The ongoing advertiser boycott of the Fox News show, sparked by anti-immigrant comments Carlson made last week, has sparked a debate among progressives and journalists about tactics.
Polling guru Nate Silver suggests that boycotting Carlson will lead to ever more boycotts culminating in a blander media landscape:
Jack is right. The logical endpoint of deeming advertisers to have endorsed the political messages of the shows they run ads on is that only milquetoast both-sidesism with a pro-corportate bent will be advertising-supported, if any political content is ad-supported at all. https://t.co/R5yrH0jN3o
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 19, 2018
Silver maintained his position in the face of many critiques:
I tend to agree that Tucker is a racist, or at least that he convincingly plays a racist on TV.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 19, 2018
However, I don't want the PR department of Applebee's deciding for us all what's racist vs. legitimate/acceptable political speech. https://t.co/UetgQ4Ab9U
In fact, I am gay, and I'm just old enough (40) to remember when conservative groups urged boycotts of advertisers and networks who were seen as promoting LGBTQ or other "nontraditional" lifestyles. That strongly influences my views on this subject! https://t.co/iGGFGQeXWw https://t.co/jDrXGxizQX
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 19, 2018
Writer Talia Lavin was among the many who took issue with Silver:
There's a difference between "milquetoast both-sidesism" and "outright white naitonalism" though. Like, a long mile, even https://t.co/2i5NVhK3ja
— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) December 19, 2018
Jumping off from a tweet by Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker, political scientist Henry Farrell wrote a meaty Twitter thread arguing that boycotts make sense given the unique problem of Fox News, an extremist outlet that presents itself as a mainstream news source.
1. Short thread on the Fox Straddle. There's another problem. Nate's broader claim is that we'll end up in a "bad equilibrium" where "only milquetoast both-sidesism with a pro-corportate bent will be advertising-supported, if any political content is ad-supported at all" https://t.co/oL9fP5AxrS
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
2. That rests on an implausible understanding of the Fox News phenomenon. Here's an alternative take. As per historical research of @pastpunditry and others, the major continuing problem of radical conservative content before Fox was that there was no mass market for it.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
3. Hence, a variety of business models, involving different mixes of patronage, leveraging of regulatory requirements for public content, and, as per @rickperlstein, scam peddling.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
4. Fox News has solved this problem - but through a jiu-jitsu trick where it simultaneously presents itself as a mainstream news channel (and howls like crazy when it is treated differently), while serving up a hot mess of ideologically loaded crazy.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
5. It hence has to straddle two markets. On the one hand, it has to present itself as mainstream to take advantage of ad revenues that help maintain its profitability together with cable fees. On the other, it has to guard its right flank against new media that can outcrazy it.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
6. As per @YBenkler research, Fox was temporarily challenged during the 2016 elections by Breitbart, which was younger, hungrier and more adept with WWW (see also @gabrielsherman ). There were real fears that audience might migrate to some Bannon or Sinclair funded competitor.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
7. So what this suggests is that Fox News is nearly uniquely vulnerable to advertiser attacks, because they widen the fissure in its underlying business model. Fox has to straddle the quite different markets for radical right crazy and the 'mainstream' engaging in a perpetual ...
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018
8. and very difficult balancing act of faux-outrage and dissimulation. This is why we're not going to see a race to Nate's equilibrium - very few other websites are going to be as vulnerable as Fox, because very few have to pull off some equivalent of the Fox Straddle. Finis.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) December 19, 2018