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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Who's More Dangerous?
Murdoch or Zuckerberg?
Two public-health (and democracy-health) menaces duke it out

I go back and forth in my mind on the question of who is the most
destructive private citizen/right-wing billionaire on the planet? Is it
Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg? I can make the argument either way.

Take, for instance, the insane position of anti-vaxxers, who, like drunk
drivers, insist not only on endangering themselves but everybody
else-and unlike most drunk drivers, they're proud of this. A recent
survey

from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that "In the presence of
statistical controls, those who say they rely on conservative media such
as Fox News or very conservative media such as OAN are more likely to
believe this [vaccine] conspiracy theory. Those who say they rely on
mainstream media are more likely to reject this theory."

So does the prize go to Murdoch? According to an analysis by Whitney
Kimball , writing for Gizmodo
,
it's Zuckerberg who deserves the top spot. "Researchers from numerous
universities, specializing in various public health and political
science-related fields, surveyed 20,669 people
from all 50 states and D.C., between June and July 2021. They found that
25% of people who only got news from Facebook in the previous 24 hours
say they won't get vaccinated, putting it below only Newsmax (41%) and
slightly above Fox (23%)," she writes.

Facebook, most people do not (I think) realize, is the second-largest
news provider in the U.S., below only CNN. Its newsfeed is dominated by
right wing conspiracy mongers led almost always by Breitbart alumnus Ben
Shapiro
.
Facebook could severely reduce the amount of potentially murderous lies
for which it provides a platform if it wished. Per Kimball, "A March
2021 report

by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 73% of vaccine
disinformation originated from just twelve people"-but if Facebook
banished that dozen, Zuckerberg would have to get by with a few fewer of
the tens of billions of dollars he has amassed during his relatively
brief life. So that's a no-go.

Facebook makes its money via reader engagement and so is devoted to
ensnaring readers in whatever bullshit they will swallow for as long as
possible. Zuckerberg spouts a lot of meaningless rhetoric about
"connectiveness," but that's really not what motivates him. The
company's ethos was captured in a recent New Yorker piece by scholar
Jill Lepore
:
"Zuckerberg would end meetings by pumping his fist and shouting,
'Domination!' New features were rolled out as fast as possible, for
the sake of fueling growth. 'Fuck it, ship it.' became a company
catchphrase." It should therefore be no surprise that Donald Trump was
the single-largest spender on political ads on Facebook. "His Facebook
page was busier than those of the major networks, BuzzFeed, the
Washington Post, and the New York Times taken together. Over the
protests of many Facebook employees, Zuckerberg had adopted, and stuck
to, a policy of not subjecting any political advertisements to
fact-checking. Refusing to be 'an arbiter of truth,' Facebook
instead established itself as a disseminator of misinformation," writes
Lepore.

Along with Google, Facebook has also all but destroyed the business
model of most news gathering operations by hoovering all the advertising
that used to support them while cannibalizing their content. The Pew
Research Center
recently reported that subscription fees recently surpassed advertising
income for the industry, thereby reversing a 300-year trend. This would
be good news if that income were sufficient to support the journalism
necessary to protect our democracy. It isn't. Not even close.

What is left to say about Murdoch? Well, this: He recently fired a COVID
liar in Australia but continues to promote, and profit from, the same
COVID lies in the United States, most prominently during prime time on
Fox. As journalist Eric Boehlert notes in his must-read newsletter,
"Press Run
," Tucker
Carlson, who has the highest-rated news program on cable, "has staked
his career on lying about the pandemic, and consequently is getting
people killed, and continues to enjoy free rein from News Corp. Carlson
unapologetically claims

the Covid vaccine is killing people

and that the government and media are covering it up. 'Nobody can be
trusted
,'
the fascism-friendly

host insists. He also says that the vaccine "poses a danger

to pregnant women"-another lie.

In explaining the distinction between Murdoch's actions in Australia
and America, Boehlert has some eye-opening information even for those
who have followed Murdoch's nefarious activities closely. (To be fair,
there are so many of these, it would take a mind like that of Carnac the
Magnificent to
keep track of all of them.) Boehlert notes that Australia's former
prime ministers, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, a liberal and
conservative, respectively, recently joined together "to denounce

the Murdoch media cancer that's eating the country. They urged the
government to take steps to diversify media ownership and to break up
the dangerous coalition that now exists between right-wing politicians
and the Murdoch press, which serves as an unaccountable, but extremely
powerful force. Parliamentary hearings

were held after Rudd's petition to establish a royal commission into
media diversity became Australia's largest-ever e-petition, and the
country's third largest petition of any kind."

I don't know enough about either former PM to say whether they did
this because or in spite of the fact that, as Boehlert notes,
"Murdoch's News Corp control controls 70 percent of Australia's print
media, most notably The Australian, the national daily newspaper with
the largest circulation. That would be like if Murdoch not only owned
the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the U.S. but also the
Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Denver
Post, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, and used them all to
pump out toxic, right-wing misinformation."

Rudd, the liberal, labeled

Murdoch's empire a "cancer" on the country, while the center-right
Turnbull branded it "an absolute threat to our democracy." Would that we
had as clear-minded political leaders-or even ex-political
leaders-in this nation.

Back to my contest: Facebook may have the edge in evilness owing to its
reach. According to Lepore, bolstered by the estimable New Yorker
fact-checkers, "Facebook possesses the personal data of more than a
quarter of the world's people." Murdoch is a piker compared to
Zuckerberg in this regard.

P.S. Facebook disabled

accounts and other forms of access used by New York University's Ad
Observatory, which had helped us understand how Facebook targets
political ads and spreads misinformation. Now, you will be able to read
fewer of these analyses.

There's a new right-wing Jewish publication in the world, to join a
field crowded by (the partially Murdoch-funded) Commentary as well as
Tablet, Mosaic, and The Jewish Review of Books. It's called Sapir
and it is edited by right-wing Jewish New
York Times pundit Bret Stephens. Fine, you say, let the right wing Jews
publish what they like, even if, as with the case of Tablet (and other
Tikvah Fund-supported endeavors
) it is dominated
by anti-democratic, pro-Trump conspiracy theories
.

Thing is, Sapir is funded by something called the Maimonides Fund, and
those guys refuse to identify where their money comes from. Could it be
funded by the Israeli government or intelligence agency, as when, say,
the CIA funded the journal, Encounter in the 1950s? I have no reason to
think it is, but then again, what's the reason for hiding it? It must
be something. Does The New York Times concern itself with whose money is
going into the pockets of Stephens, who, by the way, happens to defend
virtually every action undertaken by the Israeli government
?
I've inquired about this at the Times, but so far received no
response. Perhaps others might wish to ask as well.

Speaking of the Times, and Jews, if you were covering the cancellation
of Obama's planned massive 60th birthday celebration on the Vineyard,
who would you turn to for comment out of say, every person in the entire
world? If you chose Jeffrey Epstein BFF Alan Dershowitz
,
then you, too, could be a Times political reporter.  (This item thanks
to Altercation intern Bill Moyers.)

The amazing jazz-guitarist, producer, arranger, Upper-West Sider, and
all-around funny guy John Pizzarelli celebrated the beginning of
in-person performances as well as his good fortune in being lucky enough
to celebrate his 23rd wedding anniversary with the no less
estimableJessica Molaskey this week
with a virtuosic performance outdoors at Payomet in Truro, Cape Cod.

John is, like his late father Bucky Pizzarelli, a marvelous guitarist.
But there are lots of great guitarists in the world. What makes him
unique, I think, is what a terrific entertainer he is. I don't know
what he's like around the house, but on stage he's funny,
self-effacing, informative and unthreatening. He can also be kind of
brave, that is playing mostly solo jazz guitar for a 90-minute show
before a seated audience being tortured by mosquitos with only a short
interlude with his better half.

John was plugging his new (and only) solo guitar album, a pandemic-time
project that pays tribute to and expands on the music of fellow
guitarist, Pat Metheny, called "Better Days Ahead." It was a balm to
many of us during said pandemic to catch John (and Jessica's) "It's
Five O'Clock Somewhere" every week on Facebook, and you can read all
about that, and him, here

Speaking of great jazz guitarists, here
is one of John Hammond's
least celebrated discoveries, the great Charlie Christian, and here is
the one jazz guitarist everybody seems to have heard of, Django
Reinhardt , and here is
video about ten things about Woody Allen's underrated Reinhardt (and
Fellini) inspired film, Sweet and Lowdown
, which featured one of
Sean Penn's most affecting performances.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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