When I worked as a producer for Al Jazeera America on the amazing science show, TechKnow, I learned so much about climate justice and the fossil fuel industry’s multi-billion dollar ghost subsidiary of interfering with people’s understanding of climate change and root causes.
But one of the most important things I learned is you can’t keep giving the industry that is causing the harms a seat at the table.
For decades, the tobacco industry had a seat at the scientific table when it came to studying harms caused by nicotine. What do you think the tobacco paid-doctors were going to say? ‘Yes, please put a death warning on each pack of smokes?’ No, that is not what happened.
Scientists knew that smoking caused cancer since at least the 1940s, when epidemiological studies showed a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Experiments on mice in the 1950s confirmed chemicals in cigarette smoke caused cancer.
Decade after decade, we dithered - negotiating with capitalism on what we could and could not do to protect the population.
Why do you think the Koch-cadre and Mercer Family Foundation spend so much money to interfere with science and to attack our country’s top scientists? Because a shared understanding of scientific facts interferes with their greed.
When oil profiteering and the exploitation of our data - the new nuclear arms race - are your business practices, then truth is inconvenient. Giving their proxies a seat at the table when understanding fossil fuel impacts on climate change has interfered with our understanding of the reality of climate change. It has prolonged the collective ignorance.
I also learned something that you aren’t going to want to hear…
We are the problem. We demand the product. We can’t point our finger at the fossil fuel industry if we are not changing our consumption habits.
I was so alarmed at what I was learning about the oil and war economy that in 2017 I got rid of my car and took public transit or walked everywhere. When COVID hit - and public transit was momentarily off the table - I was gifted an old car - a wonderful VW stick shift - which I drive as little as possible. The best thing we can all do for the environment is work from home or close to home.
The point is, we can all change our ways of doing things to ease our impacts on this planet - the only inhabitable one we have at the moment - and I have no doubt that many of you who read this magazine already have changed your habits and are probably way ahead of me.
We are also in desperate need of encouraging millions of people to change the channel/s.
As we interviewed “The Brainwashing of My Dad” filmmaker Jen Senko on RadPod, I thought how we all collectively have the power to choose what we watch.
I went the extreme route. I choose not to have a television - for 17 years now - because I have post-traumatic news syndrome. I do have a screen, I do rent French and vintage films and occasionally binge great modern series, but I prefer my rare spare time for books and music.
I think we will be viewing TV news harms the way we viewed smoking harms and fossil fuel harms - as a soul pollutant that caused mass psychosis. Combined with the digital poison fed into people’s minds via various tech platforms who mined our data, I think I am not overstating the problem.
It’s important to note we are never helpless.
We can all change our metaphorical channels. And if you’re Jen Senko’s mom, you can change your husband’s viewing habits. Her father, who became radicalized over time by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, came back to his loving self when her mom took away Fox from their cable box; never repaired his AM radio when it broke so he could no longer mainline Rush; and of equal importance, she went into his emails and unsubscribed him from all the junk accounts sending him anti-democratic propaganda. She then subscribed him to pro-democracy email lists.
I never had the opportunity to de-radicalize my father. He passed away before we could have that conversation. Those are difficult conversations to have because people who become addicted to othering outrage are looking for a fight - they become “facts resistant.”
But if we keep calm and carry on and arm ourselves with knowledge of just how toxic this stuff is we have a shot of our words making a difference.
The Dominion Voting Systems court filings are incredibly damning for Fox. Viewers who watch Fox News wouldn’t know - the network is busy platforming Kremlin propagandists who are bashing Joe Biden for the courage and dignity he showed yesterday in Kyiv.
The job of the network is to make you think liberal democracy is failing - that serves Murdoch, who is clearly aligned with Putin.
I’m getting ready to do a RadPod breaking news special with Milo, our media correspondent, who is going to offer all kinds of ways you can help turn off Fox for your loved ones and for the betterment of humanity.
In the meantime, thank you for not smoking Fox.
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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine and Substack bestseller. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you, as well, to those who support my work with coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. My reflection, Confessions of a ‘Fox Blonde’ was recently published in Byline Supplement. In a review of my latest ebook, the erotic novella Fox Undercover, I’ve been called “The punk rock Anaïs Nin” and author Greg Olear called it “The Big Sleep 2.0” except with “not so much sleep happening.”
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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It’s Fat Tuesday, WWOZ Crescent city radio stream is bouncing! Biden ,whom, I once despised! Has emerged the antithesis of Trump, visiting Kyiv in a war zone is mind blowing! The whole FOX charade, and those who’ve become lost in it, feels like an alien related aphasia! It’s painful how many people are turned around(lost)in the gyre, indeed the bell curve relative to intelligence is rather curious...
Right Heidi. Time to stop smoking. Engage in truth telling. The Fox brand is mendacious. As are the venal GOP candidates or politicians they align with today.
They are anti science and anti education. They ban books.
We must fight for and preserve our collective interest in an educated knowledgeable citizen population with capacity for critical thinking and analysis.
They want us to “smoke” their poisoned lies and remain ignorant fearful and passive. Appreciate the daily efforts you make in our community to keep us alert to the “smoke and lies.”