The Tribune

With Charlie Harper

DO YOU know what the letter “E” stands for, in ESPN?

It’s actually “Entertainment”. And that’s appropriate, because the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports” is first and foremost a major player in the entertainment business where the focus is on America’s great diversion – sports.

It has long been an article of faith that men could comfortably talk with each other about sports. For many years, this was also true of politics. The past 30 years or so have corroded that conversational staple, to the point where many friends simply avoid the topic.

And in the wake of the turbulent 1960s in America, women began the lengthy process of achieving equality on the playing fields and in legislative chambers and mayoral offices. So women now talk about and are interested in sports and are also often circumspect about politics unless they are sure of their interlocutors’ beliefs.

(For many years, the truth about female fans of the NFL and football in general was that they were mostly interested in the tight pants worn by the players. That might still be true, but you probably know more women who are actually interested in the game itself than you used to do).

So ESPN makes no secret of its entertainment function. It resolutely stays out of partisan politics.

On the news side of television, things are murkier. The traditional “legacy” networks of ABC, CBS and NBC still go to great lengths to distinguish between “The Evening News” and “Entertainment Tonight”. For them, there is a sharp line dividing the news and the entertainment divisions of their large corporations.

In the cable news world, there are some significant distinctions among the most watched outlets. MSNBC and now also CNN clearly fancy themselves as beacons of truth and light in the wake of and in anticipation of the potential return of Trump World. Sticking with mostly wonky and pedantic news readers and commentators, these liberal-leaning outlets aim to appeal to college-educated viewers who take themselves and the news seriously. These networks want a base of viewership composed of serious-minded citizens who believe they represent a solid political core that can steady the wavering American course in these tumultuous times.

Both CNN and MSNBC also despise the steady evolution of the Republican Party since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, from a traditional platform stressing strong defense, social and fiscal conservatism to a more openly populist advocacy for social reactionary-ness and resistance to change.

Yet a different network has dominated the field of cable news almost since its inception in 1996. That is the formidable Fox News Channel. FNC founder Rupert Murdoch, now 91 years old, is the Aussie-born and London-trained media mogul who was reportedly the inspiration for the role played by actor Jonathan Pryce in the 1997 James Bond thriller “Tomorrow Never Dies.” Leader of a family clan nearly as notorious as the Trumps in New York City, Murdoch was once married to Mick Jagger’s ex-wife and remains a model of persistent vitality and relevance for all men who aspire to live well into their 90s.

Murdoch learned the 24-hour news business when his Sky News entered the field in the United Kingdom in 1989. Previously, he had cobbled together a fourth “major” American TV network mostly by melding a collection of independent TV stations in major US markets. Murdoch’s Fox TV network had started in 1985, and its headline acquisition was the rights to broadcast the NFL’s National Conference games in 1993.

Pro football’s National Conference includes such giant and emerging American media markets as New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, Phoenix and Detroit. Ebullient former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden and ex-New York Giants stalwart Pat Summerall were the famous faces of Fox’s NFL coverage for decades.

All of this comingling of sports, entertainment and politics brings us to the events of the past week.

A huge scandal broke out over the weekend, with Murdoch and his FNC evening hosts at the centre of it all. You might have heard that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were all revealed as hypocritical, venal liars in private emails disclosed in a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against Fox News by a voting machine company called Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactures thousands of voting machines in use across the United States.

Trump and Fox claimed that the Dominion machines were flawed, had links to the dictatorial regime of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and were vulnerable to Democratic manipulation to alter election results.

Emails from all three of them, often to each other, illustrated that they were very well aware that the election results denials of Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani and attorney Sydney Powell were nonsensical. Even Murdoch testified that he thought the election “was on the up and up.”

The popular evening TV hosts and Murdoch all testified under oath as part of Dominion’s giant lawsuit against Fox, and their revelations unmasked them. Their own words added to the evidence that Dominion has gathered in support of its contention that those running the country’s most popular news network knew Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit.

According to numerous accounts in the New York Times and elsewhere, things started to go downhill for Fox in the ratings game after it had been the first network to declare Biden the winner in Arizona on election night. Trump needed to carry Arizona to retain a viable chance of re-election in the race, so when Fox made its call viewers and the White House felt that the network was conceding the election. Fox, of course, was correct in its call.

When Trump refused to concede and started attacking Fox as disloyal and dishonest, viewers began to switch to startup conservative TV rivals One America Network and Newsmax. Fox felt the ratings heat, and began to try to win back its large audience after ratings slumped after the election.

Talk about shooting the messenger bearing bad news. Fox, after uncharacteristically trying to actually live up to its “fair and balanced news” mantra in calling the Arizona race, likely learned its lesson. Never mix actual news with entertainment; it will cost you your viewership.

On Monday, as virtually every other news outlet breathlessly reported on Fox’s mounting legal difficulties, Hannity’s show aired as usual on Fox News at 9:00 p.m. This is a slick, fast-paced production. Glib and spontaneous but supremely authoritative, with every hair in his magnificent mane carefully in place, Hannity is a superb entertainer.

The thing is, he works for Fox News, not Fox Entertainment Tonight. Millions and millions of people actually believe what he says, though it has now been revealed that at least in the case of the 2020 election, he is wise enough not to believe it himself.

On Monday’s show, Hannity called upon Kentucky Senator Rand Paul; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy; Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton; Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and conservative commentator Mark Levin, host of a Fox programme called “Life, Liberty and Levin.”

These Republican stalwarts all offered views on Democratic Party lies about: the COVID-19 pandemic origin at a Wuhan, China lab; poisoned air in New York City after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; fraudulent claims about COVID vaccines, masks, mask mandates and Dr. Anthony Fauci; Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election; Hunter Biden and his laptop computer; the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the “left-wing mob echo chamber” that is the contemporary Democratic Party.

Not a word about the scandal swirling around the Fox News Channel and its leadership.

But these guests all distracted viewers from Fox’s own deception by itemizing alleged Democratic lies.

In other news accounts of the Fox depositions, Murdoch expressed ambivalence about pillow company founder Mike Lindell, a very public and vocal supporter of Trump and a kind of self-appointed election denier. Murdoch reportedly said it was “wrong” to allow this conspiracy theorist to appear on the Tucker Carlson show in January 2021 spouting incendiary rhetoric. “But he pays us a lot of money.”

During the Hannity show on Monday, there were two separate commercials airing from the same sponsor, unusual during a one-hour programme.

Both touted a “revolutionary new product” from Lindell’s pillow company.