Anyone can claim to be a journalist or a news organization, and publish lies with almost total impunity
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)
John C. Watson, American University
(THE CONVERSATION) Headlines in early March 2023 implied Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch had made a damning confession. He had affirmed that some of his most important journalists were reporting that the 2020 presidential election was a fraud – even though they knew they were propagating a lie.
It was an admission during pretrial testimony in a libel lawsuit filed against Fox by a voting machine company that says it was defamed by the lie. For journalism practitioners and devotees, the admission should signal the end of the Fox News empire.
Nope. It didn’t.
Such a disgraceful demise would seem inevitable when journalists – professionally trained truth gatherers, employed by a news organization, which is an institution that exists to provide truthful information – choose not to do so.
Nope.
That’s because a business that calls itself a news organization actually does not have to be one - but it does have to be a business. Businesses exist primarily to make a profit and doing actual news isn’t essential. Adam Serwer, reporting for The Atlantic, wrote “sources at Fox told me to think of it not as a network per se, but as a profit machine.”
News businesses or profit machines can hire...