Here are some handy links for two stories that hit at almost precisely the same moment this morning.
- Fox News and Tucker Carlson have “parted ways,” which is code for “Fox fired Carlson.” (NYT)
- Moments later, we learned that CNN and Don Lemon are no longer a team: an infuriated Lemon took to Twitter at his firing. (NYT)
- Molly Wood’s spot-on take linked these firings to Jeff Shell’s departure from NBCU: all of them have sexism in common. Carlson is embroiled in an O’Reilly/Ailes flavored lawsuit from a former producer; Lemon made a sexist remark about Nikki Haley and doesn’t get along with one of his female co-hosts; Shell had an “inappropriate relationship” with a female coworker (what this is code for will come out in time…)
- Expect the late night hosts to have a field day with this tonight… and how many days is it until Weekend Update on SNL?
Media these days suffers from a weird paradox. On one hand, since Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s news organizations have not had to present both sides of an issue, which has led to partisan media (much of which doesn’t qualify as news) on all sides. On the other hand, these same organizations tend to look for a fake both-sides equivalence even when there aren’t two sides.
That’s right. Sometimes there are not two sides to an issue, and giving a platform to a fringe, partisan, disinformation-slinging speaker in order to seem fair only sows the partisanship that bedevils us. The scholar Deborah Lipstadt famously refuses to sit on panels with Holocaust deniers because with no evidence and only Anti-semitic hate they don’t have a side.
False equivalence makes different things look the same when they aren’t.
That’s why I wish CNN had waited just a day, just 24 hours in the news cycle, before firing Don Lemon. The fact that both of these stories hit at the same time makes it easier for people to say things like, “there’s no difference between Fox News and CNN: they’re all the same.”
They’re not the same.
Don Lemon made a gross, sexist remark. Firing him on that basis alone is justifiable. Even before then, Lemon’s ratings in the morning weren’t great, and at a moment when CNN is trying to move to the center his left-leaning sharp elbows probably didn’t fit with Chris Licht’s vision for the network. Lemon was fantastic during the Trump years, but his shtick was getting tired. I suspect that management at CNN saw the Haley remark and blowback as a handy excuse to shake things up.
But Don Lemon didn’t knowingly lie and give liars a platform on his program.
Tucker Carlson did.
Don Lemon didn’t lie about insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the Federal Government, describing violent domestic terrorists as peaceful tourists.
Tucker Carlson did.
Don Lemon didn’t put people on the air whom he knew were lying about the security of voting machines, causing millions of Americans to doubt the integrity of our elections and later causing his network to fork over nearly $800 Million in a settlement.
Tucker Carlson did.
If CNN had only waited just a day, then Americans would have clearly seen Tucker Carlson receiving the wages of his sins against truth and our Republic, as well as receiving his just desserts for being a sexist pig.
A day later, those same Americans would have seen Don Lemon’s departure as the sign of a new day dawning for women in the workplace.
Instead, things that are different look the same.
As always, if you want more evidence than my opinion about the difference between Fox News and CNN, take a look at the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart.
(Disclosure: I’m a proud investor/advisor at Ad Fontes.)
Thanks for reading this Bonus Dispatch. See you next Sunday.
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