Just Who the Kochs and Fox News Really Are

 

Just Who the Kochs and Fox News Really Are

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We all know who the, at one time Koch Brothers, and their network of like-minded authoritarians are. They are the money behind the assault of our nation. They have nearly single-handedly drive the Republican Party into insurrection central. Today, I will again lean upon one of my favorite information sources “Popular Information” to carry the load. I hope you will support them.

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You are (probably) paying for pro-Russian propaganda

Judd Legum

Mar 21

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The most powerful source of pro-Russian propaganda is not the Russian government. It's the #1 rated host on U.S. cable television: Fox News' Tucker Carlson.

But before we dive into the disinformation, let's establish the facts.

For decades, the United States has partnered with former members of the Soviet Union to secure biological weapons and materials. This program is not a secret. It's called the Cooperative Threat Reduction program and it has existed since 1991. Since its inception, "the Pentagon has spent approximately $12 billion on securing material used in weapons of mass destruction in post-Soviet republics."

Russia itself has participated in the program. The Pentagon "spent $1 billion to build the Russians a facility in Shchuchye, Siberia, to demilitarize some two million chemical weapons." That project was completed in 2009. In 2012, as relations with the United States worsened, Russia terminated its involvement.

The program expanded to Ukraine after the 9/11 attacks as "U.S. policy makers grew worried about the potential for terrorists to steal biological materials." Ukraine, for its part, had requested assistance because it lacks "the funds needed to secure its biological facilities."

Andrew Weber, a former Pentagon official, "put together a team that visited Ukraine’s biological and chemical facilities." Weber discovered that several sites "had dangerous pathogen collections left over from Soviet days." The focus on the United States' work in Ukraine "was to consolidate that biological material… into secure facilities, which the U.S. would pay to build or upgrade."

Russia has used the existence of these facilities to falsely allege that the United States was working with Ukraine on a nefarious program to build biological weapons. Tucker Carlson has skillfully amplified this disinformation to his audience of millions.

Carlson's false claims about biolabs in Ukraine

On March 10, Tucker Carlson spent much of his one-hour program claiming that the Pentagon "lied" about its "biolabs" in Ukraine.

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And they go on from there:

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“If you had told us just four days ago that the Biden administration was funding secret bio labs in Ukraine of all places, we would not have believed you." Carlson began. Of course, these facilities are not a "secret" and have nothing to do with the production of biological weapons, as Carlson implies.

Carlson then turns to fact-checkers. He discusses in detail a USA Today piece, "Fact check: False claim of US biolabs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign," published on February 25. Carlson keys in on one line from the USA Today article: "Russia has teamed up with China to further amplify the false claim of U.S. labs in Ukraine." He claims that USA Today and other fact-checkers were asserting that "[t]hose labs obviously didn't exist."

But the USA Today fact check does not claim the labs don't exist. Rather, USA Today notes that the U.S. government had provided funding and expertise to help secure the labs as part of a treaty signed in 2005 to "prevent the proliferation of dangerous pathogens… and to minimize potential biological threats." The labs are not owned or operated by the U.S. government.

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From there, Carlson focuses on the Congressional testimony of Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Under questioning from Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Nuland testified that Ukraine had "biological research facilities" and she was concerned about the security of the facilities during the Russian assault. This is how Carlson responded on air:

Does Ukraine have biological weapons? Oh, Ukraine has biological research facilities. What? You mean secret bio labs like the secret bio labs Ukraine definitely doesn't have? Ukraine has those? Yes, it does.

And not only does Ukraine have secret bio labs, [Victoria] Nuland said, whatever they're doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is quote, "quite concerned" that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.

I am not trying to use profanity on the air to describe our reaction. Our jaws dropped. Let's leave it there.

There is nothing jaw-dropping, or even mildly surprising, about anything Nuland said. But Carlson concludes that her testimony means "the Russian disinformation they've been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe, is in fact, totally and completely true."

Carlson goes on to play a clip from the spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense claiming there is a "military biological program under development in Ukraine, financed by the U.S. Defense Ministry." Carlson says this claim is true and "we don't have to take Russia's word for that." Carlson asserts, with no factual basis, the U.S. is "funding the creation of deadly pathogens" in Ukraine and lying about it.

Later, during an interview with former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Carlson asserts that "agencies in the U.S. government without our knowledge are secretly funding research that imperils the world and no one is ever punished for it."

Russian government directs state propaganda outlets to play clips of Tucker Carlson

Even before his rant on biolabs, the Russian government understood the value of the disinformation pushed by Tucker Carlson. He's making many of the same false claims about the U.S. as the Russian government. But the claims are far more powerful coming from an American with a massive audience.

A March 3 memo from the Kremlin obtained by Mother Jones directs state-owned media outlets to run clips from Tucker Carlson as much as possible:

It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally.

The Russian government has also praised Fox News' coverage of the invasion of Ukraine publicly. "[O]nly Fox News is trying to present some alternative points of view," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on March 18.

If you have cable, you are financing pro-Russian propaganda about Ukraine

After smearing immigrants and embracing white nationalist rhetoric, Tucker Carlson has very few companies running advertising on his show. But Fox News can tolerate it because it does not rely on advertising; Fox News makes most of its money from fees charged to cable subscribers, called carriage fees.

In 2020, Fox News made $1.6 billion from carriage fees and $1.2 billion from advertisements. Other channels, of course, also receive carriage fees for their content. But Fox News has negotiated fees that are far greater than any other non-sports programming.

According to a 2020 survey, about 14% of cable TV subscribers watch Fox News regularly. But every cable TV subscriber pays an average of $1.72 a month to receive Fox News. In contrast, 31% of cable TV subscribers regularly watch FX (owned by Disney) but that channel adds just $0.81 to an average cable bill. This means, for every actual viewer, Fox News receives a $7.75 subsidy from people who never watch Fox News.

The massive subsidy Fox News receives from non-viewers has always been concerning for anyone who doesn't share its right-wing political sensibility. But now that the network's highest-rated host is a vehicle for pro-Russian propaganda, the issue has taken on a fresh urgency.

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This is who they are, what they are/

RC Romine

VARIETY.COM

The True Cost to Consumers of Pay TV’s Top Channels

Note: An extended version of this analysis is available exclusively for

Note: An extended version of this analysis is available exclusively for VIP subscribers. 

It’s no secret that pay TV is facing a mounting existential challenge.

A record 6.2 million subscribers canceled their service from the six publicly traded operators between Q3 2019 and Q2 2020 (the most recent 12-month period with figures available).

One of the key reasons for subscriber decline is the increasing cost of subscriptions, abetted by the erosion of value for the overall cable package as originals production shifts to streaming.

This has created what is a growing problem for pay TV. Despite millions fleeing cable each year, individual networks continue to increase the monthly carriage fees they charge MVPDs for access to their content, which is in turn passed along to consumers.

In an attempt to quantify how this threatens the future of the cable bundle, Variety Intelligence Platform conducted an analysis of two data sets.

Kagan, the media research group of S&P Global Market Intelligence, provided affiliate fee estimates for the top 20 most expensive basic cable networks in addition to the major broadcast networks’ retrans fees.

Adaptive consumer insights platform Wizer conducted an exclusive consumer study for VIP, with data from a question asking pay-TV subscribers which channels they regularly view being used in this analysis.

The results are that the most expensive basic cable channels are rarely viewed by a majority of subscribers. Of these networks, only FX is watched by more than 3 in 10 subs, with most seeing fewer than 1 in 5 viewing.  

In an effort to highlight how much regular viewers would have to pay on an individual basis if media companies wanted to maintain their current revenues, VIP estimated the “true cost” per viewer, as well as the rate of increase this would see.

ESPN and sister college channels SEC Network and ACC Network come to an almost unfathomable amount, totaling $69.84 for the avid sports fan. The SEC and ACC networks, along with Fox’s BTN, are also the only networks to see what would be double-digit rates of increase versus current fees.

The house of cards of increasing cable costs is getting more and more unstable. With networks unwilling to stop raising prices or prioritizing content for streaming services, it will only be a matter of time before either viewers have to pay full price for what they view or the affiliate-fee-increase bubble pops.

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