Imagethief

Tag: Politics

  • U R fired thx

    U R fired thx

    Fox News’ statement about Maria Bartiromo said a lot by saying very little

    Happy Labor Day, American readers! Let’s celebrate by talking about firings.

    Last week news broke that long-time Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo was leaving the broadcaster. This came just a couple of days after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stepped down. Immediately, people started speculating on social media that Bartiromo was leaving Fox to take the podium in the White House press room.

    I don’t normally preoccupy myself with the professional fates of Fox News personalities. I don’t watch broadcast news unless I have to for work reasons or the shit is really going down somewhere. I don’t have cable, and endless panels of talking heads chortling at each other makes me want to die.1 Also, to put it politely, Fox News is not compatible with my politics. But the press secretary rumor was interesting, so I went and looked at Fox News’ statement:

    “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter.”

    I thought, this woman is not taking the press secretary gig. She has been fired.

    Here is the whole Fox News press release, minus the boilerplate at the end. I’ve highlighted the portion of the release that is about Ms. Bartiromo. Everything else is programming details:

    FOX NEWS PARTS WAYS WITH MARIA BARTIROMO

    NEW YORK – September 3, 2026 — Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media.

    In making the announcement, FOX News Media said, “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter.”

    The last episode of Mornings with Maria (6-9 AM/ET) aired this morning on FOX Business Network (FBN) and the show will transition to Mornings with FOX Business beginning tomorrow with rotating anchors. Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street which also airs weekly on FBN (Fridays, 7-7:30 PM/ET) will shift to FBN’s Wall Street effective this week hosted by Cheryl Casone and helmed by rotating anchors thereafter. FBN will also launch a new weekday programming schedule which will be announced in the coming weeks.

    Additionally, FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Sunday Morning Futures (10-11 AM/ET) will be hosted by Jason Chaffetz this Sunday and a new host will be announced at a later date.

    That is the corporate version of kthxbye and moons-of-Jupiter cold for a twelve-year tenure.

    A statement doesn’t have to be long to set a tone, and there are recent examples of Fox News on-air personalities leaving for administration roles. They are vastly warmer than the Bartiromo statement:

    For Pete Hegseth:

    “Pete Hegseth has been an exceptional host on ‘FOX & Friends’ and FOX Nation and a bestselling author for FOX News Books for nearly a decade. His insights and analysis, especially about the military, resonated deeply with our viewers and made the program the major success that it is today. We are extremely proud of his work at FOX News and wish him the best of luck in Washington.”

    For Jeanine Pirro:

    “Jeanine Pirro has been a wonderful addition to The Five over the last three years and a longtime beloved host across FOX News Media who contributed greatly to our success throughout her 14-year tenure. We wish her all the best in her new role in Washington.”

    And for Neal Cavuto, who didn’t leave for an administration role, but did leave after a long tenure:

    “Neil Cavuto’s illustrious career has been a master class in journalism and we’re extremely proud of his incredible 28-year run with Fox News Media. His programs have defined business news and set the standard for the entire industry. We wish him a heartfelt farewell and all the best on his next chapter.”

    “Exceptional!” “Wonderful!” “Illustrious!” Words not appearing in the Bartiromo statement. But you know who did get a statement a lot like Bartiromo? Tucker Carlson:

    “FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor. Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st. Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”

    Again, the highlighted part is about Carlson, and the rest is programming details. I wonder what Bartiromo and Carlson have in common? (We’ll get to it.)

    A portrait of Maria Bartiromo with a neutral expression. She is wearing glasses, a blue pinstripe blazer and a double string of pearls, and at a three-quarter angle to the camera, looking left. The background is a blurry, pastel blue.
    Literally cancelled.

    I have written and shipped lots of executive departure statements over the years. In general, assuming the executive is prominent enough to require a departure statement at all, there is a relationship between circumstances and word count. The better the circumstances of the departure, the longer and more fulsome the statement. The worse the circumstances, the shorter.

    The exception to this rule is when a departure is so acrimonious or material that the company needs to preemptively publish a bunch of receipts on the way out. The curve looks something like this:

    A graph showing the relationship between word count and circumstances, with a smiley face at high word count indicating good outcomes, a skull at low word count indicating bad outcomes, and a woman’s photo in the middle representing a neutral point.
    Fig. 1: The shit-fan – wordcount curve.

    On the far left of the curve is a typical feel-good departure. A respected senior executive retiring after a successful run, or leaving to take on a prestigious role at an organization that doesn’t compete with the prior employer. Look at Wal-Mart’s announcement of Doug McMillon’s retirement and succession by John Furner. 631 words, a quote from McMillon, a laudatory quote from the chairman of the board, not to mention some buddy photos of McMillon and Furner together. A variation on this is giving a departing executive space to publish their own communication, as Tim Cook did last week, when he handed over the Apple CEO role. Or, since I mentioned it above, look at the White House’s laudatory statement about Karoline Leavitt.

    On the far right of the curve, things are bad and risk is high. The company has had to fire an executive in a situation so scandalous or material (say, removing a CEO) that broader messaging is required. Often in these situations the departing executive still gets brief treatment, and most of the text is dedicated to the path forward and the qualifications of the replacement. Some examples are Tony Hayward’s departure from BP in the wake of the Macondo oil well disaster, Laurent Friexe’s departure from Nestlé for ethical lapses and Brian Krzanich’s departure from Intel (which I worked on) for similar lapses. In all of these examples there is brief paragraph on the departing exec, and most of the text is devoted to the qualifications of the incoming exec, remedial actions and statements of principle.

    In very bottom of the curve is what happened to Maria Bartiromo. She was visible enough that her departure needed to be acknowledged. And…that is all. No praise. For an on-air celebrity with twelve years of tenure, that told me the circumstances were bad. It’s not material, and there aren’t operational concerns, so you don’t need a bunch of continuity and safe-hands messaging to soothe customers and investors. Just, so long and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

    This is all a giant oversimplification. Many factors can influence an executive departure statement. There might be litigation risk to account for. The details of an exit statement might be negotiated as part of a separation, a thing I’ve dealt with a few times in cooperation with HR and legal teams. A corporate officer’s departure will require an SEC filing. Sometimes you’ll ship a departure statement proactively, sometimes you’ll hold it in reserve and hope no one notices, though this doesn’t work with highly visible execs—or on-air talent—whose absence will be noticed. In a potentially acrimonious departure, we might prepare all sorts of stuff, but keep it in reserve in case we have to go to war. But the word count curve is a reasonable rule of thumb.

    Speaking of litigation risk…

    Why the unceremonious departure and minimalist statement for Ms. Bartiromo? It took a day or two to emerge, but the story was colorful. From the New York Times:2

    In July, as President Trump was preparing a prime-time speech on election security, word went out from executives at Fox News: The network would avoid covering his stock claims about a stolen election.

    Fox had landed in serious legal trouble in 2021 after amplifying false assertions by Mr. Trump’s allies about vote-stealing election machines, culminating in an extraordinary $787 million defamation settlement.

    In 2020, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo had made her show a central stop for proponents of the president’s election theories. And this summer, too, she was preparing to interview the presidential adviser Peter Navarro the morning after the speech.

    But after she received a text message written by a Fox Business executive warning against post-speech coverage, she canceled Mr. Navarro’s appearance.

    As she did so, she shared the executive’s text with Mr. Navarro, who promptly sent it “up the chain” to the White House, he said in an interview Friday. It was his duty, he said, to relay “yet another example of Fox personnel censoring the Trump administration.”

    It appears that Ms. Bartiromo faced a test of whether her loyalty lay with her employer or the administration, and she chose the administration, forwarding an internal communication to the White House. This violated confidentiality and created immediate blowback for Fox News, which had already eaten a huge settlement on the issue of unsubstantiated election fraud allegations.

    That’s bad! Your employer can no longer trust you! You will be fired! The statement announcing your departure will be terse and sound like it is coming through clenched teeth!

    The defamation settlement was with Dominion Voting Systems, after Fox News accused the company of involvement with voter fraud. Tucker Carlson also left in the wake of the Dominion settlement, apparently because the legal discovery process disclosed embarrassing emails he had sent, many criticizing his Fox colleagues and the Trump administration. He was also being sued by a former producer over alleged sex discrimination. He was Fox’s most popular host, but he had become a liability. Corporations are cold that way.

    In neither Ms. Bartiromo’s nor Mr. Carlson’s case did Fox News say they were “fired.” Instead, the company used the conveniently vague formulation, “parted ways.” Bartiromo has lawyered up and her counsel said this to Variety on Friday:

    “The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false. Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth. “

    I don’t know, man. “Parted ways,” may be vague, but it’s not that vague. The lawyer’s statement may be angling to get Bartiromo released from her Fox News contract, which the New York Times says is still in force, so she can seek work elsewhere. But by all means, bring forth the receipts and witnesses. The assembled media reporters of New York will enjoy every minute of it. Also, not the biggest thing, but wrong use of “incredulous.”

    I expect that Bartiromo is done at Fox. But One America News and Real America’s Voice are surely on the hunt for big-name MAGA talent. And there’s always the Tucker Carlson self-branded YouTube approach. Or, god help her, a newsletter.

    Meanwhile, “Mornings with Maria” is done and Fox News needs a new host for their morning slot. Not to start any rumors, but I hear Karoline Leavitt is available and her last employer thought very highly of her.

    1. I actually started my media career in local broadcast news, back in 1991, as an intern and later part-timer at KPIX TV News in San Francisco. They were a CBS affiliate and the key talent were Dave McElhatton and Kate Kelly. Gen-X San Franciscans may remember them. I worked the assignment desk on weekends, which was quite a bit of fun. TV newsrooms are exciting places. I left to move into radio because I hate myself. One of my outstanding memories of my time at PIX (as we called it) was the big cardboard box of little packets of pain pills bolted to one of the hallway walls. Over my year and a half tenure the level of packets ebbed and flowed like the tides, in sync with big news moments. ↩︎
    2. Oliver Darcy’s media-watching newsletter Status  actually broke the behind-the-scenes story, but I am guessing more people will be able to view the NY Times’ article. But you should subscribe to Status. ↩︎

  • French Harder!

    French Harder!

    An air crash, the politics of language and the dangers of unresolved tension

    Let’s say you’re the CEO of a national air carrier. It’s a big job that comes with lots of pressure! One of your aircraft is involved in a runway crash that results in the tragic deaths of two pilots and injuries to a number of passengers. All the early indications are that your airline is not at fault. But, as CEO, it is your responsibility to communicate sentiment on behalf of the company, and to explain the actions the company is taking.

    You record a four minute video in which you offer condolences for deaths of the pilots and explain what you are doing to support the passengers and other crew members. You are appropriately solemn. You say all the right things, considering the circumstances. Job done, right?

    Maybe not…

    Carney slams Air Canada CEO for English-only remarks after crash reut.rs/47l7vdr

    — Reuters (@reuters.com) 2026-03-25T19:45:10Z

    It is a public relations truism that poor communication can make a crisis worse. Typically, that means things like responding too late, getting demonstrably ahead of the facts, omitting or obfuscating important information, or releasing inconsistent or muddled messages.

    Or, one might be “tone deaf,” meaning your remarks sound poorly calibrated to the gravity of the situation or the feelings of stakeholders. A canonical example of tone deafness is a remark by Tony Hayward, CEO of BP during the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. In the midst of apologizing for the situation on TV during what was supposed to be a shirtsleeves “we’re fixing it!” PR hit, he said, “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I’d love my life back.” This was after 11 people died on the rig and the gulf coast fishing industry was wiped out.

    Three days later, he was apologizing for his apology. Always a bad sign! A few weeks later, he was out.1 The statement wasn’t the only reason but it sure didn’t go in the board’s “keep him” column. Here is advice: live your life so you are never used as a case study of crisis comms gone terribly wrong!

    Read the rest on Substack

    Not the actual crisis!
  • Triumph of the Wankers

    Triumph of the Wankers

    Stadium Concerts and the Iconography of Totalitarianism

    I am going to start with something polarizing. I like the band Oasis.

    When people who don’t like Oasis find out that you do like Oasis, they will often try an intervention, like they discovered you’re in a cult where everyone wears white Skechers and signs a suicide pact. People who are musically inclined will explain that your taste is basic, and start suggesting bands that use weird time signatures and exotic modes. If I wanted to listen to King Crimson, I would just listen to King Crimson.

    Plenty of Oasis’ music is simple. “Columbia” is A-D-C in a loop for five minutes. But AC/DC proved fifty years ago that there is a bottomless appetite for three-chord party rock, and I think it comes down to branding. Britpop produced a lot of interesting and thoughtful bands—Stone Roses, Suede, James, arguably Radiohead—and then there were Liam and Noel Gallagher, a two-headed wrecking-ball of surly Manchester sex-appeal.

    This branding divide was captured in the short-lived but intense Oasis vs. Blur Britpop rivalry of the mid-nineties:

    Blur:

    Oasis:

    Behold your revealed preferences.

    The Gallagher brothers famously despised each other and the band broke up in acrimony in 2009, years after their creative peak. But the shimmering aura of money has magical healing properties, like an amethyst chandelier, and the brothers embarked upon a reunion tour this year.

    My family and I lucked into tickets to the concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena last month. The Gallaghers could remember at any moment that they hate each other and tumble back into violence, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them together as it might never happen again. We had a great time.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • The Endless PR Stunt

    America’s superstar pro-natalist couple hacks the media

    Have you heard about Malcolm and Simone Collins? They’re the American couple that have made themselves the poster-family for the “pro-natal” movement, which is an actual thing we have in the U.S. now. If you haven’t heard about them, congratulations! And I am so sorry to break your streak. But they’ve been profiled repeatedly and I know about them, so now you have to know about them, too. They look like this:

    A photograph of Simone and Malcolm Collins, seated, in front of a reflective window. Simone is on the left, dressed in a white bonnet with long drawstrings hanging down to her elbow level. She is wearing a black skirt over a white blouse with a ruffled neckline and puffy sleeves that end in ruffled cuffs, and her signature, chunky, black, round-framed glasses. Her hands are folded in her lap and she is looking down and to the right, in front of Malcolm. A toddler’s head is visible peeking from behind her left shoulder. Her overall presentation reflects her “techno puritan” aesthetic. Malcolm is dressed in a black leather jacket, black collared shirt and jeans, and square-rimmed black glasses, and is gesturing while speaking to camera for an interview.

    They are often pictured with more of their many children. Simone’s rural-trad presentation notwithstanding, this is a couple that famously met on Reddit a decade or so ago and that has been terminally online for years. They have strong “people you would sidle away from at a party” energy.

    Regrettably, the Collinses are fascinating both because of their cause (I have previously written about government pro-natal campaigns) and because of how successful they have been at getting themselves and the cause profiled. The current arc of coverage started in January and picked up speed through April, and I have read it so you don’t have to:1

    There are many more from last year and the year before. They may be decent at having kids (four plus one on the way), but they are undisputed world champions at getting into the press.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Airshow!

    Family fun at America’s answer to the military parade

    We were living in Beijing in 2009 when the Party celebrated the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic. The main event was a giant military parade that would roll down Chang’an Avenue and past the Party dignitaries assembled on top of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, which definitely sounds like a place to review a bunch of weapons.1

    Our apartment was east of downtown, along the same boulevard that becomes Chang’an Ave. A rail spur that normally delivered trainloads of coal to the huge power station next door made it a good place to stage the armored vehicles participating in the parade. It was also a good place to breathe a lot of coal soot and heavy metals, but that was Beijing in those days.

    The day of the parade dress rehearsal, I put my toddler son on my shoulders and we stood with our neighbors and watched hundreds of tanks roll down the street2 in front of our compound. Tanks on Chang’an Ave is a historically complicated image, but it was also undeniably cool. My son was raptured on a cloud of diesel fumes.

    After the rehearsal, I was excited to watch the actual parade in person. We would all line the streets and cheer for the might of China!

    We would do no such thing. In the best authoritarian tradition, there would be no disorderly public crowds along the route. Only carefully selected groups in carefully selected areas. I, a politically unreliable foreign dork, would have to watch on TV with the masses. Like everyone else who lived along the parade route, we were restricted to our compound during the day of the main event.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Re-Sanitized for My Protection

    Two Decades Walking the Lines of Self-Censorship

    Twenty years ago, I wrote a post on this old China blog, “Sanitized for My Protection,” in which I discussed my approach to self-censorship. The post was prompted by a reader comment asking me how I thought about the risks to myself as a resident foreigner blogging about China. The truth was, I hadn’t thought about it systematically, and it was interesting to give some shape to the risks and decisions that defined my writing.

    I never felt like I had the luxury of shooting my mouth off with complete abandon. This was mostly professional caution. As I wrote last September, in the post inaugurating this Substack, my boss at the PR agency I was working for was not a fan of my blogging. She was a former Chinese diplomat, well attuned to Chinese government sensibilities, and conservative in matters of public expression.

    I did get her into trouble once, in 2008. This was not through a blog post, but through a quote I gave to a reporter from The Guardian on China’s “50 Cent Party” (五毛党) of Internet propagandists. This is what ran in the story:

    According to popular lore, and a number of Chinese bloggers, each post made pays 50 Chinese cents or five mao. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a lucrative occupation. William Moss, an account director at the public relations agency Burson-Marsteller, calculates that a post needs to be made every four minutes during a gruelling 72-hour working week if you are hoping to earn the bare minimum wage in one of the country’s bigger cities.

    “Pocket money? Maybe. But I wouldn’t plan on sending the kids to college that way,” says Moss.

    Sounds like me.

    My sin was to imply that China’s nationalist astroturfers might not be receiving a living wage for their work in the service of the state. CIPRA, the government-linked China-International Public Relations Association, gave my boss an earful and she, in turn, gave me an earful. I probably laid low for a while after that, but, idk. It was a long time ago and I’m a fool.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Fandom Politics

    When do the old rules of political communication become obsolete?

    Note: There are two things that have been on my mind as I observe everything happening in U.S. politics right now. I am using this space to think through them out loud. This is the first topic. Second to follow when time permits. I am not sure how well this holds together. Feel free to debate!

    On January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute after lift-off. This was one of the defining, “where were you when…?” moments of my youth. I remember stapling my eyes to the television in a common area at my dorm at UC Santa Cruz.

    Later that day, President Reagan addressed the nation from the Oval Office. I’ve never been what you’d call a big Reagan fan—he wasn’t popular in the bong-littered halls of Porter College—but it’s good. A classic of public solace, delivered to a traumatized nation. Go watch it if you have five minutes.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Who Wants to Be On the Death Panel?

    PR thoughts on the murder of an insurance man

    Two weeks ago, Brian Thompson, CEO of big health insurer United Healthcare, was gunned down in New York. This created an epic amount of Discourse on social media, aggravated by the mysterious nature of the killer and his temporary escape. This week, a suspect named Luigi Mangione was arrested. He turned out to be a bit of a snack, which is causing weird undulations in the fabric of the media continuum.

    The trajectory of the social discourse was amazing. Immediately after the news broke, there was a wave of gleeful social media posts. That was followed by a second wave scolding those making jokes and celebrating Mr. Thompson’s death. Completing the ouroboros, there was then a wave scolding the scolds for not acknowledging the depth of popular hatred of big health insurers.

    If a prominent executive in your industry is gunned down on a sidewalk and the public response is party-poppers and dancing in the streets, you should ask yourself some hard questions!

    Read the rest on Substack

    Just off to see the insurance man, Evey.

  • Hard Right at the Airplane Mart

    An unexpected lecture on the politics of European immigration

    I went to Amsterdam for two days last week. This was a classic of hallucinatory, placeless business travel, more time on planes than in country, mostly a prisoner of the Airport Hilton Schiphol. All airport hotels are liminal, but at least I had an outside-facing room with sunlight rather than one looking into the atrium, which was a sort of luxury panopticon. I believe Nietzsche wrote, “When you look long into an atrium, the atrium also looks into you.”

    The Dutch have splendid cheeses, but don’t otherwise seem to be a big cuisine culture. I recognize this is dangerous turf for an American who was there for all of two days, but when you factor out cheese what are you left with? Stroopwaffels? Bitterballen? Hagelslag? When was the last time you went to a Dutch restaurant? Was it Rijsttafel? Thank the Indonesians!

    Even Germany has managed a certain amount of cuisine and we go to our local German place periodically for beer and sausage. Admittedly, beer and sausage is a layup. But the Dutch had a spanning Southeast Asian empire, invented the global spice trade and fought a brutal war with the English over it. All that history, and the condiment hill they’ve chosen to die on is mayonnaise. That’s commitment!

    Read the rest on Substack

    It’s polished!

  • Nasty for the Motherland!

    Can the administrative state get horny on main?

    Cards on the table, I’m a fan of the administrative state. Societies are large and complex, and a little technocratic competence goes a long way in ensuring the availability of public goods and infrastructure. But there are some areas where the administrative state struggles. Sex, for one.

    Or, more accurately, fertility. I’ve been thinking about this because a couple of weeks ago the New York Times Asian fertility desk1 was on fire. Over a few days they published stories on Chinese local officials pushing families to have more children, on Japan’s thirty-year struggle to raise its birth rate, and on South Koreans compensating for lack of children with pets.

    Like China, my adopted home of Singapore advocated for limited birthrates during the 1970s “population bomb” panic, when it was widely agreed we were destined to devour each other like starving jackals. Singapore realized its demographic error in the 1980s, as its birthrate plummeted, and went through policy whiplash. When I arrived, in 1995, there was an advertising campaign encouraging young couples to have larger families. I recall lots of slow-motion video and gauzy photos of attractive young couples with cherubic babies, and an omnipresent theme song. Alas, it was too early to be immortalized on the Internet, but there is evidence of later campaigns.

    Read the rest on Substack