Media, Moguls and Democracy

Their successors who run the country39s technology and media giants appear to be doing their best to prove Brandeis dead right today Larry Elison buys Lanai chokes off local businesses evicts longtime residents and transforms the Hawaiian island into a private retreat Elon Musk who owns SpaceX proclaims he plans a city on Mars presumably including gated communities where homeowners one day can commute by rocket for as Musk put it a measly 100 thousand a ride Meanwhile back on earth Peter Thiel the tech world39s MAGA magnate pours tens of millions into the campaigns of extremist election deniers while grousing about the deficiencies of the democracy he is helping undermineInvite job candidates to apply live during the Media and Advertising Communityamp8217s Black Talent Outreach Week at MediaVillagecom and AdvancingDiversityorg October 1720 Apply for jobssubmit your resume hereLet39s stipulate that the financial flows from megarich donors and their companies to fund their chosen fantasies far right politicians and parties aren39t unique to the technology and media industries Neither is their sense of entitlement and political access In the Gilded Age the big shots bought political bosses communing with their acquisitions over brandy and cigars at elegant private clubs in New York and Chicago These days politicians and CEOs schmooze at Silicon Valley dinners where they share deep thoughts on policy over Sonoma39s finest wines while doubtless also ironing out pesky legislative detailsBrandeis would have recognized the symbiosis He was anything but a theoretician when it came to what the law allows in a democracy Having come of age when oil railroad and meatpacking monopolists claimed their strangleholds on the market as Godgiven rights he would see through the libertarian malarkey cloaking the selfinterest of the current high tech and social media billionaires The pioneer of factbased legal arguments Brandeis focused on the injustices produced by bigness whether the issue was government infringing on freedom of speech or companies denying workers their rightsWhat Brandeis might say if he were here about the modern media industry and its political role is worth pondering When it came to the news media of course he lived in a different world To be sure media barons like William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce owned powerful newspapers and influential magazines National networks that controlled radio then technology39s cutting edge also were growing fast But in the 1920s television was barely out of the lab and forget about the wired world Computers smart phones 247 instant connectivity and the rest of the Internet39s information age weren39t even a glimmer in a futurist39s eyeIt39s a good bet a Louis Brandeis transported to the 21st Century would be conflicted Take censorship Conservatives claim social media39s liberal machinations are silencing right wing voices despite their metasticizing mendacities such as Donald Trump39s stolen election lie Brandeis viewed the First Amendment as central to all other Constitutional rights He would argue the antidote to lies rests in the contest of ideas Or as he put it the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the quotcompetition of the marketquotBut Brandeis also recognized that political speech has its limits In 1919 writing in opposition to the court39s majority decision in a case involving the Espionage Act he joined Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes in an important dissenting opinion In fact their views laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court39s more liberal interpretation of free speech rights a decade later Nonetheless Brandeis39s dissent clearly allowed that the First Amendment doesn39t protect political expression that quotso imminently threatens immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the countryquotIn the wake of January 6th Brandeis would recognize something else the dangers facing the country in the actions of a media industry that has promoted proliferated and profited from just such quotimmanent threatsquot The multibilliondollar suits against Fox News for propagating the stolen election lie are the cases in point The suits allege the network and its primetime commentators knowingly promoted baseless claims that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic an election systems company threw the 2020 election The consequences the gullible in the audience haven39t just spun themselves up In addition to joining the January 6th insurrection they39re making serious threats of violence against elected leaders election officials and the democratic process itselfAs Brandeis might have said the facts speak for themselves Rupert Murdoch has watched his network39s relentless prevarication boost its bottom line for years The political impact of that success is obvious Tuning into its commentariat39s promotion of the big lie a majority of Republicans believe the democratic process is corrupt and the presidency stolen from Trump Fox isn39t Trump39s only propagandist of course One America Network and Newsmax on cable and Parler on line play their part to name just a few But whatever their lack of journalistic integrity none have melded mendacity and media power as profitablyAnd lawsuits or not Fox39s influence from monetizing the big lie is continuing to grow Consider CNN Fox39s liberal nemesis is now tucked inside Warner Brothers Discovery the merged entertainment giant created this year CNN39s new management has launched what any Chinese Communist would recognize a rectification campaign In addition to a new party line proclaiming an end to its liberal bias the network is nixing judgmental vocabulary such labeling Trump39s big lie well a lie on air To make the point to its cadre CNN39s new chief Chris Licht is defenestrating journalistsAmong the malfactors39 acts the recently departed Brian Stelter and John Harwood have called out both Fox39s propagandizing and Trump39s statements including reporting on what39s true and what39s false A pair of firings don39t make a political purge but the ousters aren39t the only twobyfours in the wind Mirroring the desire of Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslov who reportedly wants CNN to have a quotnonideologicalquot hue Licht has said the network is seeking more Republican guests and commentators That presumably will include past and present elected GOPers Facing CNN39s ideologically gelded crew the Republicans should feel comfortable peddling their prevarications about electoral fraud Trump39s stolen victory and whatever other fables come to mind without fear of questions that contradict their baseless claimsThat Zaslov and Licht hope their actions will boost CNN39s ratings and revenues long lagging Fox goes without saying But like the fouryearlong marriage of Murdoch39s news network and Trump39s White House flacks a look higher on the corporate food chain suggests politics as well as profits explain CNN39s rectification campaign The evidence with seeming clairvoyance cable media mogul John Malone a Warner Brothers Discovery board member described his vision of the future on CNBC last year when he discussed the then forthcoming entertainment giants39 merger the cable news competition and CNN39s fatequotFox Newsquot Malone said quothas followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news I mean some actual journalism embedded in a program schedule of all opinions And I think they39ve been relatively successful with a service that tries to distinguish news from opinion I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with and actually have journalists which would be unique and refreshingquotCombined with his whitewash of Fox39s propaganda machine Malone left no doubt where Warner Brothers Discovery39s most powerful board member thought the news network needed to goComments from others in media industry Csuites assert Malone isn39t the type who gets involved in pedestrian hirings and firings Of course not With 10 billion or so net worth why bother But the fact is Malone39s handson isn39t necessary A conservative multibillionaire his views are well known The United States quotneeds Fox News or something like it Because otherwise everything39s leftistquot he told the Financial Times in 2017 Referring to the Fox News network39s launch in 1996 and the then 20 percent stake held by TCI his company in Rupert Murdoch39s new venture Malone added quotI was the cofounder of the damn thingquotAnd that Justice Brandeis might say is the point As the technology and media industries consolidate the politics of their owners and corporate captains and its impact on American democracy carry a weight well beyond the big checks written to their candidates of choice A John Malone who lauds Fox News but is clueless about the damage to democracy done by the network as well as the continuing threat its emulators and others represent isn39t aloneIn its 2021 study quotThe Big Lie and Big Techquot the Carter Center put it this way quotIt is impossible to ignore the role of Facebook Twitter YouTube etc in the information ecosystem the scale and scope of harmful narratives on their platforms and the power they wield to blunt some of the harmful effects of misinformationquot However egregious social media39s failures the analysis is no less relevant to the owners of the news media todayClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

APPLY FOR JOBS | SUBMIT YOUR RESUME | REGISTER FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT

Media, Moguls and Democracy

Author

Publish date

Channel

Kent M. Harrington

APPLY FOR JOBS | SUBMIT YOUR RESUME | REGISTER FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT

Media, Moguls and Democracy

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Kent M. Harrington

Stay in the know with more from MediaVillage

TAGS:

Cookies