When lies outsell truth, financing becomes an issue
We can take a bite out of the baloney without government getting into the act
An old outfielder’s story may have an answer for Americans struggling with the future.
If we’re going to stem the tide of disinformation that’s rending the faded fabric of American life, we needn’t look to great journalistic minds like Edward R. Murrow or H.L. Mencken for inspiration.
The man we need is Roger Maris.
Maris was the New York Yankee who in 1961 broke the most storied record in American sports, Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs in a season. But to a lot of people in New York, and all over the country, the wrong Yankee broke the record. They thought it should be Mickey Mantle or nobody.
And wherever Maris went, he heard about it.
Jim Bouton described the upshot of all that abuse in his memoir, “Ball Four.”
Roger fought a lot with the people in the stands, especially in Detroit, where he used to give them the finger. He and the fans would get to calling each other names and then Maris would roll out his heavy artillery.
“Yeah? How much are you making?”
Roger was making $70,000 a year.
After a while every time Maris got into an argument the guys in the dugout would say, “C’mon Rodg, hit him with your wallet.”
I submit that this is the way we should beat the likes of Fox News, One America News and other similarly non-credible purveyors of truth, justice and the American way.
We should hit them with our wallets.
Boycott! If we’re serious about fighting the propagation of televised nonsense, and TV’s penchant for adding authenticity and amplification to the hogwash originating on social media and elsewhere, we should have energetic boycotts of the products advertised on stubbornly fictional news channels.
Yes, such boycotts have usually not had enough staying power. Like Maris, we talk big, but don’t usually climb into the stands to fight.
I maintain that it is a lot easier to sustain a boycott than some people think, however. I’ve been boycotting Nestlé since 1977, and have actually enjoyed it most of the time.
Nestlé created its own hell by habitually pushing its powdered baby formula in the poorest African countries, despite knowing that is often a very bad idea for the babies in question. When the formula is mixed with local impure water -- which was, and remains, common -- it’s a great way to poison them.
At least when the kids are fed with breast milk, the mother’s body filters out some of the bad stuff.
And so, an international boycott of the world’s biggest food company began. It involves a lot of products -- currently, about 2,000 brands worldwide.
I never see most of them, which makes the commitment easier. And some of them that are visible are easy to pass up, like Nescafé and Taster’s Choice. Even the best instant coffee is foul and scary.
On the other hand, for years, half the things in the freezer department worth eating were made by companies owned by Nestlé: Stouffer’s, Lean Cuisine, DiGiorno Pizza, California Pizza Kitchen. It took me 20 years to get over losing Stouffer’s Spinach Souffle.
But now, if you want something processed, frozen and made from mysterious ingredients, there’s a lot to choose from that’s not connected to the sweethearts from Switzerland. Many more companies have come to cater to our laziness over the years.
When my own little family was propagating, Nestlé sent us coupons for free Carnation formula. But there was no way we were going to quit the boycott to take advantage of offers of the same stuff that started it all. And we knew what Nestlé was counting on -- that if a mother takes as little as a few days off of breast-feeding, the well might run dry, and formula will be in the shopping cart from then on.
Anti-Nestlé leaders backed off in the 1980s when the company seemed to get the point. But after a five-year-respite, the boycott was back. Nestlé had apparently just moved most of its hard practices to Asia.
I never have let up, myself. I figured that a sea change in the culture of an organization as humongous as Nestlé would be unlikely to be generated by any degree of reform of a single division.
Bad things would still be going on elsewhere in the behemoth. For instance, I noticed a long time ago that Nestlé is on the way to cornering the bottled water business by somehow making deals with governments to pump water out of rivers and springs for next to nothing. I’ve gotten used to avoiding the Swiss scoundrels’ products, so no matter what’s currently happening with baby formula, I might as well keep up the boycott while Nestlé turns the United States into a desert.
It’s reasonable to apply the same standard to Fox News. In 2017, chief Fox blowhard Bill Reilly, caught sexually harassing, was driven from the company after 80 boycotted advertisers took the air.
Reilly didn’t leave behind a cleansed organization. Just about every corner of the outfit deserves the same treatment he got. They didn’t get it.
The second-biggest boycott of Fox struck Tucker Carlson in September, 2018, for his strenuous efforts to spread bigotry. By the following March, his ad load reportedly went down by almost 50 percent, as advertisers -- including Nestlé -- humble-bragged their exits from Tucker Carlson Tonight.
But the show stayed on the air. The reason for that is probably, according to Variety, that many of the advertisers just moved their advertising elsewhere on Fox.
It’s obvious that the death of a thousand cuts won’t work here. In order to be effective, a boycott probably needs to be encompassing, continuing and enthusiastic.
Bonus: It’s a good habit. The world’s biggest corporations seem to have gotten the impression that they’re untouchable. We should become practiced at touching them.
Politico’s Jack Shafer has maintained that if boycotts become a serious way to manage “news” content it will perforate the separation between advertising and editorial.
… I’m made queasy by crusades that charge corporate advertisers with the power to decide what ideas should be discussed and how they should be discussed. Seriously, I barely trust IHOP to make my breakfast. Why would I expect it to vet my cable news content for me?
Shafer suggests that instead of boycotting, those who oppose such editorial behavior should write letters to Fox, picket the office, sign petitions of protest, and cancel cable. Up to about 10 years ago, that might have been more effective than it would seem today.
He’s right in worrying that crossing the blood-brain barrier in any circumstance might mean that news content everywhere would gradually become susceptible to interference from advertisers who might not have our best interests at heart.
But now it’s a more reasonable risk. It’s pretty obvious that disinformation has become a clear danger lately, here and abroad. Other nations are stiffening their governmental control of news content, and that’s worse than any boycott.
In this country, make no mistake: The First Amendment is not an impenetrable wall. Like everything in the U.S. Constitution, it’s conceptual. Concepts change with time.
And change may be afoot. Calls -- from good people -- suggesting government intervention in American speech have burgeoned in recent days.
We may pretend we’re not hearing it, but we are. And it’s tempting.
But it’s better to hit propagandists with our wallets than with a police officer’s truncheon.
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