zz/DJ/AAD/STAR MAX/IPx
Mark Zuckerberg in 2015
I go back and forth in my mind on the question of who is the most destructive private citizen/right-wing billionaire on the planet? Is it Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg? I can make the argument either way.
Take, for instance, the insane position of anti-vaxxers, who, like drunk drivers, insist not only on endangering themselves but everybody else—and unlike most drunk drivers, they’re proud of this. A recent survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that “In the presence of statistical controls, those who say they rely on conservative media such as Fox News or very conservative media such as OAN are more likely to believe this [vaccine] conspiracy theory. Those who say they rely on mainstream media are more likely to reject this theory.”
So does the prize go to Murdoch? According to an analysis by Whitney Kimball, writing for Gizmodo, it’s Zuckerberg who deserves the top spot. “Researchers from numerous universities, specializing in various public health and political science-related fields, surveyed 20,669 people from all 50 states and D.C., between June and July 2021. They found that 25% of people who only got news from Facebook in the previous 24 hours say they won’t get vaccinated, putting it below only Newsmax (41%) and slightly above Fox (23%),” she writes.
Facebook, most people do not (I think) realize, is the second-largest news provider in the U.S., below only CNN. Its newsfeed is dominated by right wing conspiracy mongers led almost always by Breitbart alumnus Ben Shapiro. Facebook could severely reduce the amount of potentially murderous lies for which it provides a platform if it wished. Per Kimball, “A March 2021 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 73% of vaccine disinformation originated from just twelve people”—but if Facebook banished that dozen, Zuckerberg would have to get by with a few fewer of the tens of billions of dollars he has amassed during his relatively brief life. So that’s a no-go.
Facebook may have the edge in evilness owing to its reach.
Facebook makes its money via reader engagement and so is devoted to ensnaring readers in whatever bullshit they will swallow for as long as possible. Zuckerberg spouts a lot of meaningless rhetoric about “connectiveness,” but that’s really not what motivates him. The company’s ethos was captured in a recent New Yorker piece by scholar Jill Lepore: “Zuckerberg would end meetings by pumping his fist and shouting, ‘Domination!’ New features were rolled out as fast as possible, for the sake of fueling growth. ‘Fuck it, ship it.’ became a company catchphrase.” It should therefore be no surprise that Donald Trump was the single-largest spender on political ads on Facebook. “His Facebook page was busier than those of the major networks, BuzzFeed, the Washington Post, and the New York Times taken together. Over the protests of many Facebook employees, Zuckerberg had adopted, and stuck to, a policy of not subjecting any political advertisements to fact-checking. Refusing to be ‘an arbiter of truth,’ Facebook instead established itself as a disseminator of misinformation,” writes Lepore.
Along with Google, Facebook has also all but destroyed the business model of most news gathering operations by hoovering all the advertising that used to support them while cannibalizing their content. The Pew Research Center recently reported that subscription fees recently surpassed advertising income for the industry, thereby reversing a 300-year trend. This would be good news if that income were sufficient to support the journalism necessary to protect our democracy. It isn’t. Not even close.
What is left to say about Murdoch? Well, this: He recently fired a COVID liar in Australia but continues to promote, and profit from, the same COVID lies in the United States, most prominently during prime time on Fox. As journalist Eric Boehlert notes in his must-read newsletter, “Press Run,” Tucker Carlson, who has the highest-rated news program on cable, “has staked his career on lying about the pandemic, and consequently is getting people killed, and continues to enjoy free rein from News Corp. Carlson unapologetically claims the Covid vaccine is killing people and that the government and media are covering it up. ‘Nobody can be trusted,’ the fascism-friendly host insists. He also says that the vaccine “poses a danger to pregnant women”—another lie.
In explaining the distinction between Murdoch’s actions in Australia and America, Boehlert has some eye-opening information even for those who have followed Murdoch’s nefarious activities closely. (To be fair, there are so many of these, it would take a mind like that of Carnac the Magnificent to keep track of all of them.) Boehlert notes that Australia’s former prime ministers, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, a liberal and conservative, respectively, recently joined together “to denounce the Murdoch media cancer that’s eating the country. They urged the government to take steps to diversify media ownership and to break up the dangerous coalition that now exists between right-wing politicians and the Murdoch press, which serves as an unaccountable, but extremely powerful force. Parliamentary hearings were held after Rudd's petition to establish a royal commission into media diversity became Australia's largest-ever e-petition, and the country's third largest petition of any kind.”
I don’t know enough about either former PM to say whether they did this because or in spite of the fact that, as Boehlert notes, “Murdoch’s News Corp control controls 70 percent of Australia's print media, most notably The Australian, the national daily newspaper with the largest circulation. That would be like if Murdoch not only owned the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the U.S. but also the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, and used them all to pump out toxic, right-wing misinformation.”
Rudd, the liberal, labeled Murdoch’s empire a “cancer” on the country, while the center-right Turnbull branded it “an absolute threat to our democracy.” Would that we had as clear-minded political leaders—or even ex-political leaders—in this nation.
Back to my contest: Facebook may have the edge in evilness owing to its reach. According to Lepore, bolstered by the estimable New Yorker fact-checkers, “Facebook possesses the personal data of more than a quarter of the world’s people.” Murdoch is a piker compared to Zuckerberg in this regard.
P.S. Facebook disabled accounts and other forms of access used by New York University’s Ad Observatory, which had helped us understand how Facebook targets political ads and spreads misinformation. Now, you will be able to read fewer of these analyses.
There’s a new right-wing Jewish publication in the world, to join a field crowded by (the partially Murdoch-funded) Commentary as well as Tablet, Mosaic, and The Jewish Review of Books. It’s called Sapir and it is edited by right-wing Jewish New York Times pundit Bret Stephens. Fine, you say, let the right wing Jews publish what they like, even if, as with the case of Tablet (and other Tikvah Fund–supported endeavors) it is dominated by anti-democratic, pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Thing is, Sapir is funded by something called the Maimonides Fund, and those guys refuse to identify where their money comes from. Could it be funded by the Israeli government or intelligence agency, as when, say, the CIA funded the journal, Encounter in the 1950s? I have no reason to think it is, but then again, what’s the reason for hiding it? It must be something. Does The New York Times concern itself with whose money is going into the pockets of Stephens, who, by the way, happens to defend virtually every action undertaken by the Israeli government? I’ve inquired about this at the Times, but so far received no response. Perhaps others might wish to ask as well.
Speaking of the Times, and Jews, if you were covering the cancellation of Obama’s planned massive 60th birthday celebration on the Vineyard, who would you turn to for comment out of say, every person in the entire world? If you chose Jeffrey Epstein BFF Alan Dershowitz, then you, too, could be a Times political reporter.
The amazing jazz-guitarist, producer, arranger, Upper-West Sider, and all-around funny guy John Pizzarelli celebrated the beginning of in-person performances as well as his good fortune in being lucky enough to celebrate his 23rd wedding anniversary with the no less estimableJessica Molaskey this week with a virtuosic performance outdoors at Payomet in Truro, Cape Cod.
John is, like his late father Bucky Pizzarelli, a marvelous guitarist. But there are lots of great guitarists in the world. What makes him unique, I think, is what a terrific entertainer he is. I don’t know what he’s like around the house, but on stage he’s funny, self-effacing, informative and unthreatening. He can also be kind of brave, that is playing mostly solo jazz guitar for a 90-minute show before a seated audience being tortured by mosquitos with only a short interlude with his better half. John was plugging his new (and only) solo guitar album, a pandemic-time project that pays tribute to and expands on the music of fellow guitarist, Pat Metheny, called “Better Days Ahead.” It was a balm to many of us during said pandemic to catch John (and Jessica’s) “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” every week on Facebook, and you can read all about that, and him, here
Speaking of great jazz guitarists, here is one of John Hammond’s least celebrated discoveries, the great Charlie Christian, and here is the one jazz guitarist everybody seems to have heard of, Django Reinhardt, and here is video about ten things about Woody Allen’s underrated Reinhardt (and Fellini) inspired film, Sweet and Lowdown, which featured one of Sean Penn’s most affecting performances.
