Fox and the Big Lie

August 31, 2021 5:48 AM

Australian Broadcasting Corp's superb doc -- How Fox News promoted Donald Trump’s propaganda and helped destabilise democracy in the United States of America. Part 1 Part 2
posted by dobbs (13 comments total)

Now do Scomo, ABC. The PM is linked to some of the most batshit insane Christian fundamentalists in Australia and I'm getting worried.

Even the Australian Christian Lobby, the ACL, was once a benign who actually went to church (only 8% of Aussies go to church and "No Religion" is the biggest plurality of a religious group on the census) and hated shopping on Sunday, but are now starting to turn down the dark road of their American cousins.

The Australian Christian Lobby has called on its supporters not to “fear death” and instead push state governments to end COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions.

In an email to members on Friday night, managing director Martyn Iles said the coronavirus was here to stay and that he was “not afraid to face the inevitable”.

Things are worse back home because the Murdoch press is still some of the most powerful in the country. It's not just Fox News. We have Sky "News" basically turning into conservative nutjob 24/7 with Alan Jones succumbing to brain worms whereas he used to be a loud mouth hothead, the papers they own in every major city (except Perth) puts people like Andrew Bolt front and center to run the reactionary white guy who thinks he's espousing common sense, not to mention the editors who run cover for whatever god awful thing the coalition is doing or rail against how Labor tries to make things better for people.

Rupert Murdoch must be planning to freeze himself once his soul sheds its mortal form because if there is an afterlife it's going to be hot af where he's going to end up.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:19 AM on August 31, 2021 [18 favorites]

It's unnerving how much Michael Wolff looks like a younger Rupert Murdoch in this.
posted by chavenet at 7:16 AM on August 31, 2021

only 8% of Aussies go to church and "No Religion" is the biggest plurality of a religious group on the census

It'll be interesting to see if this is still the case on this year's census, after a near-quarter century of conservative rule, with the outer suburbs of Australian cities facing a massive expansion of pentecostal churches which often control the local Liberal (i.e., conservative) Party branch, and with a generation of kids who grew up with evangelical school counsellors as the only allowed source of help.
posted by acb at 7:17 AM on August 31, 2021 [3 favorites]

Yeah. The ascendancy of Hillsong is kind of terrifying.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:25 AM on August 31, 2021 [6 favorites]

I've seen it suggested that Thomas Midgley Jr, inventor of leaded gas and CFC aerosol propellants, was the single most destructive individual organism the earth has produced.
I think Murdoch may prove to have been worse.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:56 AM on August 31, 2021 [20 favorites]

Don't forget Milton Friedman.
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on August 31, 2021 [4 favorites]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outfoxed
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:23 AM on August 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Excited to watch! As with all these documentaries, I’m sure it will mostly reconvert the converted, but every step helps.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:16 AM on August 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

starting to turn down the dark road of their American cousins

Why was this not anticipated by the Jedi? (0.37% of Australians)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:32 AM on August 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

this viewer did not hate seeing chris stirewalt get all choked up about the terrible burden of informing his sons he lost his job with the seditious propaganda outfit (having, until now, been unaware of him, specifically, as a person with a face and a name -- i was aware of the arizona election call by fox). i don't believe that joblessness is shameful or that idleness is a sin; tend to recognize those attitudes as shibboleth creeds of conservatives and doctrinaire christians. and i take this guy to be a conservative journalist, if not propagandist, likely taking pious postures (without regard to sincerity) out of mere adherence to conservative cant. i presume that he has wholeheartedly endorsed and published supporting this view that joblessness is shameful through his career, including his time at fox. so here he is, positioned as the guy who did the right thing, recounting his perspective on a cavalcade of horrors and journalistic and presidential malfeasance. he abhors ailes' sexual harassment; he knows that president t[nope!] behaved worse than nixon['s watergate]; he smirks at the camera and says "i'm not going to talk about" any rumored orders from fox executives to change the arizona call, when asked. and when he gets fired (for not doing a wrong thing)? he cries about this shame. and not just the shame of being unemployed, but the shame of informing his sons that he is unemployed, implicating the whole additional range of manly conservative shibboleths. oh and apparently got another gig within a month.
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:14 AM on August 31, 2021 [5 favorites]

savor of dude's choked-up shameful own-petardery does not outweigh great cost of being exposed again to president horrorshow's election-night speech & other utterances, nor to sydney powell, however brief and uselessly. for that (and howard kleinhendler), last week's opinion and order by district court for the eastern district of michigan's judge parker in the case of king v. whitmer (a head of the so-called kraken, if i understand aright), sanctioning all attorneys involved on behalf of plaintiffs by requiring them to pay defendants legal fees (and obtain continuing legal education) _and_ referring each to the attorney grievance committee of their respective state bar(s) for investigation of the featured misconduct, is a nice palate cleanser and a rollicking read.
posted by 20 year lurk at 3:07 PM on August 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Of course, Fox News issued some flimsy legal threats to the ABC about this. Amusingly, they seem to hinge on whether the ABC was being "fair and balanced".
posted by pompomtom at 6:18 PM on August 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

...and "fair and balanced" is simply not a matter of law.

In an email to members on Friday night, managing director Martyn Iles said the coronavirus was here to stay and that he was “not afraid to face the inevitable”.

Just today I finished a week in Twitter jail for responding to something like this with "Fine, go die. Just leave us out of it."
posted by rhizome at 6:25 PM on August 31, 2021 [3 favorites]