Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Hannity and Other Fox Employees Said They Doubted Trump’s Fraud Claims

      by

      On Wednesday, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems shared some of the strongest evidence yet that some Fox employees knew what they broadcast about the claims was false.On Nov. 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was “corruption all across the country, in countless districts,” in a plot to steal re-election from the president, Donald J. Trump.At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used “to trash large batches of votes.”Mr. Hannity interrupted her with a gentle question that had been circulating among election deniers, despite a lack of supporting proof: Why were Democrats silencing whistle-blowers who could prove this fraud?Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this?“I did not believe it for one second.”That was the answer Mr. Hannity gave, under oath, in a deposition in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to information disclosed in a court hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April.Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.More on Fox NewsDefamation Case: ​​Some of the biggest names at Fox News are being questioned in the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. The suit could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.Exploring a Merger: Fox and News Corp, the two sides of Rupert Murdoch’s media business, are weighing a proposal that could put Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the Fox broadcasting network under the same corporate umbrella.‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.The high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News. Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite. And that requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those who were making the decisions at the network.In Delaware Superior Court on Wednesday, Dominion’s lawyers argued that they had obtained ample evidence to make that case.One lawyer for Dominion said that “not a single Fox witness” so far had produced anything supporting the various false claims about the company that were uttered repeatedly on the network. And in some cases, other high-profile hosts and senior executives echoed Mr. Hannity’s doubts about what Mr. Trump and his allies like Ms. Powell were saying, according to the Dominion lawyer, Stephen Shackelford.This included Meade Cooper, who oversees prime-time programming for Fox News, and the prime-time star Tucker Carlson, Mr. Shackelford said.“Many of the highest-ranking Fox people have admitted under oath that they never believed the Dominion lies,” he said, naming both Ms. Cooper and Mr. Carlson.Mr. Shackelford described how Mr. Carlson had “tried to squirm out of it at his deposition” when asked about what he really believed.Mr. Shackelford started to elaborate about what Mr. Carlson had said privately, telling the judge about the existence of text messages the host had sent in November and December of 2020. But the judge, Eric M. Davis, cut him off, leaving the specific contents of those texts unknown.A spokeswoman for Fox News had no immediate comment.Another previously unknown detail emerged on Wednesday about what was going on inside the Fox universe in those frantic weeks after the election. A second lawyer representing Dominion, Justin Nelson, told Judge Davis about evidence obtained by Dominion showing that an employee of the Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, had tried to intervene with the White House to stop Ms. Powell. According to Mr. Nelson, that employee called the fraud claims “outlandish” and pressed Mr. Trump’s staff to get rid of Ms. Powell, who was advising the president on filing legal challenges to the results.Mr. Nelson said that evidence cut straight to the heart of whether the Fox Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, was also liable for defamation. Judge Davis ruled in June that Dominion could sue the larger, highly profitable corporation, which includes the Fox network on basic television and a lucrative sports broadcasting division.A spokesman for the Fox Corporation had no immediate comment.Over the last several months, Dominion has been combing through mountains of private email and text messages from people at every level of Fox News and the Fox Corporation — hosts like Mr. Hannity, senior executives and midlevel producers. A lawyer for Fox, Dan K. Webb, said on Wednesday that the company had produced more than 52,000 documents for Dominion, with more to come.During the hearing, the judge was asked to rule on several issues. One was whether a second voting company that is suing Fox for defamation, Smartmatic, could be given access to the documents Dominion had obtained for its case. Judge Davis ruled in Fox’s favor, denying Smartmatic’s motion.A second issue was whether certain evidence that Dominion has used against Fox in its court filings — including emails among Fox employees and a page from a deposition in which someone from Fox describes the journalistic processes of one of the network’s programs — should be made public.Throughout the case, Fox has asked the court to keep almost everything in the case pertaining to its inner workings under seal. A third lawyer for Dominion, Davida Brook, argued on Wednesday that the public had a fundamental right to see what it had filed with the court in the interest of fostering the openness that a democracy requires.Judge Davis disagreed, ruling that the evidence would stay under seal. But he admonished the lawyers that neither party in the case should be overly aggressive in trying to keep facts in the case confidential.If, for instance, someone says something “not bright” — and therefore embarrassing — that wouldn’t be enough to keep that information under seal, Judge Davis said.“That’s too bad,” he said. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Frank Shakespeare, TV Executive Behind a New Nixon, Dies at 97

      by

      He helped dispel the candidate’s stiff image for the 1968 presidential campaign and then led U.S. government broadcasting efforts overseas under Nixon and Reagan.Frank Shakespeare, a self-described “conservative’s conservative” who used skills he had learned in the television industry to help elect Richard M. Nixon as president and then led the United States Information Agency, putting a hard edge on the Nixon administration’s message abroad, died on Wednesday in Deerfield, Wis. He was 97.His daughter Fredricka Shakespeare Manning confirmed the death, at her home, where Mr. Shakespeare had also been living. His death was also announced by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative Washington think tank, where he was chairman of its board of trustees in the 1980s. He also held ambassadorships in Portugal and at the Vatican.Mr. Shakespeare joined the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign while on leave as a CBS executive. As an adviser he was principally responsible for coming up with a novel way to present the candidate on television, in large part to make viewers forget Nixon’s stiff TV performances in 1960, when as vice president he was the Republican presidential standard-bearer.Mr. Shakespeare took on that task with Harry W. Treleaven Jr., an advertising executive who was credited with coming up with the slogan “Nixon’s the One!”; Leonard Garment, a lawyer who would become a Nixon White House counsel; and Roger E. Ailes, a television producer and the future Fox News president. They devised an approach in which panels of seemingly regular folks would ask Nixon questions and he would answer them conversationally.“We wanted a program concept of what Richard Nixon is in a way in which the public could make its own judgment,” Mr. Shakespeare told The New York Times in 1968. “We wanted to try to create electronically what would happen if five or six people sat in a living room with him and got to know him.”The four advisers “knew television as a weapon” that could be used to sell candidates in the manner of toothpaste, wrote Joe McGinniss in his 1969 book, “The Selling of the President 1968.”Mr. McGinniss said Mr. Shakespeare had been “more equal than the others,” ruling on matters as minute as whether Nixon’s daughters should sit in the first or second row at a telethon. (He overruled an aide who had assigned them to Row 2; he wanted Nixon to be able to greet them on his arrival easily.)Mr. Shakespeare helped plan Nixon’s inaugural pageantry before he was appointed director of the information agency, which had been created at the height of the Cold War to broadcast programming that would further American interests overseas.There he shifted its financing efforts from movies to television. He arranged U.S.I.A. coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing, reaching 154 million people, and introduced television programs giving American views on issues in less developed countries.He also used his position to press his own anti-Communist thinking, sometimes to the ire of the State Department, which was negotiating treaties with the Soviet Union. He had a film made that argued that most Americans supported the Vietnam War, and he ordered that the works of conservative authors be placed in his agency’s libraries.Richard Nixon, as a presidential candidate, answered questions from a panel during a CBS television appearance in 1968.Associated PressMr. Shakespeare publicly clashed with Senator J. William Fulbright, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calling him “bad news for America” in an argument over the agency’s budget authorization.Mr. Fulbright countered that Mr. Shakespeare was “a very inadequate man for his job.”Francis Joseph Shakespeare Jr. was born in New York City on April 9, 1925, to Francis and Frances (Hughes) Shakespeare. He attended Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, graduating in 1946, and served in the Navy from 1945 to 1946. He worked briefly for the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and Procter & Gamble before becoming an advertising salesman for radio stations.In 1957, at 32, he was named general manager of WXIX-TV, a CBS affiliate in Milwaukee. Two years later, he was named vice president and general manager of WCBS-TV in New York. There he personally presented what was regarded as the first television editorial on local affairs, a critique of off-track betting. In another editorial, he examined how critics had treated a new CBS comedy show.He soon became a protégé of James T. Aubrey Jr., a top executive at CBS. In 1965, Mr. Shakespeare was appointed executive vice president, the second-highest post at the network.But after Mr. Aubrey was dismissed as president that same year, Mr. Shakespeare’s star waned. His last job at CBS was as head of its cable TV, syndication of programs and foreign investment. He said he volunteered for the Nixon campaign after being impressed by the candidate’s intellect when they met.Mr. Shakespeare left the Nixon administration in 1973 to become executive vice president of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, where he oversaw the company’s broadcasting operations. He went on to become president and vice chairman of RKO General, which owned radio and television stations.He was named chairman of the Heritage Foundation in the early 1980s as it pushed conservative positions like abolishing the Energy Department and cutting food stamps.In 1981, President Ronald Reagan named him chairman of the Board for International Broadcasting, overseeing Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. He served as ambassador to Portugal from 1985 to 1986 and to the Vatican from 1987 to 1989.Mr. Shakespeare’s wife, Deborah Anne (Spaeth) Shakespeare, with whom he had three children, died in 1998. In addition to his daughter Fredricka, he is survived by another daughter, Andrea Renna; a son, Mark; and 11 grandchildren.For all his skill in honing an image, Mr. Shakespeare knew his limitations in trying to mold Nixon, according to the McGinniss book. When other Nixon aides complained that the candidate had resisted their entreaties to stop repeating the phrase “Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” Mr. Shakespeare had the last word.Drop the subject, he said — it wasn’t going to happen.Maia Coleman contributed reporting. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Defamation Suit Against Fox Grows More Contentious

      by

      Lachlan Murdoch is set to be deposed on Monday, the latest in a flurry of activity in the high-stakes case.Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of the Fox Corporation, is expected to be deposed on Monday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for amplifying bogus claims that rigged machines from Dominion Voting Systems were responsible for Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Mr. Murdoch will be the most senior corporate figure within the Fox media empire to face questions under oath in the case so far. And his appearance before Dominion’s lawyers is a sign of how unexpectedly far and fast the lawsuit has progressed in recent weeks — and how contentious it has become.Fox and Dominion have gone back and forth in Delaware state court since the summer in an escalating dispute over witnesses, evidence and testimony. The arguments point to the high stakes of the case, which will render a judgment on whether the most powerful conservative media outlet in the country intentionally misled its audience and helped seed one of the most pervasive lies in American politics.Although the law leans in the media’s favor in defamation cases, Dominion has what independent observers have said is an unusually strong case. Day after day, Fox hosts and guests repeated untrue stories about Dominion’s ties to communist regimes and far-fetched theories about how its software enabled enemies of the former president to steal his votes.“This is a very different kind of case,” said David A. Logan, dean of the Roger Williams School of Law, who has argued in favor of loosening some libel laws. “Rarely do cases turn on a weekslong pattern of inflammatory, provably false, but also oddly inconsistent statements.”Dominion, in its quest to obtain the private communications of as many low-, mid- and high-level Fox personnel as possible, hopes to prove that people inside the network knew they were disseminating lies. Fox hopes to be able sow doubt about that by showing how its hosts pressed Trump allies for evidence they never produced and that Dominion machines were vulnerable to hacking, even if no hacking took place.The judge, Eric M. Davis, has ruled in most instances in Dominion’s favor, allowing the voting company to expand the pool of potential evidence it can present to a jury to include text messages from the personal phones of Fox employees and the employment contracts of star hosts such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, along with those of Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, and her top corporate managers.More on Fox NewsDefamation Case: ​​Some of the biggest names at Fox News are being questioned in the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. The suit could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.Exploring a Merger: Fox and News Corp, the two sides of Rupert Murdoch’s media business, are weighing a proposal that could put Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the Fox broadcasting network under the same corporate umbrella.‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.Dominion has conducted dozens of depositions with current and former network personalities, producers, business managers and executives. The people questioned come from the rungs of middle management at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan to the corner office in Century City, Los Angeles, where Mr. Murdoch oversees the Fox Corporation and its sprawling enterprise of conservative media outlets.The fight over depositions has intensified in recent weeks as lawyers for the two companies sparred over whether Mr. Hannity and another pro-Trump host, Jeanine Pirro, should have to sit for a second round of questioning about messages that Dominion obtained from their phones as part of the discovery process. Fox lawyers have argued that the hosts should not be compelled to testify again, citing the legal protections that journalists have against being forced to reveal confidential sources.The judge ruled that Dominion’s lawyers could question both Mr. Hannity and Ms. Pirro again but limited the scope of what they could ask. Ms. Pirro’s second deposition was late last month; Mr. Hannity’s has yet to be scheduled.Fox has accused Dominion in court filings of making “escalating demands” for documents that are voluminous in quantity, saying it would have to hire a second litigation team to accommodate such a “crushing burden.” (The judge has largely disagreed.)In a sign of the simmering tensions between the two sides, Fox lawyers have asked the court to impose tens of thousands of dollars in sanctions against Dominion. Fox has accused the voting machine company’s chief executive, John Poulos, and other senior company officials of failing to preserve their emails and text messages, as parties to a lawsuit are required to do with potentially relevant evidence.After Dominion filed its lawsuit in March 2021 — claiming that Fox’s coverage of its machines not only cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in business but “harmed the idea of credible elections” — many media law experts assumed this case would end like many other high-profile defamation case against a news organization: with a settlement.Fox News has a history of settling sensitive lawsuits before they reach a jury. In the last several years alone, it has paid tens of millions of dollars in claims: to women who reported sexual harassment by its former chief executive, Roger Ailes, and by prominent hosts including Bill O’Reilly; as well as to the family of Seth Rich, a former Democratic Party staff member who was killed in a robbery that some conservatives tried to link to an anti-Clinton conspiracy theory.But a settlement with Dominion appears to be a remote possibility at this point. Fox has said that the broad protections provided to the media under the First Amendment shield it from liability. The network says it was merely reporting on Mr. Trump’s accusations, which are protected speech even if the president is lying. Dominion’s complaint outlines examples in which Fox hosts did more than just report those false claims, they endorsed them.“This does not appear to be a case that’s going to settle — but anything can happen,” said Dan K. Webb, a noted trial lawyer who is representing Fox in the dispute. “There are some very fundamental First Amendment issues here, and those haven’t changed.”In a statement, Dominion said the company was confident its case would show that Fox knew it was spreading lies “from the highest levels down.”“Instead of acting responsibly and showing remorse, Fox instead has doubled down,” the statement said. “We’re focused on holding Fox accountable and are confident the truth will ultimately prevail.”The judge has set a trial date for April of next year. A separate defamation suit against Fox by the voting company Smartmatic is not scheduled to be ready for trial until the summer of 2024.Part of the reason Fox executives and its lawyers believe they can prevail is the high burden of proof Dominion must reach to convince a jury that the network’s coverage of the 2020 election defamed it. Under the law, a jury has to conclude that Fox acted with “actual malice,” meaning that people inside the network knew that what they were reporting was false but did so anyway, or that they recklessly disregarded information showing what they were reporting was wrong.That is what Dominion hopes to show the jury with the private messages it obtained from a several-week period after the election from Fox employees at all levels of the company. Very little is known publicly about what those messages could contain.In addition to arguing that its coverage of Dominion was protected as free speech, Fox argues it was merely covering statements from newsmakers. “There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations of voter fraud,” a spokeswoman said.Fox’s lawyers are also planning lines of defense that they hope will dent Dominion’s credibility, even if that means leaning into some of the conspiracy theories that are at the heart of Dominion’s case. They may argue, for example, that it was plausible that the machines had been hacked, pointing to questions that were raised by at least one independent expert about whether the software was secure.As part of their fact-finding, Fox lawyers sought information from a University of Michigan computer scientist who wrote a report this year saying there were vulnerabilities in Dominion’s system that could be exploited, even though there is no evidence of any such breach.Mr. Webb said the intent would be to show that the fraud allegations “were not made up out of whole cloth.” But it was not his plan, he said, to pretend that Mr. Trump’s voter fraud falsehoods — which were the same as many of the falsehoods uttered on the air at Fox — were true. “The president’s allegations were not correct,” Mr. Webb said. He added that he planned “to show the jury that those security concerns were there and were real and added plausibility to the president’s allegations.”After Mr. Murdoch’s deposition on Monday, lawyers on both sides of the case said they expected one additional senior executive to be questioned by Dominion’s lawyers: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the Fox Corporation, who founded Fox News with Mr. Ailes more than 25 years ago. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Survivor winner Nick Wilson secures seat in Kentucky legislature

      by

      Survivor winner Nick Wilson secures seat in Kentucky legislatureRepublican, who ran unopposed, will represent home town in state house of representatives Not every Republican television personality who ran for political office during Tuesday’s US elections lost.The winner of the TV competition Survivor: David v Goliath in 2018, Nick Wilson, secured a seat as a Republican in Kentucky’s state house of representatives. Wilson’s path to victory wasn’t particularly fraught, as he ran unopposed for a seat that was left empty when the prior officeholder, Regina Huff, retired.Some viewers may remember Wilson competed on Survivor: David v Goliath, which pitted contestants regarded as underdogs with those labeled overachievers. He emerged at the top of a field that included the creator of the HBO show The White Lotus, Mike White.US midterm elections 2022: focus on Nevada after Democrat Mark Kelly wins key Senate seat – liveRead moreWilson appeared again on Survivor in the show’s Winners of War season in 2020, but he finished seventh.He will represent Laurel county – which has a population of more than 60,000 people – and his home town, Williamsburg, in Kentucky’s legislative house beginning on 1 January.Wilson graduated from the University of Kentucky and worked as a public defender after obtaining a law degree from the University of Alabama. He has spoken about how he lost his mother to drug addiction while in law school, and he said his role as a public defender let him help those struggling with the nationwide opioid epidemic.“That is an issue I will always hold close to my heart,” Wilson told the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky after declaring his candidacy. “These mountains [in Kentucky] have been hard hit by it.”Wilson on Tuesday afternoon issued a statement describing himself as “thankful to so many for the support”.“I’m excited to serve and hope to represent the community well,” said the statement, accompanied by photos of him and his wife, Grisel Vilchez, casting their ballots.Wilson fared better than another Republican television personality, the talkshow host Dr Mehmet Oz, who lost a Pennsylvania US Senate seat to his Democratic rival, John Fetterman. The Democrats will retain control of the Senate if they win either the unresolved race in Nevada, which had not been called as of Saturday afternoon, or the 6 December runoff in Georgia.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsKentuckyTelevisionRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Sexy khakis and giant graphics: how US TV pundits spent election night

      by

      Sexy khakis and giant graphics: how US TV pundits spent election nightThe midterms brought less drama than expected, but anchors had to fill the airwaves with something

      US midterm election results 2022: live
      US midterm elections 2022 – latest live news updates
      Before the first polls closed in Virginia and Georgia, CNN’s John King stood in front of his infamous magic board to plead with viewers to avoid unconfirmed news: “Stay off social media, folks.”Jake Tapper, who took over Wolf Blitzer’s usual duties after a last-minute switch up, let out an uneasy laugh. Then King made a case for CNN’s frantic coverage of 2022’s midterm season: “If you’re trying to figure out ‘are there really issues with voting’, trust your local officials and trust us here,” he said. It was a line that conservative pundits would jump on as fear-mongering. (“CNN in Panic mode,” Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson tweeted.)‘No Republican blowout’: our panel reacts to the initial US midterm results | PanelRead moreMoments later, Tapper stood in front of a gigantic countdown screen, the much-less-fun cousin of Times Square’s New Year’s Eve clock. A bold number 1 blazed across the screen in red. It represented the only seat Republicans needed to pick up to win back power in the Senate. The screaming, Super Bowl-esque graphic reminded us that cable news coverage of midterm results was back in all its frenetic excess.Such breathless, wall-to-wall coverage is enough to give anyone election stress. The New York Times suggested to its readers “evidence-based strategies that can help you cope” with the effects of doom-scrolling. It was helpful, if a bit unsettling, advice.“Breathe like a baby,” said one step. “Focus on expanding your belly when you breathe, which can send more oxygen to the brain.” Another tip skewed more Wim Hof: “Plunge your face into a bowl with ice water for 10 to 30 seconds.”Readers who came up for air would be rewarded with MSNBC’s “Kornacki Cam”, a loop that played in the corner of TV screens during commercials. It showed live, behind-the-scenes shots of the fan-favorite national reporter Steve Kornacki, only partially aware that he was being filmed. Kornacki took water breaks, had one-way conversations with his interactive district map, and gave viewers the perfect shot of his geek-chic brown khakis. Those pants, his beloved trademark, earned him a spot on People’s Sexiest Men list in 2020.They remained a rare highlight of our fractured democratic process. “Happy Steve Kornacki day for those who celebrate,” read one tweet. As the reporter rifled through his notes on screen, another fan wrote, “Steve Kornacki finding his documents during this stressful race is extremely relatable.”Kornacki’s data-driven approach represented to some a bastion of stability on otherwise crazed election nights. But head over to the rightwing outlet Newsmax, and things were a little more unpredictable: especially when Donald Trump took a moment to call in.The former president teased a “big announcement” he plans to make at Mar-a-Lago on 15 November. This appears to be a thinly veiled promise of a 2024 election run. But why wait a week? Trump said he didn’t want to “take away” from the significance of election night – specifically, JD Vance’s Ohio Senate race – but he seemed to be doing just that by opening his mouth.On Fox News, Tucker Carlson repeated conservative concerns about voter fraud and election integrity. “We’re not really serious about democracy if we’re using electronic voting machines,” he said.Cable news producers have to fill their seven-hour-long slots with something, even if it’s a whole lot of nothing. At about 9pm on Tuesday, as some polls were closing but results were not yet in, Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt tried to stay cheery as they talked through a list of tight gubernatorial races. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before: too early to call,” Guthrie said.Pundits also found humor in the triumph of Maxwell Frost, the night’s youngest winner and the first Gen Z member of Congress. Frost, who will represent Florida, is 25 years old. “That means he was born in 1997,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said as her fellow anchors laughed in disbelief. “I literally have liquor older than him.”When the Republican surge some had predicted failed to materialize, MSNBC hosts started patting each other on the back. “I looked at you weird earlier when you said Joe Biden was going to be one of the most successful presidents ever as measured by the midterm performance of his party,” Rachel Maddow said to her colleague Lawrence O’Donnell. “I owe you not an apology, but a tepid climb-back.”On Fox News, Karl Rove was wistfully talking about the hinterlands of Georgia with votes still to report, but there was a clear sense that things weren’t quite going to plan any more.TopicsUS politicsUS televisionCNNFox NewsMSNBCThe news on TVTV newsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      How Kari Lake Went From News Anchor to Outspoken Critic of the Press

      by

      Former friends and colleagues of Ms. Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, say they remember her far differently from the candidate they see today.One longtime former co-worker in the television news business recalled that Kari Lake detested guns and practiced Buddhism. Another former local news anchor, Stephanie Angelo, who did not work with Ms. Lake but later became close friends with her, described Ms. Lake back then as “a free spirit” and “liberal to the core.”“Her saying that abortion should be illegal — absolutely not,” Ms. Angelo said. “The Kari I knew would never have said that, and she wouldn’t have believed it either.”But in her run for governor of Arizona, Ms. Lake — a former local Fox News anchor — has refashioned herself as a protégé of Donald Trump and a die-hard Christian conservative who wields her media expertise as a weapon and has turned her former industry into a foil. In her closing pitch to voters ahead of the election on Tuesday, Ms. Lake, 53, has been campaigning against the press as much as she has against Katie Hobbs, her Democratic rival, riling up audiences against reporters in attendance, whom she calls the “fake news,” and pledging to become the media’s “worst nightmare” if elected.It’s a far cry from the person many journalists she worked with remember.Seven of Ms. Lake’s former colleagues at the local Fox station in Phoenix, where she read the news for more than two decades, and two others who consider themselves her former friends said Ms. Lake had once expressed more liberal views on subjects including guns, drag queens and undocumented immigrants. They said she used to admire Barack and Michelle Obama, and pointed out that she had donated to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign. Some requested anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to the press or feared retaliation from Ms. Lake or her supporters.During a campaign stop with veterans in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Wednesday, she called reporters “monsters” and said, “Let’s defund the press.” In another rally on Thursday night in Phoenix, she lashed out at “the media” more times than she mentioned Ms. Hobbs.The attacks on her former industry exploit trends that, in recent years, have shown stark declines in Americans’ trust in television and newspapers — and that, most recently, amid bitter partisan fights over local school boards and pandemic restrictions, have even captured increasing charges of bias against local news, long seen as one of the most trusted sources of information.Many supporters first got to know Ms. Lake as a local television anchor before she decided to run for governor. Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMs. Lake has adapted many of the skills she learned in television to her campaign for governor. Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThey are also part of an old playbook: Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, criticized networks over their ratings and media coverage he disliked throughout his time in the White House and his presidential campaigns. At his recent rallies, he still takes time to denounce news stories and the reporters in attendance. Republicans’ trust in traditional media continues to drop, with many preferring to rely on a thriving ecosystem of fringe right-wing outlets and partisan fare.At Ms. Lake’s events, some of her loudest applause lines and showers of boos come when she mentions the news industry, even though many of the reporters at her events now increasingly include those from right-wing media who amplify her message. In Scottsdale, many people raised their hands when she asked how many of them consumed little to no “fake news media.” In Phoenix, people cheered and whistled when she expressed indifference toward negative coverage of her campaign. She asked them to look at the reporters set up on risers in the back. “How many of you really don’t care what the big news media says?” she said to applause.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.Her supporters tend not to care or believe that she once leaned liberal. Those who watched her newscast often cannot cite specific stories she worked on, but they do recall her charisma and sharp presentation. They now appreciate her TV-polished and combative style.That includes Jeanine Eyman and her daughter, Joanna, who were waiting in line outside a sports park in Mesa, Ariz., in October to watch Ms. Lake speak at a Trump rally. They said they admired that she was a news insider turned outsider. “To step down when you don’t agree with the politics going on, I think that made a huge statement for what she believes and the person that she is,” Jeanine Eyman said.Reece Peck, a media scholar and the author of “Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class,” placed Ms. Lake in an influential class of conservatives that includes former President Ronald Reagan: telegenic Republicans who had no political experience or public ideological core but quickly rose in politics because they came from the media world.Ms. Lake was particularly effective as a candidate, he said, because she emerged from “square and trusty local news.” He added: “She was a student of mass tastes” and could now “speak to audiences on that mass register.”Ms. Lake has declined to respond to multiple requests for interviews or to criticism from her former news colleagues.Before Ms. Lake started her professional journalism career, she interned at the same radio station where Mr. Reagan once worked. She often cites this fact on the trail, along with her admiration for Mr. Reagan, a conservative hero who she said spurred her to register as a Republican as soon as she turned 18.Ms. Lake taking a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesBut she often says now that she left her job as a prominent television news anchor in Phoenix in early 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, when she came to believe the media was pushing a “biased” and “immoral” agenda by refusing to cover unproven Covid treatments and by repeating talking points from Dr. Anthony Fauci.She started her campaign for governor with a debut ad that featured her smashing television sets playing newscasts with a sledgehammer. She has since called for the arrest of Mr. Fauci, publicized unproven Covid treatments and fueled Mr. Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election was “crooked.”She has criticized drag queens and surgery for transgender people, and she echoes Mr. Trump’s rhetoric against immigrants, promising to finish his border wall and declare an “invasion” on the nation’s southwestern border. She has presented herself as a staunch opponent of abortion and “a lifetime member” of the National Rifle Association. And she has called reporters “the right hand of the Devil.”It is a metamorphosis that has shocked former colleagues and others who knew her.Richard Stevens, who performs as the popular drag queen Barbra Seville, said Ms. Lake used to invite him as a news contributor to comment on L.G.B.T.Q. issues. He recalled watching Ms. Lake argue in defense of undocumented immigrants on air. She often came to his drag shows, he said, and the two became close. He also performed as Ms. Seville at her house, including in front of her children, he said.“Kari is not afraid of drag queens, Kari is not afraid of gay people,” Mr. Stevens said, calling Ms. Lake “an opportunist.” “I have had every reason to believe that she is as liberal as me.”The contradictions have not stopped Ms. Lake’s momentum in what remains a neck-and-neck race. “People know her,” Ms. Angelo, the former local news anchor, said. “They are familiar with her face, with her voice, and they trust her even though her positions now are contrary to everything that she has stood for up until the last year.”Ms. Lake is engaged in a tight race with the Democratic nominee for governor, Katie Hobbs. Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMs. Lake speaks during a “Latinos for Lake” rally in Tucson in September.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesBrenda Roberts, 67, a retired legal secretary who was in the audience at the Phoenix rally, said she was initially skeptical of Ms. Lake but came around because the candidate seemed to believe in what she said. “She expresses what we’re all feeling — we’re really upset about the border,” Ms. Roberts said. “We’re upset about inflation. We’re really upset about the way that Biden has destroyed the economy.”Part of Ms. Lake’s rise has had to do with how she has applied the Trump media playbook, sometimes with her own touches. Some of her campaign videos resemble movie trailers and are embellished with cinematic sound effects. Her husband, Jeff Halperin, an independent videographer, often films her events and interactions with the press. She has also been quick to call impromptu news conferences seemingly timed for the early-evening newscast.Ms. Lake assembled one of those gaggles last month after a man was arrested in connection with a burglary at Ms. Hobbs’s campaign headquarters. Pointing to a large placard with a photo of someone in a chicken suit, Ms. Lake joked that a person had been caught rummaging through her campaign headquarters and that she had evidence to believe it was Ms. Hobbs herself — a jab at Ms. Hobbs, as well as reporters, whom she claimed were suggesting the Lake campaign bore responsibility for the Hobbs campaign burglary.“You love to smear Republicans,” Ms. Lake told reporters.In a statement responding to Ms. Lake’s news conference, Sarah Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Hobbs campaign, doubled down on Ms. Hobbs’s earlier remarks charging Ms. Lake with fanning “the flames of extremism and violence.” Ms. Lake released another video on Thursday again slamming Ms. Hobbs and reporters for the burglary coverage.In the final stretch of the midterms, top Democrats, including Mr. Obama, have made stops in Phoenix urging people not to support Ms. Lake, as they have cast the election as a battle to preserve democracy. “If we hadn’t just elected someone whose main qualification was being on TV, you can see maybe giving it a shot,” Mr. Obama said to laugher from the audience. At her event in Phoenix, Ms. Lake argued she was not in the race for the fortune or fame — “I’ve already had fame — it’s overrated” — but for Arizonans.She lamented the loss of friends over her evolution and told supporters that she had not believed her former television news colleagues would unfairly attack her as they did Mr. Trump. “But I’ll tell you what: The patriotic America-loving friends I’ve gained will make up for any friend that I lost a million times over,” she said, as people broke into another round of cheers.Ms. Lake has adapted the Trump media handbook to her own campaign. Rebecca Noble for The New York Times More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, and the Future of Liberal Late Night T.V.

      by

      Trevor Noah recently surprised fans (and, according to some accounts, also Comedy Central management) when he announced plans to leave “The Daily Show.” His departure is one of many notable personnel changes in late-night television: James Corden will leave “The Late Late Show” next year; TBS canceled “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”; and Desus and Mero broke up with each other and their hugely successful Showtime late-night show beloved by a diverse viewership of millennials.Prominent entertainers leave jobs all the time; but media watchers see something more systemic in the recent spate of departures. Dylan Byers describes the “contracting genre” as an economic problem: “The eight-figure late-night host increasingly doesn’t match the new economics of the late-night business.” The economics used to look like big advertisers paying for a captive audience that tuned in for pulpy takes on mainstream American culture.But audiences have not been flocking to late night television for some time. Advertisers have continued to support the time slot, not necessarily because it works but because there was little else competing for the late night audience. Throwing good money after bad, as it were. That cannot last forever.This is an economic problem but I suspect the underlying issue is cultural: Americans don’t want to share a living room with each other. We prefer to live and be entertained in ideological encampments.A study using cross-national data found that Americans have become so tied to party identity that race and class polarizes us less than politics. We don’t just want personalized content. We want personalized content that affirms and does not challenge our political identities.Liberals appear to dominate the late-night TV show genre. The reason for that dominance is complex. Audiences have different orientations toward humor and political talk. Those orientations have some underlying psychological needs. And styles of comedy have political and cultural histories. Bluntly, scholars who study political communication and humor often find that liberals are ironic smart alecks and conservatives are outraged moralists. Some of us are a bit of both, but most of us have a psychological need to be one over the other.In terms of humor, you can think of this as “you know you’re a redneck if” on one end of the spectrum and George Carlin on the other. In the 1990s, satirical political infotainment evolved into the late-night television style that we have today. Two things brought politics and infotainment together: the internet and “The Daily Show.”With Jon Stewart as host, “The Daily Show” innovated a formula for liberal satire infotainment. When Trevor Noah took over in 2015, director and supervising producer of “The Daily Show” David Paul Meyer says, he embraced a more holistic style. “Trevor doesn’t necessarily use the edgier form of satire, irony and outrage to drive his approach to the show,” Meyer told me. Noah’s willingness to drop the routine to tackle a subject seriously is good political education.Unfortunately, outrage makes more money, and today’s conservative media is much better at outrage. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a communication professor at the University of Delaware, wrote “Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States.” She says that “The Daily Show” is an exemplar of what political media became in the 1990s. “Entertainment wasn’t expected to ‘stay in its lane.’ It was expected — encouraged even — to blur the lines between fact and fiction, entertainment and politics, art and social justice,” she writes. The show’s mockumentary style and satirical stance updated 1960s counterculture critique for the post-modern, post-internet age.Young pulls together a lot of research on psychology, history and media to explain why we find funny what we do. The need for closure is a big one. If you have a high need for clear-cut moral rules, then satire, which asks us to skewer our own beliefs, is going to make you pretty anxious. Ouchie stuff if “us versus them” makes you feel safest.As it turns out, political messages play on some similar psychological needs. One that tells you who are “bad” and, even better, how to punish them satisfies the same need as good old-fashioned outrage. Think how Donald Trump and his audience co-wrote one of the most enduring outrage political messages of 21st-century politics: “lock her up.”Liberals may be drawn to ironic humor like satire because it reflects their antagonism toward the status quo. But outrage plays better to the political psychology of conservatives. As outrage has become a more viable media model than satire, it gets harder to sell liberal politics. “All of our political, cultural and economic messages risk being filtered through an identity-driven ecosystem that proportionally rewards not just conservatism and Republicanism,” Young told me, “but also conservative populism on the far right.”The irony isn’t lost on me that conservative audiences complain about how vilified they are in popular culture. Conservative media seems to be doing quite well. Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro are two of the most popular podcast hosts in the nation. There is no liberal counterpart to either. Fox News lost some of its big names when Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly left in 2017. But while MSNBC looks for its footing after Rachel Maddow’s exit on most weeknights and as CNN pivots to centrism, Fox is beating them both in ratings.When you look across media platforms, it is easier to see how conservative psychological preference for outrage bodes better for their growth in satellite radio, lifestyle media and, of course, social media. My Times colleague Zeynep Tufekci is one of many scholars who have documented how social media’s economic models reward outrage-driven content. Conservative social media platforms like Parler are duds. But conservative personalities like Shapiro are hugely popular across Facebook and YouTube. And Elon Musk has promised to turn Twitter into his idea of a free-speech platform. Some observers suspect that means reinstating accounts previously banned for violating Twitter’s terms of service. Outrage comedy has for the most part never found its late-night mojo, but outrage content is doing just fine in every other sector of infotainment.If satirical political content is the liberal audience’s way to stick it to the man, why isn’t the genre exploding right now? Young says the thing about satire is that it asks the audience to take risks. Getting the layered meaning of ironic humor requires a little, well, faith that the payoff will be worth it. “It is hard to be hopeful, even ironically, when everything seems to be going so bad,” she says. The Dobbs decision has radicalized and terrified millions of voters. Many Americans think the Supreme Court is partisan, if not outright corrupt. Biden’s policy achievements do not seem to be capturing voters’ imagination. And he has several significant policy wins. Large swaths of the Republican Party have embraced white identitarian violence. We are too scared to laugh.Whether infotainment should matter to the way politics is communicated is a separate issue from the fact that it does matter. In the meantime, Republicans are set to take over the House and perhaps the Senate with next week’s midterm elections. Many expect Trump to run again in 2024. Election deniers are legitimate G.O.P. candidates. Outrage is the mainstream G.O.P. brand, from the top of the ticket to the bottom. We are heading into a dangerous election cycle with a contracting liberal media ecosystem and conservative media machine optimized for outrage.All of this is only funny in a laugh-to-keep-from-crying kind of way.Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of “Thick: And Other Essays” and a 2020 MacArthur fellow.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      TV Prepares for a Chaotic Midterm Night

      by

      Gearing up to report this year’s midterm election results, American television networks are facing an uncomfortable question: How many viewers will believe them?Amid rampant distrust in the news media and a rash of candidates who have telegraphed that they may claim election fraud if they lose, news anchors and executives are seeking new ways to tackle the attacks on the democratic process that have infected politics since the last election night broadcast in 2020.“For entrepreneurs of chaos, making untrue claims about the election system is a route to greater glory,” said John Dickerson, the chief political analyst at CBS News, who will co-anchor the network’s coverage on Nov. 8. “Elections and the American experiment exist basically on faith in the system, and if people don’t have any faith in the system, they may decide to take things into their own hands.”CBS has been televising elections since 1948. But this is the first year that the network has felt obligated to install a dedicated “Democracy Desk” as a cornerstone of its live coverage. Seated a few feet from the co-anchors in the network’s Times Square studio, election law experts and correspondents will report on fraud allegations and threats of violence at the polls.“It’s not traditional,” said Mary Hager, CBS’s executive editor of politics, who has covered election nights for three decades. “But I’m not sure we’ll ever have traditional again.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: The debate performance by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is still recovering from a stroke, has thrust questions of health to the center of the pivotal race and raised Democratic anxieties.G.O.P. Inflation Plans: Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture Congress, but few economists expect their proposals to bring down rising prices.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Across the industry, networks have deployed dozens of reporters to state capitals around the country, where journalists have spent weeks cultivating relationships with local election officials and learning the minutiae of ballot counting procedures.Still, an election night that ends without a clear indication of which party will control the House and Senate — a likely possibility, given the dozens of tight races — could present an extended period of uncertainty, allowing rumors and disinformation to run rampant. And Americans’ trust in the national news media has rarely been lower, with barely one-third of adults in a recent Gallup poll expressing confidence in it.“I can’t control what politicians are going to say, if they choose to call an election result into question,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “You’ve got to be clear, when it’s a partial picture, that nothing about that is untoward.”Two years ago, TV networks prepared for pandemic-related ballot headaches and speculation that President Donald J. Trump might resist conceding defeat.But 2022 has presented novel challenges. Allies of Mr. Trump — who claimed two years ago, without evidence, that “frankly, we did win this election” — continue to sow doubts about the integrity of the vote-counting process. Republican candidates in some key races still refuse to accept that Mr. Trump lost.Even as Americans consume information from an increasingly kaleidoscopic set of news sources — social media, hyperpartisan blogs, streaming services and family Facebook posts — the big TV networks still play a major role in setting the narrative of an election night, for better and worse.In 2020, Fox News’s early Arizona call signaled that Joseph R. Biden Jr. might emerge victorious (and left Mr. Trump enraged). In 2018, TV had a more ignominious evening: After a series of deflating early defeats for Democrats, some anchors predicted that a “blue wave” had fizzled and that Republicans would retain control of the House. It was Fox News again, working off a proprietary data model, that made the correct call that Democrats would take the chamber.Fox News made the early call that Joseph R. Biden had won in Arizona in 2020.Fox NewsMarc Burstein, the executive in charge of ABC News’s election night coverage, said his team “will be very clear to explain that there could be red or blue mirages. We’re going to be patient.” Carrie Budoff Brown, who runs “Meet the Press” on NBC, said it was “everybody’s responsibility” to prepare audiences for an extended wait.Executives are optimistic that Americans will tune in — and stick around. Despite steep drops this year in viewership of CNN and MSNBC, the Big Three broadcast networks are planning to pre-empt their entire prime-time lineups for political coverage on Nov. 8.ABC, CBS and NBC will kick off their traditional election night coverage at 8 p.m. Eastern time and continue into the wee hours. In the past, those networks often shied away from midterm nights, shoehorning in an hour of coverage between police procedurals and the local news. Executives reasoned that, without a presidential race, audiences were less engaged. That changed in 2018 at the height of the Trump presidency, when ABC, CBS and NBC each devoted three prime-time hours to covering the midterms.On cable, the anchors are preparing for the usual marathon. “This is our Super Bowl,” said Bret Baier, the chief political anchor at Fox News.Fox News’s decision desk will again be run by Arnon Mishkin, the outside consultant who spearheaded its controversial Arizona call in 2020. Although Fox’s projection was eventually proved correct, it took several days for other news outlets to concur. Mr. Trump turned his wrath on the network in retaliation, and Fox News eventually fired a pair of top executives who were involved in the decision to announce the call so early.“What we want to be, always, is right — and first is really nice — but right is what we want to be,” said Mr. Baier of Fox. “In the wake of 2020, we’re going to be looking at numbers very closely, and there may be times when we wait for more raw vote total than we have in the past.”“It’ll be a lot smoother than that moment,” he added, referring to when he and his fellow co-anchors were visibly caught by surprise as their colleagues projected a victory for Mr. Biden in Arizona. Fox officials later ascribed the confusion to poor communication among producers.“I think,” Mr. Baier said, “we all learned a lot from that experience.” More