{"id":171083,"date":"2015-08-07T03:34:12","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T03:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=171083"},"modified":"2015-08-07T03:40:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T03:40:27","slug":"republican-party-gave-first-presidential-debate-to-fox-news-as-political-payoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/republican-party-gave-first-presidential-debate-to-fox-news-as-political-payoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Party Gave First Presidential Debate to Fox News as Political Payoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Millions of especially non-Republicans on Thursday night were disappointed to find that they couldn\u2019t access the first Republican Presidential debate because they don\u2019t subscribe to the Fox News Channel, the Republican Party\u2019s news channel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately,\u00a0Newsweek posted an announcement<\/span><\/a>\u00a0explaining:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fox News is making it difficult to watch the\u00a0first 2016 GOP presidential debate online.\u00a0If you have a cable account, you can sign in\u00a0to Fox New’s website and watch a live\u00a0stream\u00a0here. The Fox News app is available\u00a0for smartphones and game consoles as well,\u00a0allowing viewers with cable accounts to\u00a0watch on the go, but also only if you have a\u00a0subscription to cable.\u00a0\u2026\u00a0Fox is closely protecting the only legal\u00a0stream option, and heavily restricted the\u00a0venue’s audience.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: FNC was using this Presidential debate primarily to make money, not primarily to inform voters, nor to help the Republican Party.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If FNC had wanted to inform voters, or even to do a favor for the Republican Party and help them reach out to and attract some non-Fox (that\u2019s basically non-Republican) voters, then they\u2019d have suspended, for this event, their usual money-making system, and allowed millions of political independents, and even Democrats, to watch it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As was\u00a0recently explained<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by the great Bruce Bartlett, at the website of the great Barry Ritholtz, a recent striking finding by the pollster, PPP, is that 56% of Republicans place Fox News Channel as their most trusted source of news, and that the #2 news-source for Republicans is, tied at 10% for each of the two, CNN and ABC. \u00a0There\u2019s nothing comparable to FNC for Democrats: the top-trusted news source for them is CNN, at only 21% of Democrats who cite them as being their most trusted news source. (FNC is #5 1\/2, or tied for fifth and sixth place, amongst Democrats.) Bartlett explains how FNC was created by Ronald Reagan\u2019s TV guru Roger Ailes, with Rupert Murdoch\u2019s money, and how Ailes has always run it like a Republican Party instrument. \u201cFox viewers were very right-wing from the start,\u201d notes Bartlett.<\/span><\/p>\n

Restricting the viewing of the debate to FNC-payers means restricting it to the biggest Republican audience there is, but also means incentivizing any non<\/i>-subscriber who wants to see the debate to pay<\/i> for the privilege. It\u2019s saying to them (not by words, but by deeds): If you want to watch this, and you\u2019re not already providing a source of income to us, then either subscribe now, or else cross your fingers and hope that you\u2019ll be able to see this debate somehow, at some other time, and in some other way. It\u2019s warning them: If you don\u2019t<\/i> <\/span>pay us, you won\u2019t even be able to see major events such as this! That\u2019s a significant inducement to subscribe. It\u2019s not just a paywall: it\u2019s a locked paywall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, this is also providing to the candidates the freedom to direct themselves to only Republican voters, and allowing the candidates to ignore independents or possible crossover voters, in the first Republican candidates\u2019 debate. But that will mean a higher likelihood of the farthest-right candidates to lead the contest at this early period; and this could increase the chances for the Party to end up nominating a candidate who in the general election will be the easiest for the Democratic nominee to beat.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: why would FNC be placing income above even its service to their Party?<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert Murdoch has never placed money-making second; it\u2019s his top<\/i> <\/span>motivation.<\/span><\/p>\n

But why would the RNC, the Republican National Committee, choose for its crucial first big debate, an outlet that places its own financial interest above that of even the Party itself? Isn\u2019t the supplier supposed to serve the client, not the other way around?<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two ways to explain that:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, one might say that the very essence of conservatism, at least as it\u2019s represented by the Republican Party, has historically been to appeal to its donors\u2019 self-interest. The rationalization for that is essentially the libertarian one: the collective best-interest is the sum of the individuals’ best-interests. Everyone should serve himself first. It\u2019s hard-core Republicanism. During the Ailes-Reagan era, it was \u201cGreed is good!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The other explanation is: Rupert Murdoch is owed this, for all of his decades of service to the Party. It\u2019s just a big \u201cThank you!\u201d for him. In a transactional-ethical culture (\u201cYou scratch my back, I\u2019ll scratch yours\u201d), it\u2019s a proof to Murdoch of the Party\u2019s loyalty to him. He\u2019ll thus likelier stay loyal to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, either way, it\u2019s a political payoff to Murdoch, and also to Ailes. It might help to produce a right-skew to the Party\u2019s ultimate Presidential pick, its selection of their nominee; but, even so, it fits the Republican ideology. It really does.<\/span><\/p>\n

This ideology isn\u2019t shown by words. It\u2019s shown by the decisions that people actually display in their actions. Instead of reporting the news by what people say, this is reporting the news by what people do; and that\u2019s the way I report the news.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Millions of especially non-Republicans on Thursday night were disappointed to find that they couldn\u2019t access the first Republican Presidential debate because they don\u2019t subscribe to the Fox News Channel, the Republican Party\u2019s news channel. Immediately,\u00a0Newsweek posted an announcement\u00a0explaining:\u00a0 Fox News is making it difficult to watch the\u00a0first 2016 GOP presidential debate online.\u00a0If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":171084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[937,534,839,540,890,4672],"class_list":{"0":"post-171083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-937","10":"tag-conservatism","11":"tag-news-media","12":"tag-republicans","13":"tag-rupert-murdoch","14":"tag-u-s-presidential-contest"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}