March 10, 2023
Welcome to Home & Away. I don’t see any way to avoid writing about Fox News. Actually, that is something of a misnomer. Parts of Fox News have jumped the shark and should be called Fox Propaganda. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that every news organization, be it the New York Times or the Washington Post or MSNBC or CNN, has its biases both in what issues it covers and how it covers them. But what we have seen and continue to see at Fox is something qualitatively different. It is also dangerous.
Fox News and above all Tucker Carlson put out information that those involved knew to be false, impugning the integrity of the 2020 presidential election by spreading baseless accusations of fraud. Carlson has since doubled-down by his editing of the January 6 tapes in an attempt to hide the fact that what took place was a violent insurrection.
(A separate issue is the outrageous decision by Kevin McCarthy to provide the raw footage to Carlson. As an aside, I will give the Speaker points for not traveling to Taiwan and instead agreeing to meet Taiwan’s president in California later this month. A major crisis between the United States and China may well have been averted at a time this critical relationship can ill-afford any more blows.)
As Fox News battles a defamation lawsuit, it is trying to wrap itself in the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press. The Founders must be turning in their graves to see this high-minded principle so basic to American democracy twisted to defend the indefensible. The gap between what Carlson and several of his colleagues wrote in their private communications, which emphasized the damage Trump was doing, and what they broadcast, reflects a degree of cynicism that is breathtaking. All in the name of ratings and profits. Missing is any sense that journalism is a professional calling, one that entails a degree of obligation to the country and its citizens.
So what can be done? First, we have to hope the legal system does its job and holds Fox liable to the tune of $1.6 billion for defaming Dominion Voting Systems.
Second, I’d like to think that some Fox viewers will be turned off by Tucker Carlson’s whitewashing of the January 6 violence at the Capitol. Any true patriot should be.
Third, I’d also like to think many of those working at Fox News will demand that Rupert Murdoch cease enabling such behavior and instead institute a culture of professionalism. This may well be a pipe dream, but I can’t imagine that many of those working there feel comfortable much less proud in being associated with such malpractice.
Fourth, corporate leaders need to be pressed by their employees, customers, and investors to stop advertising on those Fox shows that peddle misinformation.
Fifth, firms (including Vanguard and BlackRock) that hold meaningful stakes in Fox Corporation (which owns Fox News) should be pushed by their shareholders, primarily institutional investors (pension funds and foundations), to divest unless Fox News cleans up its act and becomes a legitimate news organization. Firms are regularly pressured to avoid investments that contribute to climate change; I would like to think it is no less important not to contribute to the undermining of American democracy.
As for Away, I was thinking of writing about either democratic backsliding in the United States, Israel, Mexico, and India, or diplomatic backsliding, whether involving Ukraine or U.S.-Russia arms control or the U.S.-China relationship or Iran or Israel and the Palestinians.
These matters will have to wait for another Friday. Instead, in the spirit of my Giants signing their under-appreciated but now well-compensated quarterback Daniel Jones to a multi-year contract, I will call an audible. What is more, I will go off brand and actually say some positive things about what is going on in the world.
First is the Windsor Framework, signed in late February by the UK and the EU, that provides a formula for addressing one of the most vexing problems created by Brexit. The question was how to establish a trade and customs regime between the EU and the post-Brexit UK without creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, something that would be inconsistent with the 1998 Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, or a hard border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, which would be unacceptable to Unionists (Protestants) in Northern Ireland.
I promise not to go into detail about the new arrangements lest I risk losing you forever as a reader. But the framework seems to finesse what needs to be finessed. It remains to be seen whether it will prove acceptable to the often difficult Unionists. One hopes so, as we are about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1998 agreement, and it would be fitting if the celebration took place against the backdrop of a Northern Ireland at peace and with functioning political institutions.
A second example of successful diplomacy involves the oceans and, more specifically, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, or BBNJT to those in the know. Some forty years after the Law of the Sea Treaty, after some ten years of negotiations, governments reached an agreement (also called the High Seas Treaty) that aims to place 30% of the world’s oceans into protected areas by 2030. Limits would be placed on fishing, shipping lanes, and deep-sea mining in an effort to protect marine life in these areas.
It all sounds good and potentially it is but it is too soon to celebrate the treaty as either a C-change or even sea-change. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) The agreement still has to be ratified and then implemented. We will have to wait and see what it all means for the sea.
The third diplomatic accomplishment I want to note is perhaps the most significant: the agreement between South Korea and Japan to settle issues stemming from Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910-1945, primarily forced labor. The “agreement” involves reiteration of Japanese apologies and a fund created by South Korea to compensate victims, which is open to voluntary financial contributions by Japanese entities.
It is hard to exaggerate just how painful, contentious, emotional, and controversial this issue has been and the degree to which it has bedeviled relations between these two neighbors who happen to be two of our closest allies in the Indo-Pacific. Resolving it should pave the way for increased trade between the two countries as well as greater strategic cooperation when it comes to dealing with China and North Korea. Such agreements only come about when leaders are willing to lead, and the South Korean president, the Japanese prime minister, and their respective foreign ministers deserve praise and admiration for doing the right but politically difficult thing.
There you have it: an upbeat ending. It is unlikely to be a precedent, so I suggest you enjoy it while you have it. Also added for your edification if not quite enjoyment are a number of links to conversations, some about the world, some about The Bill of Obligations, I have recently been party to.
In the news
Tuesday, March 7, 2023: MSNBC Morning Joe, Washington Post Live
Podcasts: