I recently read a Fox News article and I was inspired to write about some thoughts I had on it. It was really shocking to see how brazen the propaganda was, but since it might not be obvious to everyone, I thought I’d share some of the reasons I believe it is. The article’s headline states the purpose is to inform the reader “CNN heavily promoted Rebekah Jones’ fake conspiracy accusing DeSantis admin of altering COVID data”.
What I’ll show is that Fox’s actual purpose can be understood as follows: “Cast doubt on Rebekah Jones, rip on Chris & Andrew Cuomo, and elevate Governor DeSantis to the Republican audience”. That’s a mouthful, but they cover a lot of ground in a super short article. I’ve outlined the article below:
- State a sensational takeaway as headline (and then summarize someone else’s opinion)
- Get to the true reason for the article, which is to take cheap shots against people/issues (which are not relevant to the article)
- Omit things which should be included in a news article
Sensational takeaway
The article in question is about Rebekah Jones. Jones worked on the covid-19 dashboard for Florida, and was apparently fired for refusing to change the positivity numbers from 18% to 10% (the state’s target reopening metric). The article opens with Fox News giving readers a preview of what their true purpose is – attacking CNN. They frame the discussion by saying that all media outlets (especially CNN) swooned over Rebekah Jones based on her allegations, which seemed to indict Governor Ron DeSantis. They then take a rather strange turn, and start quoting from an article written by a conservative editorial magazine (National Review). It’s interesting because they can merely state what they’ve read in the article, like a book report. They can then relay whatever claims it makes without any liability for false statements/accusations, because they make it very obvious that the info they are reporting is coming from an article, which they label as a report. Something to note is that they do not call out or label what the National Review is, nor do they preface it with the fact that the report is actually an opinion piece, and not any researched journalism. I think this is dubious, but very clever — they can say anything, and ostensibly are protected from any potential libel, since they can claim that they are not saying it themselves. They also can covertly sneak in some opinions while dressing it as “news”.
The Fox contributor, Joseph A Wulfsohn, makes no effort to verify (or at least does not inform the readers of such efforts) any of the information that comes from the article which he cites, and he makes no effort to talk to Ms Jones herself, or anyone else involved in the story. In fact, there is nothing in the article which suggests that any of the information is actually verified, original, or newsworthy. For that matter, there’s also no evidence that the author performed any work related to the story at hand, other than counting how many times CNN ran reports about Ms Jones. It’s basically a written form of gossip (i.e., hey, did you hear what so and so said about so and so? Well, I’m not saying that X is true, but this is what I heard). Anyway, it is pretty clear this is not news. This is gossip, masquerading as news, but with a more sinister intent. The intent is to influence their readership by using their dubious position as a news source and peddling worthless and unactionable information.
Get to the true reason for the article
Once the author is done relaying what he learned from the opinion piece in the National Review, he segues into his primary purpose for the article, to rip on the Cuomo brothers. He transitions by mentioning that Jones has been interviewed by Chris Cuomo 5 different times. Here he says that CNN “pushed the narrative” (I think he meant to say “reported on”) that she was a victim of a police raid due to Governor DeSantis’ retaliatory action towards her for trying to tell the truth.
The author uses this point to bring up the super obvious fact that Chris and Andrew Cuomo are brothers, and that during interviews with one another, they tended to be pretty friendly toward one another. The brothers were “chummy” with each other, and the way the author writes this is clearly intended to draw scorn from the readers for this fact. He then goes on to relay how CNN has said complimentary things about Governor Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic in the past, and that now Chris is in a tough position due to the scandals now swirling around Governor Cuomo. (Pause here to appreciate how far from the headline topic we’ve strayed!) He finishes the article by stating with ridicule that Chris has said that he “obviously” cannot cover his brother – with the author implying that Chris is hypocritical for covering him during the early part of the pandemic. He fails to mention that Chris said in the next sentence that CNN has and will continue to cover the stories about this brother. It’s pretty obvious that it wouldn’t make sense for him to cover his brother’s troubles on air – this doesn’t seem unreasonable, although the author seems to understand that his audience will likely take the cue and scoff at this as typical hypocrisy. The author also appears to tip his hand to one final purpose of the article: to gently suggest to his readers that they should get on board the Ron DeSantis train. He does this by informing them that DeSantis’ “national popularity has been rising among Republicans”. This indicates to me a forewarning of who the author, and possibly Fox News will be backing in the next round of Republican primaries.
Omit things which should be included in a news article
One of the reasons I think that it is easy for readers to fall prey to Fox News articles is because it is difficult to detect what is actually missing from the articles, not just what they choose to include. For instance, the author doesn’t try to make any contact with anyone involved in the story — at all. This is a huge red flag – any normal news article or journalist will use sources of information, facts, interviews to describe the subject at hand. This article does none of that. The only source is an opinion piece by a highly partisan news source. Contrast this with a CNN article which outlines Jones’ arrest. The article has quotes from the FDLE which detail the reasons for her arrest and the charges which were brought against her. It also contains quotes from her which mention her perspective of why she was arrested, and the subsequent lawsuit she is bringing against the FDLE. There are then links to other stories which talk about DeSantis’ handling of covid-19, some from CNN, and some from other news sites. The point is, there are sources of information which show an attempt to give a good faith representation of what is happening from multiple perspectives, and the use of multiple sources allows the reader to get an understanding of the breadth of the issue while also allowing them to research pertinent points at a later time.
Another important aspect which is missing is a good faith attempt to look at things from a different perspective, namely Ms Jones’. For instance, after describing the “devastating piece” which Cooke wrote, a normal news article would then have also shared information which gives an alternate position or given some statements from someone who has reason to believe the report is false, or at least outline what problems there may be with the article. None of that is given, whatsoever.
Fox News took a very devious but clever approach to inducing suspicion in its readers all the while staying pretty safely away from making actual accusations or revealing any facts to corroborate what is reported. They used a gossip technique used by the expert gossipers – relay something dubious that they heard from someone else. They keep their hands clean (sort of), because they didn’t actually say anything false — they just told us what they heard or read somewhere. It’s devious because they are acting like it is news, but not actually doing any of the legwork associated with writing a real news article. They get website hits (and money from advertisers), and they promote anger, as well as their preferred partisan viewpoint, which continue to feed each other in an unvirtuous cycle. The casualty unfortunately will be our Democracy, if they continue to be successful with fooling their readers into believing the reality which they skew as I’ve outlined above. May they fail in their attempts, and may the eyes of their viewers be opened.
Merely Xtian 