Fixed Noise’s No. 1 fan also America’s gravest national-security risk

Fox News is prepared to destroy America’s democratic traditions if it will help its most important and most dedicated daily viewer—Garrett Graff, Wired

[ this post has updates below ]

Propaganda is big business.

Back in the Obama days, Fixed Noise was merely shouty-but-profitable parasite on American Democracy. The news channel lie factory relentlessly demonized President Obama, members of his cabinet, his actions and his successor—all to get Rupert Murdoch’s preferred candidate installed and satiate addicted viewers. (Seriously, look it up: Fox News is an addiction.)

Fixed Noise’s signal-boosting Tea Party “resistance” to Obama, for example, lent enough credence to the “movement” that Very Angry Republicans became redundant understatement. Those VARs circa 2010-16 are seditious Q-MAGAs of present day and/or Fixed Noise contributors because after one Fs up government one needs a soft landing. Looking at you, Paul Ryan and Jason Chaffetz.

Tea Party & Performative Outrage

Teabaggers were eerily silent in the face of Donald’s gift to 1% via Trump’s tax scam which, as of this writing, shifted huge swaths of cash to the richest assholes in America and ballooned U.S. deficits. Government waste, deficits and largess were core Tea Party religious principles but that deafening silence proves they’re all a lying sack of GOP garbage doing faux-conservative cosplay. That was and is Fixed Noise’s raison d’etre: signal-boosting frauds.

You’d think with FNC’s fawning they’d at least have modicum of consistency in present day.

LOL, about that.

“Simply put, today’s tea party probably wouldn’t exist—at least not at its level of influence and notoriety—without the integral role Fox [so called] News played in promoting the first round of tea party events during Obama’s first year in office,” wrote Ben Dimiero for Media Matters.

Fixed Noise was so hysterical/desperate depicting Teabaggers as legit-grassroots insurgency they ran incorrect video footage and got rightly lampooned for it on The Daily Show. FNC is a fraudulent scheme run by charlatans to make Murdoch’s family richer.

War with Iran, disinformation & nat-sec destabilization

Fixed Noise is just as phony, lying and ideological as its Teabagger-marketing benefactors. Tea Party’s alt-reality is the same fiction spun by Fox which is the same Obummer-erasing hallucinations from Donald Trump; all one awful operation.

Tea Party’s alt-reality is the same fiction spun by Fox which is the same Obummer-erasing hallucinations from Donald Trump; it’s all one awful operation

What’s more, though, is FNC has become official state TV playing to an addicted audience—including that Audience of One. And since that viewer—Fat Orange Nixon—is himself a national-security nightmare, it only follows that Fixed Noise is, too.

But the truth is far FAR worse. Let’s take Wired’s great reporting a step further to see what’s happening at FoxLand™ from when Trump was installed by Russia in 2017 to present day, where war with Iran seems all-but certain (tweets followed by related explainer):

– FNC had been under investigation for mail and wire fraud as recently as early 2017. What happened? Haven’t heard a peep on that case and it smells like Barr might’ve killed it along with other cases he strangled in the bathtub. Let’s not forget Barr had tea with Murdoch; and for what reason? Why would our nation’s attorney general need to meet with Fixed Noise oligarch Rupert Murdoch FFS? (Some say Shep Smith’s resignation was related to that meeting.) Billionaire-funded crooked-media company slavishly fawning over politicians who in turn make investigations go away? That’s a National Security Risk oh and probably illegal—for FNC and those who obstructed justice

– Attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing—frequent guests across many FNC shows—were working “off the books” with Rudy Giuliani to dig up Biden dirt (Trump was impeached by the House for it). This news was broken by… Chris Wallace on Fox News Political Entertainment Channel, which is a sign that a few rogue truths get told on a network devoted to fiction. Asking Joe & Vickie to pop by is more proof that Fixed Noise is an unchecked National Security Risk even by their own lax editorial standards.

– Paul Manafort was using Sean Hannity as backchannel to Trump which means Fixed Noise’s primetime cash cow is in furtherance of criminal activity. And don’t get me started on Sean canoodling Julian Assange because that’s an ongoing love affair, to be sure. Hannity’s willingness to “play ball” with a transnational-criminal mafia—even urging viewers to destroy evidence of criminality—is further proof FNC is National Security Risk.

– Last I checked a “news” network shouldn’t be in business to save anyone let alone an *entire political party*. But Murdoch correctly opined FNC kept GOP afloat during Obummer years so that they could continue to fuck up government. When you throw a life raft to a ragtag bunch of purposely incompetent/complicit traitors you are—say it with me—a grave National Security Risk.

– FNC has no core principles; they just bob and weave according to what satiates MAGA addicts with another fix. The “Deep State”—bullshit workshopped phrase like “Fake News” or “Crooked Hillary” designed by political nutbags in a lab somewhere—was Fixed Noise anchors’ frequent punching bag (in this case an invisible one). But when Nectarine Crappertweeter did something impulsive like whack an Iranian military commander without notifying our allies they literally *turned on a dime* and U.S. Intel community was suddenly heroes, not deep state. Trust me when I say this: they will ABSOLUTELY go back to screaming about “deep state” IC nonsense at their earliest opportunity. FNC anchors will casually vilify GOP members for daring to speak up against their chosen tyrant. National Security Risks like FNC have no consistency other than what pleases Donald and shareholders.

– So-called “News” Network lavishing praise on lunatic tyrant who just committed an act of war via extra-judicial assassination? I’ve always said Donald would have no compunction starting war with Iran—which could lead to World War Three—so once again THAT network is grave National Security Risk

– Fixed Noise would have you believe that 19 of its Twitter accounts went dark to protest the company’s treatment of Tucker Carlson. Doxxing should always be an outrage (even though Twitter doesn’t take it seriously enough) but in this case Tami Burages stumbled on evidence that could be the REAL reason why Fixed Nonsense stopped tweeting. In a nutshell: Fox executive Pamela Browne got busted DMing with Russian intelligence and Carter Page; although we don’t know what’s in those messages, she’s been shown to be very sympathetic generally to a hostile foreign power. For a network that lies all the time—appeasing Dear Leader who also lies constantly—I do NOT trust Fixed Noise’s party-line explanation. For that and many other reasons FNC is National Security Risk.

Don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say Fixed Noise (and Meg McCain and other conservative “thinkers” LOL) warning of “bloodshed if Dems win in 2020” is a national-security risk. And if you say to me “well Will, you’re being hysterical and probably won’t happen” I have some lovely beachfront in Iowa. Russian bots and other rogue nations seize upon chaos amplify until the cows come home. (Many Americans don’t even know they’re influenced by disinformation.) That’s ALL our enemies do in the cyber age—find divisions in America and exploit them. Yep, National Security Risk.

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Even when factual critiques accidentally make it to FNC’s air it becomes a scramble to change the subject. Fixed Noise is NOT a small operation; their primetime nudniks regularly pull in millions of viewers rubes every night. That a national “news” organization would cover politics with this type of fealty is dangerous to Democracy and, yes, to our National (and global for that matter) Security overall.

“He’s watching Fox News this morning. He’s making decisions based on how popular he thinks he is to the Fox News crowd; he doesn’t care about America. He doesn’t care about anything else other than if it makes him look strong”—Malcolm Nance on The Stephanie Miller Show

As Wired reported, FNC creates a comfortable information cocoon around its audience that would make George Orwell blush. If investigators were in fact closing in on Fixed Noise—propaganda network pushing the agenda of christian-nationalist dead-end Russiapublican mafia—doesn’t it logically follow Fox’s benefactors would be *desperate* to shut that whole thing down? I’ve wondered that aloud on Twitter and hopefully someday soon we’ll have the answer. 🔵

UPDATE (15 January 2020): Laying a marker down on the recent news that Russia hacked Burisma servers. (Apparently they listen closely when Fat Nixon speaks.) Why is this germane to Fixed Noise’s threat to national security? Because FNC was clearinghouse laundered/stolen/fabricated data in 2016 and there’s every reason to believe they will use whatever they can to advance the prospects of Dear Leader this November. Our election security is literally a joke and you can bet the farm Faux Newz will seize upon whatever Russians release to hurt Dems and help Donald. Set your watches to it.

UPDATE 2 (5 April 2020): Fixed Noise subject of lawsuit out of Washington that says, in part, Faux Newz was “willfully and maliciously engaging in a ‘campaign of deception and omission regarding the danger of the international proliferation of the novel Coronavirus.” I expect this will be the first of many; Attorneys General of some states governed by adults should consider filing criminal charges for violating national security laws, too. One thing at a time I guess.

UPDATE 3 (27 April 2021): We’ve already drawn straight-lines between Tangerine Nixon’s genocide of Americans for failing to take Coronavirus seriously (Foreign Policy magazine suggested in January that it could constitute crimes against humanity). After more than a year of lockdowns, 600k+ deaths and life-changing sacrifices Fixed Noise talker Tucker Carlson decided breathing masks must be canceled. I’m just a layperson but literally ANY U.S. prosecutor could convince a grand jury to indict Carlson—and Fixed Noise as a criminal enterprise—for fraud and murderous disinformation. If Trump goes on trial for genocide then FNC must be his co-defendant.

UPDATE 4 (3 May 2021): To this observer Fixed Noise uses the fig leaf of journalism to protect their rights under the First Amendment. But what if Merrick Garland’s DOJ was able to prove, in a court of law, that Nonsense Newz is not just a grave national-security threat—but an active domestic-terror organization? Establishing Fixed Noise as a terror group would remove any pretense that FNC is an information purveyor and/or news organization.

UPDATE 5 (14 December 2021): News about Fixed Noise anchors’ text messages on 6 Jan has been breaking late last night and into today, so I’m gonna break that news out in an updated post. This fifth update is the perfect bookend to a post I researched and wrote over the course of 2 years: primetime FNC anchors KNEW January 6th was violent insurrection; urged TFG’s operatives to stand down; and when folks like Meadows didn’t step in, those same anchors defaulted back to regular propaganda that same evening. Fox so-called News is not news… it is sedition partner, propaganda and a criminal operation.

 

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Will Pollock is a perpetually crabby New York City escapee based in Midtown Atlanta. He’s a freelance multimedia journalist, media analyst and author of two books (award-wining Pizza for Good & Leaving Triscuit), with more on the way.

In 2001, Will earned his Masters from The Medill School of Journalism, graduating with highest honors from the magazine sequence. As permanent member of Journalism’s National Honors Society, he’s been active in monitoring, writing and blogging about media and journalism ever since he graduated.

Obsessed with good storytelling and journalistic excellence, Will uses snark, humor and reason to distill dumb shit and make it fun. He’s a seeker/maker of non-consensus news, and helps you cure crankies by finding the nut in every story.

As for-profit media continues to fail us, it’s more important than ever to find reliable sources. Authentic storytelling exists—you just have to look for it. On this blog you’ll get ideas, not ideology. Sass with class. Reporting with rapport. Evidence with a touch of evil. You get the idea.

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