Trump’s War on Fox Is About ‘Control Against the Power Structure of the GOP’
(NY Times) – Who would win in a fight: a Fox or a golden goose? We’re about to see.
Donald J. Trump, who has made the ratings rain for network after network, gave Fox News an ultimatum: dump Thursday-night debate moderator Megyn Kelly, whom he has called unfair (and worse) since Fox’s August debate, or he takes his viewers and goes home. (Or he goes to his own event that other networks may broadcast.) Fox refused — answering him with a dose of his own snark — and as of now, it will be putting on cable news’ biggest serial without its breakout antihero.
Is Mr. Trump really quitting the debate because Ms. Kelly is a big meanie? Who knows — this is politics, he’s been leading the polls in Iowa, and theories abound.
Nor do we know Fox’s motives in hanging tough (or if it will keep doing so). But Fox has a point worth making regardless: that however much networks benefit from working with parties and candidates on debates, they do not work for the parties and candidates.
This hasn’t been a good campaign cycle for that notion. The Republican National Committee asked networks holding debates to agree to partner with conservative media outlets. CNN’s debates have included the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt as a moderator-chaperone. (There’s been no equivalent liberal babysitter at the Democratic debates — which, if unintentionally, helps the R.N.C.’s working-the-refs argument that mainstream news anchors themselves count as liberal advocates.)
The R.N.C. has made clear there will be penalties for not playing nice. It moved a February debate from NBC to CNN after candidates complained about their treatment in a debate on CNBC. Then it disinvited a conservative “partner,” National Review, from that debate after it dedicated an issue to attacks on Mr. Trump. (Mr. Trump also claimed credit for getting ABC to dump New Hampshire’s Union Leader newspaper as a debate partner after it was critical of him.)
Of course, parties and candidates are in the business of winning elections; it’s their right to demand conditions that help them do that. But the correct response from a news outlet is: Don’t let the debate-stage door hit you on the way out. That means potentially passing up some of the biggest ratings on TV.
Fox News has gotten away with pushing back more, which says as much about its special place in Republican politics as its journalistic principles. (See also Fox News’ August debate, which was easily as tough as CNBC’s but somehow generated complaints only from Mr. Trump.) The channel is run by Roger Ailes, the former Republican political consultant who has not been shy about influencing politics in general and primary politics in particular. In the last primary, Republican candidates courted the network (and Mr. Trump, too).
So Mr. Trump’s war on Fox News isn’t just a media spat. It’s part of a war for control against the power structure of the G.O.P. — whose appeals to cultural anxieties he has hijacked and dialed up to 11 — and thus against Fox as an extension of it. (The bizarro-world possibility of a Fox News at odds with the Republican nominee, should Mr. Trump win, would be one more weird twist in a campaign full of them.)
Whatever the reasons, Fox’s stand is the right one. (So, likewise, is MSNBC’s attempt to expand on the Democratic National Committee’s limited debate schedule by trying to organize another, even without the party’s blessing.) Fox News may or may not end up with a ratings goose egg Thursday night. But if you don’t draw a line, eventually the golden goose becomes a monster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/arts/television/fox-news-vs-trump-setting-free-the-golden-goose.html?_r=1&referer=http:/news.google.com/
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