Death of Roger Ailes Puffs Wind Into Sails of a False Meme: The Corporate Mainstream Media As Liberal

New York Times and "On The Media" Coverage of the death of Roger Ailes allowed Ailes to make specious argument from the grave, in the end serving the financial interests.

The death of Roger Ailes could have been an occasion to note that the presence of Fox News on the corporate news spectrum (like the growing Sinclair Broadcast conglomerate and others) moves the already corporatist and hence conservative slant of mainstream media somewhat further to the right.

Instead, the death of Mr. Ailes was used to deceptively buttress the notion that Mr. Ailes himself worked hard to promote, that corporately owned mainstream media instead of being conservatively and routinely supportive of vested monied interests, is, instead, “liberal” or “progressive.”  The eulogies making this post mortum assessment don’t promote the Fox News Network that Mr. Ailes helped birth as “fair and balanced,” per the motto Mr. Ailes affixed to the network, the assessments instead make Mr. Ailes false fact practices seem almost “fair” or at least part if a fair game because it was “balancing.”

Somehow as they engage in this misleading-slight-of-hand the pundits manage to sound judiciously sober.

What am I talking about? . .

 . .  I am talking about the the impression you would likely have gotten from reading of Mr. Ailes death in the New York Times, which styles itself as the paper of record though hardly being reliable in that regard.

 . . . More disconcerting was hearing commentary on Mr, Ailes’ death from “On The Media,” a WNYC based public radio program the exists to provide and overarchingly accurate meta-perspective on the nation’s media generally.  It’s sad because I would normally recommend “On the Media” for being reliable in meeting higher standards.

I don’t think I am being too harsh here.

Before I get to the capper from “On the Media” here is what you could read in the New York Times:

•      Roger Ailes: The Man Who Mined a Divided America (The Fox News creator made a fortune creating a cultural safe space for Americans pining for the way things were), by Jim Rutenberg, May 18, 2017

    . .  Roger Ailes saw a divided country but an undivided news media. And he set out to change it.

    . . . Mr. Ailes built a network, the Fox News Channel, that would speak to and for those Americans he said were being ignored and disrespected. . .

    * * *

    His network . .  presenting news with an approach he called "fair and balanced," an indictment of the rest of the news media as excessively liberal.

•     Roger Ailes, Who Built Fox News Into an Empire, Dies at 77 (Mr. Ailes exerted wide influence on American politics with his conservative Fox News, only to be undone by sexual harassment allegations.), By Clyde Haberman, May 18, 2017

"If we look conservative," he said, "it's because the other guys are so far to the left." In his mordant humor, CNN stood for Clinton News Network and CBS for Communist Broadcasting System. What Fox News did, he said, was apply a necessary corrective.

* * * *

Almost immediately he called on Mr. Murdoch, who longed for a news network of his own and shared Mr. Ailes's belief that existing news organizations were far too liberal. They created Fox News in fairly short order.

You get the same impression from the video news version the Times posted- Roger Ailes: Polarizing Media Mastermind, May 18, 2017.

“On the Media” much more explicitly described the corporately owned media Ailes was purportedly providing a balance against was actually liberal. progressive, not conservative.

•     A Bill of Indictment, May 19, 2017

FOX News Channel was founded on . . .  one great truth, that mainstream news media were voices of liberalism, . .  a journalistic mentality that largely overlaps with progressive thinking. Reform, truth to power, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, liberal democracy is the consensus . . .

In one fatal summary valedictory “On The Media” framed the entire existence of Fox News exactly as the sort of he-said-she-said contest that OTM normally inveighs against.

Instead of suggesting that Ailes genius was an atunement to the voice of a forgotten and neglected populace why didn't any of these summings up report on the money that catapulted Fox into existence in the mid 1990s before it gain traction with with manipulative falsehoods?

It is worth noting that Fox reportedly was paying cable television providers $11 a subscriber to put it on the air when it launched rather than the convention, which was the reverse, for the cable providrs to pay the content provdiers.  See: Bold grab for subs: Murdoch offers $11 to carry Fox News. (News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to launch Fox News channel) May 6, 1996 and Media: Entrepreneurs race big cable companies to get new cable services to viewers, by Geraldine Fabrikant, May 6, 1996.

$11 per subscriber plus the forgone spread that would normally have been paid to a provider instead is quite a substantial portion of the overall average cable bill.  I don't know what it was in 1996, (bills have been increasing rapidly in recent years) but in 2001 the average cable bill was reportedly $48.00.

Consider the Fox News tactic of paying to be broadcast with how much other networks want to be paid their retransmission fees. In 2013 CBS went off the air in major cities because of the retransmission fees it demanded it be paid.  In March of 2010 a standoff between Disney’s ABC and cablevision affected the broadcast of the Oscars that year.

The political slant of corporately owned media media is a problem because it is corporately owned.  The slant of corporately-owned Fox News is likewise a problem, and that is similarly because of the money behind it.

Big Changes!: And The More Things Change, The More They Are Changing In the WRONG Direction- GLOBAL WARMING and INCREASING WEALTH INEQUALITY

The news didn’t wait to come out on the day of Mr. Trump’s inauguration (if that’s what you were expecting): Last year we got the news on January 20th.  This year we got the news today. . . .

Last year, on January 20th, we learned that 2015 had set the record for the world’s warmest year ever, eclipsing 2014, which, in turn, had been the world’s warmest year ever.

This year we learned today: 2016 is the world’s warmest year ever.  That makes it three years in succession that the temperature has set escalating records.

When this was announced last year, we were told that the odds were starkly against the phenomenon of "two back-to-back record years," that they were only 1 out of 1,500 unless. . .  climate change with the ever present prospect of continually increasing temperatures is undeniably here. -

. . . so what are the odds of THREE successive years of annual increase?  What’s worse is that the New York Times reports that record-setting figures of 2016 were “trouncing” those set a year earlier.

Last year, National Notice looked at this frightful record setting with respect to our climate and connected it to another dismal trend in setting records: News had come out that world wealth inequality had increased to the point that just 62 of the world’s richest were as wealthy as as half of world's population.  See: Hot News Connection: 62 Billionaires Now Own More Than Half The Planet's Population And 2015 Far Outpaced 2014 as Planet's Hottest Ever Year (January 23, 2016).

Well, this week similarly brought news that last year’s record of wealth inequality has been trounced by this year’s record as well.  Now just eight individuals have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population:  World's 8 Richest Have as Much Wealth as Bottom Half, Oxfam Says, by Gerry Mullany, January 16, 2017

Eight individuals (including Michael Bloomberg, who was hardly even on the map of wealth before becoming NYC mayor)?. .

. . .  Only six years ago in 2010 this power of holding as much wealth as half the world's population was dispersed among 388 multi-billionaires.

Are these racing increases in wealth inequality related to the fast racing increases in climate change?  Yes, they are.  That was exactly what I wrote and explained when I wrote last year in National Notice about those records being broken.. . .  Consider this just an update about how increasingly out of hand the situation is getting.

BTW: In a related vein, if you want to read about how one of the world’s most bizarrely wealthy man is buying a central destination library from the New York Public Library, which will be snuffing out its major science library just when what we need to know about climate change is vanishing from the libraries, there is a Noticing New York article you should read.

Hot News Connection: 62 Billionaires Now Own More Than Half The Planet’s Population And 2015 Far Outpaced 2014 as Planet’s Hottest Ever Year

Headlines and accompanying graphs that document significant progressions of some unwelcome change- Are hey related

This week brings two jaw-dropping headlines accompanied by graphs that document significant progressions of some unwelcome change.  With the news of each, arriving together, one must wonder about the possible relationships between the two. .

The Guardian reports that, according to a new report by Oxfam, our accelerating inequality means that the richest 62 people in the world are now as wealthy as half of world's population.  What's more, 1% of people on the world own more wealth than other 99% of the population combined.  See: Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world's population, says Oxfam- Charity says only higher wages, crackdown on tax dodging and higher investment in public services can stop divide widening, by Larry Elliott, 18 January 18, 2016.

More than half the world's wealth held by just 1% and just 62 people owning as much as half the world's population?  If you believe that we live in a world where money is power and probably increasingly so, then an exceedingly small set of individuals hold an awful lot of power.  As for how fast this situation is getting worse, the Oxfam report tells us that only five years ago in 2010 this power of holding as much wealth as half the world's population was dispersed among 388 multi-billionaires.

On this side of the Atlantic the New York Times has just reported that 2015 was earth's warmest year by the widest margin on record; outstripping 2014, the previous record setter.  This means we have "two back-to-back record years," the odds against which are 1 out of 1,500 unless. . .  Yes, worsening climate change with the prospect of annually increasing temperatures is undeniably here.  See: 2015 Far Eclipsed 2014 As Wordls Hottest Year, Climate Scientists Say / 2015 Was Hottest Year in Historical Record, Scientists Say, by Justin Gillis January 20, 2016.

Climate change is definitely here.  It is phenomenally destructive to our planet and yet the world is doing very little about it.  Why?

The Oxfam report on the increasing concentration of wealth tells us a little bit about climate change:

. .  while the poorest people live in areas most vulnerable to climate change, the poorest half of the global population are responsible for only around 10 percent of total global emissions. Meanwhile, the average carbon footprint of the richest 1 percent of people globally could be as much as 175 times higher than that of the poorest 10 percent.

Another Oxfam report cited in a footnote to the above amplifies that, "The richest 10% of people produce half of Earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions,"  See:  World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions, says Oxfam,  the Guardian, December 2, 2015.

Probably more important than the correlation between wealth accompanied by disproportionate consumption, and therefore much larger carbon footprints, is that the poorest in the world are the most vulnerable to the costs of climate change.  That's exceedingly relevant because, if money is power, then those worst affected by climate change are those least powerful to compel civilization to adjust and chart a better course.

It is clear that large carbon footprints and excessive consumption can be laid at the doorstep of the wealthiest, even citing the those amongst the tippy-top 1% with alarmingly cavalier consumption.  A recent hard-to-believe report, "Elite Emissions: How the Homes of the Wealthiest New Yorkers Help Drive Climate Change” by the Climate Works for All coalition concluded that with NYC buildings being responsible for "70% of New York City’s emissions" that generate the "greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming . . a mere two percent of the city’s one million buildings use 45% of all of the city’s energy."  See: New York Post- Rich New Yorkers' homes are ruining our air, by Hana R. Alberts, November 20, 2015.

Using the Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list to investigate The Elite Emissions report was able to present a list of  buildings with their high energy consumption figures.  It includes buildings with the homes of those ranking among the top 62 wealthiest people in the world, among them: The apartment building housing the home of David H. Koch (740 Park Avenue- the building made infamous by a book and an Alex Gibney documentary about it,) Alice Walton (515 Park Avenue in a a $25 million apartment), and Donald Trump (721 5th Avenue- "Trump Tower").  David Koch, along with is equally wealthy brother Charles, are, in whatever order you want, the sixth and seventh wealthiest multi-billionaires in the world.  Alice Walton is the eleventh.  Christy Walton and Jim Walton are higher up the list than Alice, right after the Kochs.  Climate science denying Donald Trump, with only an estimated $4.5 billion to his name, is way down the list of the world's wealthy at #405 with only a fraction of their wealth.

Of much more concern than whatever may be the aggregate personal carbon emissions are of these particular, exceedingly wealthy individuals, is the effect these individuals have on what systemically contributes to and establishes the societal infrastructure for climate change throughout the world.

An article in the New York Times wrote about how the richest multi-billionaires are now so wealthy that they are forming their own political parties: How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties,
by Jim Rutenberg, October 17, 2014.  Certainly, many already perceive the Tea Party, in view of its funding, as being essentially the party of Koch.

Of course, there is very visibly also Trump.  And, now, apparently, goaded or "galled by" the success of the relatively small-change Trump in this election cycle, Michael Bloomberg (multi-billionaire #14 on the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest) has disclosed renewed ambitions to run for Unite States President.  Mr. Bloomberg's credentials are environmentally dubious despite a lot of PR to the contrary.  Endorsed fracking he was  then appointed `Climate Change Envoy’ by the United Nations.  Bloomberg is looking to run as an independent candidate declaring that he would spend "at least $1 billion" of his estimated $35.5 billion fortune to run.  Mr. Bloomberg reportedly doesn't like the Wall Street-critical Sanders and 'laments' what he considers Hillary Clinton’s "lurch to the left" to keep pace with Sanders. See: Bloomberg, Sensing an Opening, Revisits a Potential White House Run, by Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, January 23, 2016.

Trump, Koch and most particularly Bloomberg present examples of the cycle of how money and power reinforce each other.  Some may regard Bloomberg's $1 billion proposed to be spent on his campaign, or the cash similarly splashed around Trump as expenditures.  Others may view it as an investment that will more that repay itself no matter who is elected.  When Bloomberg declared his interest in politics to launch his career he was not exceptionally wealthy, but when he completed his third term as mayor he was, having for a time become the richest man in the city.  In the process he far outpaced the wealth increase of most others on Forbes list.

From Noticing New York: Two charts overlaid, showing how Bloomberg's increasing annual wealth makes the increasing annual average wealth of the rest of the "Forbes 400" look virtually flat by comparison

   
The question is what these multi-billionaires do with the huge influence they wield. In theory climate change will adversely affect everybody.  Indeed, we have heard some billionaires tell us they are mobilizing efforts to do what they think should be done to curtail climate change.  See: Bill Gates forms billionaires' super league against climate change- With the COP21 conference starting today in Paris, wealthy investors including Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg team up to give governments a helping hand, by Adam Gale Monday, 30 November 2015 and Top 10 Billionaires Saving the Planet, by Sarah Backhouse, August 21, 2015.

That doesn't necessarily mean that one should agree with the solutions the multi-billionaires promote, or trust their motivations.  One reason to be skeptical about the solutions that get fielded when multi-billionaires mobilize is if you believe that, as we grapple with climate change, there won't be one "silver bullet" top-down solution.  Instead there will be a "mosaic of solutions" generated myriad fashion mostly from the bottom up. What's more Jane Jacobs ("The Economy of Cities") suggested that one upside to large populations is the multiplication of individuals and groups who can innovate to advance society and improve what we do.  If that's a theory you subscribe to, then leaving the half the world's population high and dry of a share of resources with which to participate negates that advantage.

Whatever good some billionaires like Tom Steyer may do with respect to climate battles like Mr. Steyer's opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline there is all the weight of what is being done to counteract their better efforts.  Steyers is way down the Forbes list of the wealthy (#1190) and not even a multi-billionaire, with only an estimated $1.61 billion to his name.

We find this assessment of the fight between our financial giants at Bill Moyers' Moyers and Company site:

Fred Wertheimer, a long-time advocate of campaign finance reform, tells the Times that a political world where billionaires set the agenda is not a democracy. "This is about as far away as we can get from `representative government,'" he said. And when it comes to politically active billionaires, it would seem that there are more who profit from inaction on climate change than who want to see that action happen - not a good sign for those who agree with Steyer's politics.

See: Bill Moyers- The Billionaires on Both Sides of Climate Change, by John Light, February 19, 2014.

The Koch brothers are the prime example of such "politically active [multi-]billionaires."   With their combined wealth that exceeds that of any individual on the plant they are politically active, spending to fuel climate science denial and inaction about how we are raising the temperature of the earth and they are also fighting public health care (probably it's actually the same thing).

It is not just the first 62 multi-billionaires who are as wealthy as half the world.  What is remarkable is how many more multi-billionaires are up there on the Forbes list in the top sliver of the 1% fraction that holds more than half world's wealth.  You would probably not have to go far down the list before you had collected yet another small set of outrageously wealthy individuals who also collectively own and control more wealth than the poorest half of the world's population. The frightening thing is that many of those multi-billionaires also are either joining the Kochs in stymieing effective measures to address climate change, or they are doing little to prevent it.

For example at #100 on the list we find Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of the Blackstone Group, with an estimated personal wealth of $9.8 billion who lives in the same hugely energy inefficient building as David Koch.  (Great as Schwarzman's wealth is, it is just 8.76% of the combined wealth of the two Koch brothers, and far less than the $121.7 million which is the estimated combined fortune the three Waltons command.) Along with promoting fracking and a list of other objectionable activities, Mr. Schwarzman has been involved in selling off New York City Libraries.  The Oxfam report on escalating income inequality calls for a "three pronged approach" to counter that trend, one prong of which is "higher investment in public services."  Certainly the disinvestment of selling libraries (with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's approval) is the opposite of of such investment and what is otherwise called for if we are to start restoring equality.  The other two prongs called for by the report: are "a crackdown on tax dodging" and "higher investment in public services; and higher wages for the low paid.". .

. . .  As for tax dodging, Mr. Schwarzman has been famously aggressive in promoting what are viewed as dodgy tax loopholes. Mr. Schwarzman may be low on the Forbes list in terms of his wealth, but Forbes has compensatingly ranked him higher on another of its lists:  On the Forbes list of those with power in the world Forbes ranks Schwarzman as number 62.

It seems that Mr. Schwarzman has predilections to tilt the playing field on at least two fronts: Against those who could be trying to catch up and close the gap with him, and secondly, in favor of the tax system advantages that will continue to move him even further ahead.

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Clinton, has a new book out, "Saving Capitalism For the Many, Not the Few," that addresses the escalating income inequality we see in the United States.  Median national household income is declining (after adjusting for inflation, an American family earns less in 2013 than it did in 1989) while productivity gains from economic growth collect at the top.  Mr. Reich tells us to remember these recent changes are not because of economics per se, but because of the way that the rules of the market are being written by those with wealth and power, people like Mr. Schwarzman.  . .

. . . Studying the law of property and property ownership in law school and urban planning school I was taught that the rules of property ownership are formulated based, in part, on concepts of what will ultimately benefit society, husband its resources and forestall waste.  The current decimation of our environment while wealth concentrates in the hands of a very few who mostly encourage this devastation or who sit idly by should be viewed as evidence that the rules we have now are not working and need to be rewritten.

Lesson Of Election: The Big Money Lost! . . . Or Maybe That's Pretty Far From Perfectly True

Which Times article to believe?  No effect from money or a shift to the right?

People still haven’t got it sorted out: One way you know . . . conflicting headlines in the same edition of the New York Times!  Everybody’s busy proclaiming victory or trying to deny actual defeat.  Fact is, they're both right.

One perfectly good take on this election is that the big money unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision lost.  Upper left hand of its front page the Times today chose to run a story making exactly this point: Little to Show for Cash Flood by Big Donors, by Nicholas Confessore and Jess Bidgood, November 7, 2012.

After what the Times notes was the “most expensive election in American history drew to a close this week with a price tag estimated at more than $6 billion” it comments that “the nation’s megadonors returned home with lighter wallets and few victories.”  Indeed, just as the Times observes, “President Obama will return to the White House in January, and the Democrats have strengthened their lock on the Senate.”

But contrast that with the message conveyed by other articles the Times featured in the same edition.  One picture is worth a thousand words and the message bolstered by Times data graphics proclaimed “most counties shifted toward the Republican side in Tuesdays’s vote, partly reversing large steps to the left in the 2008 election” and “Counties Blue and Red Move to the Right.”   See: Over the Decades, How States Have Shifted, How Obama Won Re-election, Obama Was Not as Strong as in 2008, but Strong Enough.

The Times supplies the above, illustrating a shift to the right, in the form of an animation at their site

And let’s not forget that the House of Representatives, seized by the Republicans in 2010, remained in Republican control.  So Karl Rove’s perspective reported in that first mentioned front page Times article is very important: Without the huge amount of spending by the megadonors, “the race would not have been as close as it was.” *  Among other things the Democrats might have taken back the House.  And this doesn’t even begin to consider what the effect of big money might have been in smaller, more easily bought local elections.

(* Notwithstanding, this philosophical point of view, Rove reportedly melted down on the Fox News set the night of the election unwilling to admit Obama had won Ohio.)

So if there is solace to be taken that the influence of big money can be fought and counteracted, that isn’t to say that its influence isn’t mightily felt.

With big money in play this election was fought very strategically on both sides.  It’s already been mentioned that Republicans “have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.”  That Republicans have won presidential elections while losing the vote is an indication that money was spent strategically with the most important goal being the winning of the election, not the winning of the hearts and minds of the populace.  But Obama was also willing to play strategically and for a while it was viewed as possible that Obama might have won the all-important electoral college without winning the popular vote.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that with a little campaigning in North Carolina, a state the Obama campaign apparently wrote off due to importance of electoral collage math, Obama probably would have shifted a lot of voters in his favor, adding to his popular vote and electoral collage tallies.

Big money also probably forced the Democrats to play a strategic game concentrating on keeping a balance of power with majority in the Senate rather than devote resources to taking back the House.

How did big money assert itself in this election?  The best analysis will come in time.  Since much of the money invested in political candidates now stays secret, utilizing 501(c)(4) organizations, organizations that are ostensibly formed for charitable and public purposes but these days are abused for political purposes, it may take a long time to figure out whose money was going where, notwithstanding that there are some donors, like Sheldon Adelson, who actually seem to like to attract attention to the money they are giving as well as to whom it's going.

Before we discount the influence of big money too quickly let’s remember that Romney was the Republican candidate because he was the product of the big money.  In the Whac-a-Mole Republican primaries it was the powerful effect of Romney money that was whacking down that long string of anyone-but-Romney alternative candidates.  Speaking of "anybody but Romney," the phrase can be inverted and turned to say that analysts keeping their eye on the money never gave anybody but Romney a chance of being the Republican candidate, consistently and for more than a full year in advance.

The irony is that the other potential candidates taking on Romney were those favored by those in the populace stirred up by the Tea Party.  Consider that the Tea Party, while it masquerades as grass roots, is actually a top-down movement.  It is top-down and well-funded because it is largely the creation of big money.  It served to siphon off and engage a lot of the national anger coming to the surface about privileged elites that would have been channeled more rationally in a direction like the Occupy Wall Street movement.  While most of the establishment's big money wanted Romney, the big money funding the Tea Party couldn’t and didn’t tightly control the free-for-all preferences emerging for for candidates like Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich.

What the donors behind the Tea Party have been buying with their focus on extremism and their picking off of moderates is an intransigent resistance to compromise, leftward movement, and any sort or rational debate and discussion about issues.  Gridlock is acceptable, likely desirable, to them.  Their strategies of creating new out-lying poles of "political" thought parallel the strategies of those spending heavily to create doubt about climate change and to remove from office politicians willing to take steps to deal with it.  This is not surprising because a lot of the money to fund the Tea Party and to fund creation of doubt concerning the scientific conclusions on climate change is actually coming from the same places.

I recently offered a teaser which I will offer here again: This may be the last presidential election where the fossil fuel industry will ever be able to spend this kind of money to buy politicians.  Why?  I’ll have to set that aside and deal with it in a future National Notice article.

Provided that big money is disabled in the future the shift to red that money bought in this election is likely to be counteracted by the changing demographic that favor Democrats in future years.  That's provided that the money, being done with this election, doesn't figure out how to buy new set of voters in the future.

Was big money also spent on the Democratic side of the election?  Of course.  There was some balancing out.  Big money on the Democratic side helped defeat big money of the Republican side, but there was much more of it on the Republican side.  Big money unleashed in politics was exactly what Republican strategists wanted when they pursued the Citizens United case.

There are those who will correctly point out that because there was big money spent on the Democratic side we should expect Obama will inevitably behave with a certain deference to the establishment entities where the money came from as a result.  True, but by virtue of that analysis we can also expect Obama to be less beholden to the Wall Streeters who abandoned him this time around and less beholden to fossil fuel industry that threw so much support to Romney.

Another set of data maps in today's Times showing a shift to red

Did the big money win?  Yes, in part: The House is still Republican.  The Republican’s are proclaiming that the results of the election mean that the people of the United State don’t want higher taxes on the rich.  If that is believed or treated as true that's a win for them.  Also, as mentioned in the last National Notice article, it’s the Republicans in the House of Representatives who won’t even talk about their positions about climate change.

Yes, big money is having a lot of influence.