Traffic on Sixth Avenue passes by advertisements featuring Fox News personalities, including Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity. on the front of the News Corp building, March 13, 2019, in New York City.(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
The ongoing defamation suit launched by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for its coverage of the 2020 election has already resulted in the release of an eye-opening tranche of documents that give an unprecedented window into the inner workings of the TV network. As Nation D.C. bureau chief Chris Lehmann has noted, the major revelation is how completely beholden the network is to its right-wing base, to the extent of knowingly pushing false stories to please that audience.
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Chris and I talk about what the Fox News revelations say not only about the powerful media site but also the challenges facing both journalism and American democracy. The problem is not just that Fox News lies but that millions of viewers have grown addicted to those lies, so much so that they’ll look for any source to bolster their worldview. More than a media problem, this is a democracy problem—one with few obvious answers. Using the Dominion lawsuit as a starting point, Chris and I talk about the broader problem of a post-truth society.
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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.