The progress of knowledge and, ultimately, economic growth and prosperity require a certain freedom of expression and a certain economic freedom; and the more, the better. This does not mean that these freedoms have only advantages, but that they have more advantages than disadvantages. Rupert Murdoch’s deposition in Dominion’s libel suit against his company Fox News may serve as an illustration, bearing in mind that only part of the information has been made public.
What is apparent from Mr. Murdoch’s testimony is that he knew very shortly after the November 2020 election that Trump’s allegation of breakthrough fraud, along with claims that Trump’s voting machines Dominion were accomplices, didn’t make rational sense. Maybe part of it was an illusion, but many had to lie for the illusion to persist. THE FinancialTimes reports (Anna Kicolaou, “‘Panic Station at Fox News’: How the Murdochs Agonized Over the Loss of Trump“, FinancialTimesMarch 3, 2023):
The evidence — consisting of depositions and hundreds of internal company communications gleaned from the legal discovery — shows that Fox mulled over how to handle Trump’s campaign denial for months. …
December [2020] send to [network’s chief executive, Suzanne] Scott came after Murdoch and his eldest son Lachlan, Fox’s chief executive, received a panicked text message from Paul Ryan, former House Speaker and Fox board member. …
The filings paint a picture of Murdoch and Fox executives being terrified of viewers deserting the channel. …
“It’s not red or blue, it’s green,” Rupert Murdoch said of the channel when he was impeached in Los Angeles in January as part of the trial.
Murdoch conceded that while he didn’t believe the fraud allegations, he didn’t want to upset Trump because “he had a very large audience, and they were probably Fox viewers.” …
Fox’s own internal fact-checkers concluded as early as November 13 [2020] that the accusations of fraud were incorrect. …
Scott was worried about “pissing off viewers,” she told Murdoch, according to an email.
Green is of course the color of dollar bills. In other words, Fox News and most of its hosts and executives are consciously promoting the opposite of the truth because they don’t want to lose viewership, which is to say money. They knew what much of their audience wanted to hear was that Trump had won the election. They were consciously selling the lies their audience wanted to hear.
The Murdoch family is also a major shareholder in News Corp, which owns the the wall street journal, which is better staffed and better managed, probably because its customer base is largely made up of people who need real economic information to navigate the economy and make money, or just to really understand the world. Two days ago, the WSJ ran a story that confirms what the FinancialTimes had revealed (see Joe Fling and Keach Hagey, “Fox News’ inner workings exposed in libel case“, the wall street journalMarch 6, 2023).
A Martian landing on earth who knows nothing of human history might conclude that this lack of concern for truth is the inevitable price of a regime of freedom. The free press, he thinks, sells its audience entertainment and confirmation of its previous prejudices. He could infer that, for humans, information should only be provided for free and of good quality by the government. But if he only knew a little political history or economic theory, he would know that the outcome of this alternative system would be worse, soon producing only one-sided propaganda and boring entertainment. With a free press, at least, truth and information still have a chance because competitors can provide truthful information as long as some consumers are willing to pay for it.
The most disturbing fact is that millions of Fox News watchers were uninterested in the truth, at best because they were perfectly sure they had already found it in their pious intuitions and the statements of hero-demagogues. ; at worst because they are happy to live a lie.
Of course, one should always keep one’s mind open to rational challenge and refutation of one’s beliefs with evidence.
Heirs to the Enlightenment, the classical liberals thought that popular education would prevent the victory of lies and the spread of snake oil. In America and elsewhere in the world, it seemed to work for a while. Why did the engine stall? The best guess, it seems to me, is that teaching and education institutions have degenerated, probably captured by bureaucrats, unions and authoritarian democracy. We see it on the left as on the right, both in favor of education as a propaganda machine.