Comment by eitally
1 day ago
This is akin to Fox News arguing in court that it is, in fact, entertainment and not news, despite it's name.
1 day ago
This is akin to Fox News arguing in court that it is, in fact, entertainment and not news, despite it's name.
It's true though. All cable news is "entertainment news", not "news".
Nobody should have been getting their "news" from Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, or Rachel Maddow.
IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.
Absolutely- even as a lifelong leftie, I find the rhetoric on CNBC just as sickening as that on Fox.
I've (somewhat sardonically) wondered if they're both false flag operations. Imagine CNBC started with the idea "we'll parody the left to make them seem radical and unreasonable" but accidentally developed a huge following who didn't get the joke.
Do you mean MSNBC?
Thank you for pointing this out. Carlson and Maddow made nearly identical arguments in court and if both are not mentioned in the same breath, the speakers bias is instantly displayed to anyone who is educated on this topic.
> IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.
Agreed but the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News. The problem goes deeper. I despair.
Carlson's texts were wild, they proved that he knew he was spreading lies and did it anyway for views. That's why Fox settled with Dominion for $787 million dollars.
Meanwhile, OAN sued Maddow for calling them Russian propaganda and her lawyers responded by flexing, doubling down with receipts under oath. Signing up for consequences if they were wrong, and receiving none because they were correct.
So no, these are not the same, and anyone who argues that they are immediately reveals themselves to be partisan hacks.
4 replies →
> the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News
I think the 'average' person thinks of 'Entertainment News' as celebrity gossip, e.g., E! News[0] etc. Telling them the entertainment news/opinion/commentary they watch is not actually 'News' but is entertainment "news" doesn't compute
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E!_News
1 reply →
What Fox News argued was a bit more nuanced than that all of Fox News isn't news. Rather, "Fox successfully argued that one particular segment on Tucker Carlson’s show could only be reasonably interpreted as making political arguments, not making factual assertions, and therefore couldn’t be defamation."[1]
That feels like a fairly reasonable assertion for anybody watching Tucker Carlson.
[1] https://popehat.substack.com/p/fox-news-v-fox-entertainment-...
I know nothing about the case but isn't that a little like saying "look, we weren't lying, cause we never said we were saying the truth"?
Well, context matters in looking at defamation claims.
Let's say you were involved in a freak hunting accident and shot somebody, but you were never charged with any crimes.
If the Fox News "hard news" program (if such a thing exists) said "skrebbel is a murderer" that is more likely to be understood to be a statement of fact, asserting something in a legalistic sense. [IANAL, but I think even this is unlikely to be defamation, although there is a somewhat similar case where ABC settled with Donald Trump over saying he was "liable for rape"]
If somebody on Tucker Carlson Tonight said "You can't trust anything that skrebbel guy says, he's a murderer!" that is more likely to be understood as an opinion based on disclosed facts, not a fact. That person isn't asserting that you committed or were convicted of a specific crime of murder, but rather that you killed somebody and it might be your fault. On a show were people are arguing and exchanging opinionated views, viewers should understand that these things are opinions. And therefore that's not defamation, because it's an opinion.
1 reply →
Political argument, as such, is worthwhile insofar as it can cause me to reexamine my own preconceptions. Facts I can pick up almost anytime.
Isn't it also how, many years ago, Top Gear got away with a hit job on Tesla by claiming they're just an entertainment show, so they're not obligated to do honest or truthful reviews?