on Drudge or listen to a podcast and you will encounter multiple stories on polls. Did you know that Joe Biden is polling poorly? Did you know Americans are deeply unhappy with the economy despite its metrics being very good? Did you know that Biden’s weakness among young voters should be taken seriously?

Everywhere you look there are polls, and these polls provide fodder for stories, which then fuel news cycles and shape narratives around the 2024 election, such as how Biden should drop out because of his age. “Voters think Biden’s too old,” says contrarian comedian Bill Maher, and indeed, there are polls, like one from The Wall Street Journal, in which voters are asked if Biden, 81—along with Donald Trump, 77—is “too old to run.” The poll, in which 73% of voters consider Biden too old, was cited in a separate Journal story asking, “Is Biden Too Old to Run Again?”

Of course, polls can be upended when voters actually go to the polls. Reuters gave Hillary Clinton about a 90% chance of winning on Election Day 2016, while the Huffington Post told us that Trump had “essentially no path to an Electoral College victory.” Everyone knows what happened next.

And yet recent 2024 polls, which serve, at best, as snapshots of the electorate a year out, become news events unto themselves, generating reams of coverage and endless commentary. They’re not actually breaking news events, like, say, a train derailment, even if treated as such. They’re more creations of a media industrial complex that longs for easy data points, for things that feel like facts but are actually imprecise measuring mechanisms. 

For every piece that is directly about polling, like one from Politico proclaiming “the polls keep getting worse for Biden,” there are others based on the suppositions gleaned from poll results, such The Washington Post examining “Trump’s improved image.” Even pieces downplaying some headline-grabbing polls as the “wrong” ones, may seize on others to make a point.

“The odd thing about media polls is that they are reported as a newsworthy event, but this kind of event ‘happens’ only when a newsroom decides it’s time for one—and when it has the money,” NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote in an email.

Polls may fall into the category of pseudo-events, a term coined in 1962 by Daniel J. Boorstin and defined as something that “planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced.” Just like polls, a pseudo-event’s “relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous.” (This idea was recently discussed by on John Dickerson on Slate’s Political Gabfest episode on polling episode). In this way, a poll may be more like a press conference, something that is created to shape a narrative.

There are other problems with polls, according to Margaret Sullivan, the media critic and recently named executive director of Columbia University’s journalism ethics center. “Polls are, by definition, horse race coverage, which focused on who’s up or down, not substance, ignoring what Jay Rosen calls ‘the stakes,’” she told me. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say never write a poll story but, in general, journalists are bad at predictions and should do some more meaningful reporting instead.”

Rosen has been out front this presidential election cycle with an “organizing principle” for journalists: “Not the odds, but the stakes.” The focus, he argues, should be “not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy.” Placing too much emphasis on polls can shift the political conversation from critical reporting about what’s happening—such as the impact of Biden’s administration’s policies or Trump’s authoritarian plans for a second term—to predictions about what may happen a year later.

G. Elliott Morris, editorial director of data analytics for ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight, noted in an email how “pollsters like to market their work as ‘snapshots in time’—quick, one-off readings of the public’s attitudes that get less accurate the further you get from that moment in time. That means that polls of the 2024 election are of very little utility this far ahead—roughly of zero predictive value, historically speaking, though there’s reasons to believe they’re more predictive now with higher levels of polarization.”

“But they’re also subject to a lot of measurement error,” Morris continued. “Only about one out of every 100 people a pollster calls picks up the phone. Those respondents can be really weird, politically speaking, and are also prone to overreacting to the news cycle. This means we need to be even more careful when reading into a single poll’s results.”

Even if the intention of conducting a poll is to capture the views and sentiments of voters, the outsized coverage of it may distort the picture of what’s going on. As Boorstin wrote, “The shadow has become the substance…. By a diabolical irony the very facsimiles of the world which we make on purpose to bring it within our grasp, to make it less elusive, have transported us into a new world of blurs.”

For more related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Consumer Behaviour, Evaluation, Media, Political Strategy, Research Customer Behaviour through Feedback and Survey instrument design click through:

Lobbyists and Media – Push Politicians to Right – But Not Voters?

Interesting article from The Conversation ‘Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are’ analysing the mismatch between media and politicians versus the electorate and society at large in Europe, US and Australia, why?

‘on a majority of issues, politicians consistently overestimate the share of citizens who hold right-wing views.  Importantly, politicians’ overestimation of how many citizens hold right-wing views is consistent across the ideological spectrum. Politicians hold a conservative bias regardless of whether they represent left- or right-wing parties’

Student Evaluations in Higher Education and Universities

While student evaluations or ‘happy sheets’ become routine in higher education and universities, some question both effectiveness and efficiency in using such instruments to assess quality. Further, what is quality in teaching, learning, assessment, technology, administration and student well-being, then how and when should it be applied?

Focus Group Feedback – Qualitative Data Analysis – Grounded Theory & Coding

Potential respondents must have the ethics of research explained before any interview or feedback, not only verbally at start of an interview or related interaction, but inclusion on a briefing document explaining study and research, storage of data, along with ethics.

Focus interviews, individual or via a group, based on psychoanalysis, can be very adaptable, allow expression of body language, in addition to concept checking or informal communication which would be precluded by the written form.  However, there are disadvantages, interviews can be very time consuming to conduct, transcribe, code and analyse when using open questions to elicit perceptions, attitudes and experience of the research area, plus they can be subjective or prone to bias.

Focus Group Research for Digital e-Marketing Strategy Development

Optimal research is based on triangulation between scholarly and industry research representing a process with related factors, then analysis and coding of key stakeholder feedback according to same process.  Thirdly, it can be followed by quantitative data gathering or survey of customers’ attitudes on the factors that emerged, joining the circle or triangulation.

The literature review can highlight research and industry issues or views of marketing and communications for international education or related products and services, leading to an optimal marketing and communications construct to inform strategy and professional practice.  Additionally, to inform or validate any construct, qualitative data needs to be collected through focus type respondents from industry or target market, coded and analysed for inclusion of important factors in a survey instrument.

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Throughout the world, especially now with social media, the digital volume of information and velocity, all citizens need skills of critical analysis, especially through the education system, community and media.

While newsrooms cut costs, headcounts and resources, many journalists or reporters now have less time and fewer resources to produce more news content.  However, this comes with the commensurate risk of media being gamed by corporate and political forces of the right, due to media using heuristic shortcuts on any issue and inherently biassed towards parties of the right.

Murdochs, FoxNews, Tucker Carlson, Anglo Conservatives and Hungary

Fox owner Rupert Murdoch allegedly fired FoxNews’ Tucker Carlson which may be plausible, but not credible if one observes other allegations apart from Christian beliefs that have emerged? 

In addition to allegations that Carlson was too Christian, now he went on an unapproved trip to Hungary? Further, other people related to Murdoch including journalists, former politicians and grifters still visit Hungary and attend events including support from MCC Mathias Corvinus Collegium and the Danubius Institute (called out by conservative Anne Applebaum)?

While Fox presenters and guests praise or support Putin, Trump, Hungary etc., without sanction from Murdoch, it’s unclear why he sacked Carlson except maybe ‘getting too big for his boots’?

‘Tucker Carlson’s ‘Unapproved’ Trip To Hungary Could Have Led To His Fox Firing

Fox News executives were reportedly unsettled after Carlson openly praised Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán during a 2021 visit to the country.

Tucker Carlson’s rogue trip to Hungary in 2021 could have contributed to Fox News’ decision to can the controversial commentator this spring.

New accounts of Carlson’s prime-time ouster emerged in excerpts from journalist Brian Stelter’s forthcoming book, “Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy,” which were published by The Daily Beast on Monday.

Stelter’s reporting suggests that Carlson was in hot water with his Fox News bosses for years before his exit in April.

According to what The Daily Beast described as “an executive involved with the situation,” Carlson deliberately usurped his superiors when he took “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to Budapest, Hungary, without their permission in 2021.

The week abroad concluded in a cozy chat with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in which Carlson praised the autocrat for his anti-immigration, nationalist approach. During the trip, Carlson also spoke at the far-right political conference MCC Feszt.

Carlson’s “unapproved” trip may have been a tipping point for Fox executives, who already felt like the pundit was heavily flirting with authoritarianism.

“A tug-of-war was underway between people of good faith and all parties who wanted to protect American democracy, and those on the other side of the rope who tugged in an authoritarian direction,” Stelter wrote.

“Carlson’s unapproved trip to Hungary in 2021 was surely in the latter category. Carlson whipped his show up into an infomercial for Viktor Orban’s increasingly autocratic, patriarchal nation.”

The former Fox News headliner almost returned to Hungary for CPAC Budapest in 2023, but instead sent a video message after a Fox higher-up reportedly “reined him in.”

Despite ongoing tension between Carlson and execs, Fox News didn’t dismiss the anchor until after reaching a $787 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year.

While Carlson repeatedly used his show to push baseless claims about Dominion interfering in the 2020 presidential election, private texts found during pre-trial discovery revealed that he had actually balked at the conspiracy theories that former President Donald Trump and his team were pushing.’

‘Why Australia’s conservatives are finding friends in Hungary

When Tony Abbott gave two speeches in Hungary last month, it prompted an outcry from his usual progressive critics. They were alarmed by the former prime minister’s talk of migrants “swarming across the borders in Europe”, invoking the dangerous old notion of immigrants as pests or vermin.’

‘Greg Sheridan’s Grand European Tour

Hasn’t Greg Sheridan had fun this past month? The Australian’s foreign editor junketed to both Poland and Hungary, coming away with only sympathy for their conservative political figures so unjustly maligned by the liberal-left media.’

‘Greg Sheridan, Australian conservatives flirt with Orban’s fascistic politics

Senior Australian “conservative” figures continue to attend conferences backed by illiberal Hungarian leader Viktor Orban. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) hosted its 2023 London Summit in late June, featuring Alexander Downer and Greg Sheridan as two of the five speakers. Australians must focus on connections between our Right and Hungarian fascistic politics.

Peter Browne of Inside Story recounted in early June that Greg Sheridan had just spent a week in Budapest again as a visiting fellow to the Orban-backed Danube Institute. This stay was followed by an effusive celebration of Orban’s illiberal Hungary in The Australian (3/6). Sheridan has previously appeared on the Orban speaking circuit, and was a notable part of its first appearance in Melbourne in 2016.

The MCC is superficially an educational institution that fosters conservative students and thinkers.

In fact it functions as a key part of Orban’s efforts to establish a Western and Christian bulwark that proclaims itself a staunch defender of “traditional” values. These nouns are dogwhistle codes meaning white, anti-Muslim and staunchly anti-LGBTQIA+. It is also antisemitic. George Soros, Hungarian expat and Jewish Holocaust survivor is demonised as public enemy No.1.

The MCC is part “think tank” aiming to push anti-EU and far right positions in Brussels. A Hungarian opposition party member described it as a key part of Orban’s “alt-right intellectual universe.” It is also part indoctrinator of conservative youth.

Frank Furedi, director of the institution, described a goal in 2022 to be the publication of an annual “Fear Barometer” measuring “What European people fear.” Orban’s Political Director chairs the MCC’s Board of Trustees.’

Related articles and blogs on ageing democracy, Australian politics, conservative, demography, EU European Union, Evangelical Christianity, immigration, Koch Network, media, populist politics, Russia and Tanton Network click through

US or UK Sanctions on Murdoch’s Fox News Support for Putin’s Russia?

Anglosphere News Media – Objectivity – Political Interference – Fair & Balanced

Nigel Farage – Julian Assange – Wikileaks – Trump Campaign – Russian Influence

Conservative CPAC Event – Hungary – Who Pays for Influence?

Koch Industries – Putin – Russia – Ukraine – Koch Network – Think Tanks

AC Grayling on the Need for more Educated and Informed Citizens

When people question seemingly uninformed voter choices, they are averting their gaze from politicians of the right, right wing media and related who are desperate to keep or put right wing parties in power, by attacking the centre and sensible legislation, why or how?

Not understood that across the Anglosphere and Europe mostly ageing voters dominating, with politicians, media and influencers, who are less educated and less diverse than younger generations, backed up by ‘collective narcissism’ and ‘pensioner populism’; see Brexit, Trump, Meloni, Orban et al.

However, in the ByLine Times article excerpts below from AC Grayling, his explanation of how we arrived here cites education as the issue; though this ignores amongst older dominant voters who are informed by activist right wing legacy media, influencers and including US fossil fueled think tanks versus younger who are outnumbered; not education now but the past?

Further, there are attempts through influence and lobbying to dilute education standards from the same fossil fueled Koch Network think tanks, in support of far right policies now adopted by ‘conservatives’ including more Christianity or religion in schools vs. attacks on supposed ‘woke’ or LGBT friendly policies.

However, this masks concerted efforts in the Anglosphere replicating education curricula from less developed authoritarian states including teaching, curriculum syllabi and content e.g. more religion &/or nationalism, less analysis, less maths/science and basically avoiding the hidden curriculum i.e. developing essential soft skills a la Bloom’s Taxonomy and well rounded citizens.

There is a collective need to avoid attempts getting at young people in preparation for when demographics balance out, neutering the dominance of less educated but more active above median age voters, especially in regions.

From ByLine Times:

‘Who or What to Blame? Education, Education, Education’

Too many voters are insufficiently informed and reflective to vote other than tribally or self-interestedly in exploitable ways due to failings in how we conceive of ‘education’, writes 

AC Grayling  2 August 2023

Let us ask why so much influence has been exerted by a dishonest and ultra-partisan media owned by non-dom billionaires with a vested interest in destabilising the country so that their preferred version of anarcho-capitalism can flourish. And let us ask why social media has found the British population such a plastic, malleable, easy playground for its bubble-creating, conspiracy-promoting, false-fact-spreading downside.

And then let us reflect on the answer: because well-informed and reflective people would not be so easily duped by either a dishonest press or unreliable and distorting social media, it must be that enough of the British population is insufficiently well-informed and insufficiently reflective – more bluntly: ignorant enough and unthinking enough – to be ripe for serving as their dupes.

How has this happened?

The Need for Active Enquirers

The fact remains that, in 2019, 43% of those who voted chose Conservatives, and enough Uxbridge voters – blaming a Labour London Mayor for Tory policies on the environment – voted Tory in a seat formerly held by Johnson. What explains them? Indeed, even supposing half of these were principled, loyal, Conservatives who had thought hard about the Government of the past 13 years and somehow liked what it saw – what explains how they could?

From among a plethora of answers let us focus on one very central one: the failure of our education system to achieve a good standard of active intelligence in enough of the population.

By ‘active intelligence’, I mean the useful general knowledge and the constructive scepticism that prompts people to test claims and promises made by those who want their money or their votes.

The price we pay is careless voters exploitable by a system and its career politician operatives into putting someone as grossly unfit as a Boris Johnson into Downing Street – to say nothing of the inadequacy of the compeers such an individual surrounds himself with.

To educate – not merely to train in enough basics of literacy and numeracy to qualify as a squaddy in the economic infantry – classes need to consist of fewer than 10 pupils, so that teachers have time to work with the individual grain of each pupil’s mind and personality.

Pupils should be active enquirers, not just passive learners sitting behind desks in a classroom: that means getting out and about, doing, travelling, finding out, making.

The value of musical education and art on general cognitive development, enhancing its capacities for success in maths and applied sciences, has been all but lost in the English education system.

Historical and geographical ignorance, and wholly inadequate levels of competence in a second and third language – plus frequent and active travelling in the countries where they are spoken – make for narrow, parochial, limited mindsets. 

I defy anyone to claim that the level of achievement represented by GCSE today is comparable to that of the ‘O’ levels of yore – and even the ‘O’ levels of yore did not pass the test of what is necessary for the informed and thoughtful populace that is the minimum requirement for any version of democracy.

Democracies are being made to fail all round the world today because increasingly larger portions of already significant percentages of populations are too easily taken for a ride by the political and politically-motivated agencies which benefit from their incapacity.

This problem with education means that efforts to explain why some claim or promise does not stack up simply go over the heads of enough people to make it possible for those who claim or promise to get away with it. This happens all the time.

As we know too well, serious newspapers and current affairs programmes get little traction because they speak to tiny minorities only, while tabloid media cleave to the parochial interests and prejudices of their consumers because that is what makes money – with little if any concern to inform or engage beyond the usual sodden fare of celebrity gossip and whatever is the hysteria of the moment.

The landscape of our democracy is accordingly a dismal one indeed. Its poverty and barrenness have been cruelly exposed by Brexit – arguably inconceivable in a better-educated nation (look at Scotland) – and its emblems will forever be Johnson and the gang of coarsely unsuitable appointments he has made over the past three years. 

Too many voters are insufficiently informed and reflective to vote other than tribally or self-interestedly in exploitable ways, and a large part of the reason for this is that our education system is too poorly funded to achieve in enough cases the kind of intellects that would be more resistant to such exploitation.

I argue that the systemic failure of our political order, for which this insufficiency of education is responsible, led to Brexit: and that Brexit is the ultimate condemnation of both.’

AC Grayling is a philosopher, Master of the New College of the Humanities, and Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College at Oxford University

For more related blogs and articles on Adult learning, Ageing democracy, Conservative, Critical thinking, Demography, Koch Network, Media, Populist politics, Science literacy and Younger generations, click through:

Trojan Horses – Ultra Conservatives Disrupting Education Curricula to Influence Youth

Libertarian Curricula – Science and Culture Wars vs. University Maths Teacher Training

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Skills of Critical Thinking

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism