• breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    That’s why I said to wait for corroboration. Fox would then be the first to report, not the only.

    I think most of us are mature enough to handle unconfirmed reports.

    They also didn’t make that argument about their content, they made it about their opinion personalities. Saying no reasonable person could take Tucker Carlson seriously isn’t the same as saying everything they publish is fiction. Yes, they suck and a world where they didn’t exist would be a better world but, unfortunately, we still live in a world where Fox News occasionally breaks a story.

    • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Of course the person who posts Fox News content would defend Fox News.

      Rupert Murdoch himself admitted in a deposition that Fox News was knowingly promoting dangerous consipiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 election and here you are minimizing their lies and defending them as a legitimate news source.

      Stop it. Just stop. Posting them as a legitimate news source is harmful to humanity. Period.

      • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        I replied to you because you replied to me. I’m not defending Fox News. Their arguments in court defending their on-air personalities are vile enough in their actual context without pretending they apply more broadly. Substituting our dishonesty for theirs is hardly a victory.

        • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Ahhh… a lecture in “dishonesty” from the account that posts Fox News articles and then defends the source as valid.

          The dishonesty in our conversation started with your post from a notoriously dishonest source. It continued when you minimized Fox News’ admissions of dishonesty to a single lawyer’s statement regarding Tucker Carlson. Then, as you pretended to agree that Fox News is bad, you simultaneously defended their reporting as valid. And now you are lecturing me on honesty. Got it. I will print this exchange and file it appropriately.

          • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            There exists a possible world where Fox sucks and you’re a liar even if you’re lying about Fox. Your statement about what their sworn testimony says is demonstrably false, either because you’re misinformed or being dishonest. If it wasn’t you could produce proof that it wasn’t. But you can’t, because it was. Me pointing that out about you doesn’t mean I’m somehow defending Fox.

            If you want to take an article linked with a disclaimer that it’s uncorroborated and from a less than trustworthy source followed by a comment saying that I wouldn’t accept it as fact without corroboration as a ringing endorsement, you’re free to I guess. I remain confident that a reasonable person wouldn’t.

            • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              You referenced the McDougal case against Fox News and claimed that was the only time Fox used that defense (in defense of Tucker Carlson). I replied with the Rupert Murdoch testimony from the Dominion case, in which he admitted that Fox News at large knew it was spreading lies and did nothing to mitigate it. In his testimony, he claimed the anchors were merely personalities expressing opinions, but the evidence clearly showed that these “opinions” were being presented as news pieces in articles and news package stories. He then admitted Fox News knew the truth and allowed the lies to spread.

              The same defense (that Fox News “news” is just opinion that no reasonable person would confuse an editorial with fact) was also used in the Smartmatic case and the Nina Jankowicz case. When that defense did not work, they then shifted to, “We were just reporting the debate”. This double-play is Fox News’ go-to defense strategy.

              That’s four cases in which they’ve used this strategy, which they have dubbed their “First Ammendment Defense” and their “Newsworthy Reporting” defense.

              Fox News openly admits in these four cases (under oath) to being liars. They attempt to conflate their deceptive reporting with opinion editorials, even when the “news piece” is presented as fact. When shown that they were not presented as editorials, they then claim to just be reporting the “national debate” on the topic. The strategy has not worked in 3 of the 4 cases, but they are sticking with it.

              Please stop defending their propaganda machine. It is harmful to share Fox News stories and claim that such a source can, in any universe, be relied upon for honest factual reporting.

              • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca
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                11 months ago

                Again, only in your imagination am I defending Fox. it speaks volumes that you need a straw man.

                First, I didn’t say they only used that argument to defend Carlson. I said they use it to defend their on-air opinion personalities. Plural. Like they did multiple times in the examples you cite.

                I’m not debating whether they lied or not. They did. They already paid out nearly a billion dollars because of it. They’re going to get their asses handed to them even harder by Smartmatic. They deserve it. It’s hard to argue they even have a strategy in the Dominion and Smartmatic (still in discovery, ftr) cases since they’ve thrown all kinds of shit at the wall because they’re just so dead-to-rights guilty of defamation. I’m not even debating whether they use that on-air personality defense in good faith. They don’t! They want their on-air ghouls to lie and mislead with impunity. Once again, Fox News sucks and it shouldn’t exist.

                That’s all pretty immaterial to whether some beat reporter out of Buffalo could possibly have a source with valuable information in a sudden crisis though.

                You said this:

                Fox “News” has testified multiple times in sworn court testimony that their content is not fact-based and that “no reasonable person could confuse” their content as factual reporting.

                That statement is false. They have not said in sworn testimony that their “content,” in this context meaning the entirety of their news reporting, is non-factual or that no reasonable person would take their news reporting as factual. It’d be nice if they did!