#fakenews | #FOXnews It's an interesting headline from The Hollywood Reporter: "Fox News Argues Viewers Don't Assume Tucker Carlson Reports Facts". The detail is only barely more complex: Tucker Carlson doesn't have an obligation to investigate the truth of statements before making them on his show, and his audience doesn't expect him to report facts, a lawyer for Fox News told a New York federal judge on Wednesday .... .... Fox News' attorney Erin Murphy argued that Carlson repeatedly couched his statements as hypotheticals to promote conversation and that a reasonable viewer would know his show offers "provocative things that will help me think harder," as opposed to straight news. "What we're talking about here, it's not the front page of The New York Times," said Murphy. "It's Tucker Carlson Tonight, which is a commentary show.” While discussing what constitutes reckless disregard for the truth in regard to the actual malice standard, Judge Vyskocil asked Murphy, "Does somebody in Mr. Carlson's position have the duty of inquiry?" Murphy replied, "Not as to an actual malice standard. The Supreme Court could not be clearer." She argued malice isn't a negligence standard, and "failure to investigate" the truth of a statement doesn't suffice. The Fox News lawyer also argued that even if Carlson were aligned with Trump, that's not enough, and you can't reach the actual malice standard "just by saying someone has motive for lying." (Cullins↱) What makes it seem like a mess, of course, is the effort required to justify what FOX News might otherwise pretend needs no explanation. To the other, did the attorney intend to mean FOX News viewers in general, or Carlson's viewers in particular, don't expect facts? Let us be clear: A reasonable viewer knows Carlson does not report facts, but that does not necessarily describe Tucker Carlson viewers. Like this paragraph; if it reads like a sad joke, there is little to say, then, of the ones ommitted from the excerpt, which include one that opens, "To complicate matters". FOX News viewers are a curious range. To the other, didn't another one of their primetime hosts once acknowledge explicitly he knew he was misrepresenting the stories? That's the thing about the #trumpswindle: Are his voters marks, or ―... okay, yeah, they're marks, sure, but do they really think they're in on the grift? Don't get me wrong, we knew about the supremacism the whole time, and are not surprised when the people who tried to make excuses for them and pretend indignance on behalf of people they most certainly are not should be unashamed of being so harmfully wrong. In the end, though, it sounds about right. It's not just that Trump supporters have or need fake facts; rather, they no longer expect real ones. Well, if they ever did. ____________________ Notes: Cullins, Ashley. "Fox News Argues Viewers Don't Assume Tucker Carlson Reports Facts". The Hollywood Reporter. 17 June 2020. HollywoodReporter.com. 17 June 2020. https://bit.ly/3eponlX
