The
Simpsons’ scene opens with Homer Simpson sitting on the couch, flipping through
channels on his TV.
Homer:
“Hey, Marge, check this out! The news is reporting that aliens are invading Springfield.”
Marge
(skeptically): “I don’t know, Homer. That sounds like fake news to me.”
Homer
(rolling his eyes): “Ah, Marge, you and your obsession with truth. Don’t you
know that ratings are all that matter? Who cares if it’s real or not, as long
as people are tuning in!”
Just
then, Bart burst into the room, excitedly.
Bart: “Dad,
did you hear? The news is saying that a giant donut is rolling through
downtown!”
Homer
(jumping up): “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Let’s go check it out!”
Marge
(exasperatedly): “I can’t believe I’m the only one here who cares about
what’s actually happening in the world.”
Not
really, Marge. Lots of moms like you do care as well about what’s happening in
the world today. Like this one mom, I read some time ago in an article I’m
trying to retrieve from my aging memory. Her son got down to chat about the
day’s issues. Abreast of the current events, the mom exchanged views with her
son. Stunned, the son asked her mom
where she got her thoughts. Mom replied she picked them up from Fox News she
watched daily.
Nothing’s
wrong with that chat until one reads the headline about the White House saying
that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is not credible – the network’s star could be mom’s
favorite. The headline is about Carlson who claimed that the people who stormed
the Capitol to protest the 2020 US presidential election results were
“sightseers” -- based on his manipulated and selectively edited bits from out
of 41,000 hours of video.
Michael
Fanone, a former Washington, DC, police officer who sustained severe injuries
defending the Capitol on January 6, wrote that legal filings made public exposed
Carlson as a fraud. He wrote in the CNN article:
“Carlson’s
spin about January 6 is fabricated. I was there. I saw it. I lived it. I fought
alongside my brother and sister officers to defend the Capitol. We have scars
and injuries to prove it.”
One may
unearth the root of the matter from the following clashing statements
(underscoring mine) once said by two prominent personalities in the Fox News
organization:
“The RATINGS
are the lifeblood of the business.” (Rupert Murdoch, founder of Fox News’
parent company)
“[W]hen people start to question the TRUTH… I found that unsustainable.” (Chris Wallace, ex- Fox News Sunday host who left Fox)
RATINGS VS. TRUTH
The
ratings versus truth muddle is not a new phenomenon in the US media industry
which has become increasingly competitive in recent years with news
organizations vying for viewership and readership in an ever-changing
landscape. This has led to fierce competition for ratings and viewers as news
organizations strive to capture the attention of the public and remain relevant
in an increasingly crowded field.
Fired
up and not far from fanatical, the competition has been raging between conservative
news organization outlets, like Fox News, and liberal news outlets, like MSNBC.
The February 2023 Nielsen ratings ranked Fox News as the most-watched basic
cable network in a total day which averaged nearly 1.44 million total viewers.
MSNBC comes closely behind averaging 1.165 million total viewers.
However,
this competition can fall out at a cost, as news organizations are often faced
with the difficult decision of balancing ratings and viewership with the
journalistic values of accuracy and impartiality.
In the
case of Fox News, Dominion Voting System, a leading provider of election
technology, filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network alleging it
knowingly spread false information about Dominion’s involvement in the 2020
U.S. presidential election and contributed to the defamation of Dominion’s
reputation.
The
lawsuit accuses Fox News of promoting baseless conspiracy theories about
Dominion’s voting machines and alleging it was involved in a
vast-election-rigging scheme to ensure a victory for Joe Biden. These claims
were not supported by any evidence and were debunked by multiple independent
audits and investigations into the election results.
Meantime,
at the innermost recesses of the Fox News foxhole, Oliver Darcy of CNN reported:
“Fox News staffers are in the dark and vexed as the right-wing talk channel
remains ensnared in one of the worst scandals of its 26-year history – and
arguably the most consequential media scandal in modern American history.”
“People
are really shocked and disgusted,” the staffer said. “Even longtime staffers.
You would think after all we’ve been through nothing could surprise us. But
this is unprecedented.”
“We’re
all embarrassed,” some employees at Fox, feeling self-conscious about the
scandal, told Brian Stelter in Vanity who wrote this seeming handwriting on the
wall: “No one I spoke to expects Fox will come out of a trial as a stronger
brand.”
PH RATINGS-TRUMP-TRUTH VARIANT
“Sen.
Tillis Calls Tucker Carlson’s Jan 6 Revisionist History” (Now This News on
YouTube banner)
REPORTER:
“What do you think of, you know – Tucker Carlson… has had to downplay January
6, said it was, you know, ‘mostly peaceful chaos’ in his view, and said it was
not an insurrection… How do you feel about that?
SENATOR
TILLIS (R-NC): “I think it’s bull s**t.”
Here and
now in PH, the revision of Philippine History is raging and shown in movie
theaters all over the country. The public pulse seems to hold its breath while
watching which, between the two versions of history, could climb to the top
ratings of the box office and be proclaimed ultimately as the winner – the torchbearer
of the truth of PH History.
Excerpt
of The Manila Times’ Antonio Contreras’ column “The partisan weaponization of
art as propaganda” could give us a microcosm of how the Ratings-Trump-Truth muddle
is coming down in PH:
“[W]e
now see the production of art, particularly of films like “Martyr or Murderer”
and “Oras de Peligro,” unfold as implicated in the political contestations between
the anti-Marcos and pro-Marcos narratives. What is being affirmed is the political
nature of art as a weapon for propaganda. Despite the posturing of the
partisans, both movies are forms of propaganda, in the sense that they have
appropriated art to promote a particular partisan view.”
George
Santayana (The Life of Reason, 1905) said: “Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.”
If we,
Pinoys, could not even agree on what to remember from the past, are we
condemned to repeat it? Your guess on what is “it” is as good as mine.
One
final word. If one assesses a leader’s performance based on a survey rather than
the realities on the ground, then he puts into operation the ratings-trump-truth
modus operandi.
Has anyone gone through some nagging feeling that the time has come for some Pinoy, like Sen. Tillis, to say, “I think it’s bulls**t”?
Head collage photos courtesy
of Deadline & freepikdotcom
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