
We eat hot dogs because they’re tasty, they’re convenient — and, damn it, because they’re downright American. We eat them even though, deep down, we know they’re not good for us.
Do you think Patrick Bertoletti would have wolfed down 84 hot dogs (and buns) in ten minutes at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island on July 4th to win the 2024 Mustard Belt if he knew how the sausage gets made? Well, maybe he might. But, knowing how hot dogs are made might make the rest of us skip a hot dog night every once in a while.
Just like there’s a growing dogger’s Hall of Fame, there’s a growing journalistic Hall of deFame. It includes Fox Sports and Amazon Prime NFL’s sideline reporter Charissa Thompson. Last November, during an interview with Barstool Sports, Charissa admitted she would sometimes “make up” sideline reports. She did so unambiguously — “I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again: I would make up the report sometimes.” That’s not even the funniest part — this is: After the fallout, Charissa seemed genuinely surprised that her colleagues were “aghast.”
But Charissa did it. She knew she did it. She said she did it, and everyone knew she said it. No one really cared. Why? Maybe it’s the attitude of, hey’ it’s just sports. Low-grade banalities masquerading as “insights” that coaches spew as they jog off the field before they chastise their charges at half-time to create what we call “content” around which Fox can shoehorn yet another Draft Kings commercial isn’t real news. It’s just sports.
I mean, it’s not like something a coach may or may not have said could influence second-half betting odds. It’s not like this sports stuff matters. Not like, say, when some Fox News guests made up stuff about Dominion Voting Systems and how they impacted the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. That stuff matters.
Fox said it was opinion, and something about the First Amendment. Dominion disagreed. They sued Fox, and they characterized the allegations as “outlandish” and “crazy” and “ludicrous” and “nuts.” Before a jury could hear the case, Fox and Dominion settled. Apparently, you can’t just make stuff up and say it on TV. Apparently, that hurts people.
How much does it hurt? Well, Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million. Here’s the kicker’s kicker. Two year earlier, the private equity firm, Staple Street Capital, bought 76 percent of Dominion in a deal that valued the company at $50 million. Lesson one: When it comes to defamation, the payout is punitive.
Put another way: Why was the settlement so large? Because McDonald’s. Remember when Stella Liebeck bought a coffee from McDonald’s, spilled it on her own lap, and asked McDonald’s to pay her $20,000? McDonald’s lost in court, and had to pay her $640,000. Punitive. The message was clear: Don’t serve unnecessarily hot coffee.
Poynter — you know, the folks that own Politifact — didn’t care the first time Charissa Thompson admitted to making stuff up: Nearly two years before the Barstool Sports interview, she made the same admission to fellow sports reporter Erin Andrews on a podcast they co-hosted. There was no Poynter story then, but there was last November when Tom Jones called out Thompson’s “stunningly” bad behavior.
Jones said the quiet part of the recipe out loud: “I cannot remember ever calling for someone’s job. But that streak might end depending on how Thompson handles this.” Here, tense is everything: How she might handle this? She already admitted to committing journalistic fraud. Is post-fraud contrition enough to handle this? Showing up late and doing a half-assed job is very on-brand for Poynter.
For news organizations, the important thing is fraud. The important thing is making sure not to tell people how the sausage gets made. That was reinforced by Stewart Mandel of The Athletic when he questioned Charissa’s acknowledgement: “She admitted this out loud?”
All of this leads up to the incredible CNN defamation trial. On Friday, a jury affirmed CNN made things up. The trial was a guided tour through the abattoir. And our guide was Nicholas Fondacaro, who did yeomen’s work chronicling the trial on X (formerly Twitter). I haven’t been this riveted to a court case since Lieutenant Kaffee parried with Colonel Jessup using words made up by Aaron Sorkin.
The jury heard that Jake Tapper and his producers wanted a story that “targeted” former U.S. Navy Seal Zachary Young because he was a “sh—bag” with “punchable face”. They said they were “gonna nail this Zachary Young motherf—er” for illegally profiteering by charging people thousands of dollars to get them out of Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal. They ignored sources that said the opposite. They created a fake video of him not answering his phone. Basically, they used lesser ingredients to make the sausage. Big whoop.
No, actually, it is a big whoop. In the trial, Tapper said he doesn’t care about ratings, that it was all about news. Except, CNN’s breaking news editor, Megan Trimble, admitted the story “is full of holes like Swiss cheese,” and CNN senior national security editor Thomas Lumley called the story “80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscured fact.” Tapper and his team ignored the network’s editors and fact-checkers, and ran the story anyway.
This trial exposed Jake Tapper’s sausage recipe. He lost, CNN lost, and journalism lost. Again.
So far, CNN is on the hook for $5 million — the first $4 million for economic damage, and $1 million more for emotional damage. The number to watch was going to be the punitive part, but CNN and Young came to an undisclosed agreement. Which, for CNN — and all news — misses the point. It wasn’t about the fraud, or the money. It was about protecting the recipe.
Recipes are funny things. When I watch Gordon Ramsay, I think to myself, I can cook. One time, when I walked through the Tate, I saw Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, read how he made it, and thought, I can make one, too.
In August 1962, I started doing silkscreens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silk-screening, you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it, so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple, quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it.
We consume news because it’s tasty. And, convenient. And, damn it, because it’s downright American. Except now that we know how the news sausage gets made, it’s a little tougher to swallow.
Charles Benaiah is the CEO of Watzan, a techy company for medical media. When he’s not running a media company, he reads about media, thinks about it, pull out what’s left of his hair dealing with it, and then he writes about it over on UnCharles. Follow him on LinkedIn by clicking or tapping here.Â
The opinion reflected in this article is the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of TheDesk.net or its parent company, Solano Media LLC.