The Broken Windows Theory of Journalism: Unpacking a Tiny Fox Lie

Fox was only able to sell the Big Lie because it sold lots of little lies along the way.

(Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

1. The $10k EV

This doesn’t matter. At all. It’s a tiny little lie. But it is illustrative of our political asymmetry.

Yesterday Pete Buttigieg went onto Fox Business to engage with the Forgotten Men and Women of America. The Fox anchor interviewing him was a fellow named David Asman. Asman asked Buttigieg about the Biden administration’s EV goals and prefaced his question by claiming that consumer demand for electric vehicles is incredibly low. Here is Asman’s personal testimony on the subject:

Asman: We had a friend who just tried to have his - his dealers were - were trying to sell him an EV truck, a Ford 150 EV for $10,000 because he wanted to clear the lot of it.

Let me be very clear: This did not happen. No one, anywhere in America, is selling a Ford F-150 Lightning for $10,000.

Some details:

The F-150 Lightning is Ford’s fastest-growing EV, with sales up 53 percent year over year.¹ That said, it’s still a niche product and sales haven’t been what Ford wanted. They’ve lowered the price on the Lightning, introduced a mid-range trim, and cut the truck’s production goals in half for 2024.

So how much does a Ford F-150 Lightning cost?

The cheapest version of this truck I could find anywhere in America is a 2022 used model with 27,028 miles. It’s listed for $39,995.

The idea that a dealer is trying to unload a new Lightning for $10,000 is utterly preposterous. This. Did. Not. Happen.

Buttigieg tried to gently push back on the Fox host, giving Asman an opportunity to correct himself, if it was just a verbal slip. Maybe Asman meant that his friend was offered a $10,000 discount and Asman misspoke? (Remember: Ford did lower prices on the Lightning over the summer.)

Instead, Asman doubled down on his lie:

BUTTIGIEG: Well, first of all, if you know somebody who's selling a new Ford F-150 electric for $10,000, please give me their number. It's - that's a --

ASMAN: I'll give it to you. I'd be happy to.

BUTTIGIEG: That's something I'd love to know. This is basically where we are. We had -

ASMAN: Jeff Ceco, who's right here where we are.

BUTTIGIEG: Yes, please, do.

I have reached out to Buttigieg to ask him to pass along the phone number that Fox Business host David Asman claimed he was about to give him. But we are not children: We know it never happened. There is no phone number, because there is no Prickly Pete to call, because there is no $10,000 Ford F-150 Lightning.

It’s all a Costanza-level lie.

I also tweeted at Asman asking him to provide some evidence that this $10,000 Ford Lightning exists. So far, no reply.

Here is my shocked face.

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Of course Asman was lying about this very specific personal story that he told. And of course Fox will not issue a correction, or a retraction.

Asman will not go on air and say, Yesterday I said that there was a $10,000 Ford Lightning because a buddy told me a story, but when I checked it out, I found out that my buddy was mistaken and I passed along his mistake. Sorry folks.

And really, who cares? This is the smallest thing in the world. Compared to, say, defaming a company that sells voting systems, or delegitimizing an election, or peddling dangerous misinformation during a global pandemic—compared that that stuff, making up a story to drive home an argument about softening EV sales doesn’t even register.

It’s like worrying about a broken window in a city where violent crime is out of control.

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The broken windows theory of law enforcement is complicated.² But broken windows theory does map exceedingly well onto journalism.

Real journalists hate broken windows.

They get pissed at themselves if they misidentify a person in a story. Or if they say that Event A happened in City X—when it really happened in City Z.

They get mad at themselves even if the mistake doesn’t change the fundamentals of the story they are relaying.

They do this because by sweating their small mistakes, they’re less likely to end up totally disconnected from reality, or trafficking in propaganda, or flirting with legal exposure.

Fox had to pay Dominion $787 million because of a big, important lie. But that big lie was built on a foundation of thousands of little, inconsequential lies.

Which, come to think of it, is precisely the way Donald Trump—and all authoritarians—work, too.

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Regular readers will know that I sometimes add corrections to this newsletter: I try to be as accurate as possible, but every once in a while I screw up. When I do, I go back, correct the text, and leave a note with a time stamp explaining what the error was and what the text has been changed to.

Another thing we do is refuse to participate in Both Sides-ism.

The Bulwark is home to a fairly broad spectrum of political views. We’re pretty good with nuance. And we’re great at understanding what we don’t know and where our epistemic blind spots are.³

But at the same time, we don’t play make-believe with democracy and we don’t tolerate bad-faith actors.

We believe that this is what journalism should be—what it must be in the midst of an authoritarian moment.

And it works because readers support it. If you’re not a member of Bulwark+ yet, come join us. We’ve got a democracy to save. And the only way to do it is together.

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2. Disqualifying

A quick vignette about Republican voters and Trump from Ohio’s 9th District:

In 2020, Republicans nominated a MAGA crazy for the 9th. His name was J. R. Majewski and you may remember for his participation in the January 6th “rally’ or as the guy who claimed to have been combat-deployed in Afghanistan only to have it turn out that he spent his (honorable) service loading planes in Qatar.

Majewski lost to the Democrat by 13 points.

Well, Majewski decided that he wants another bite at the apple and the local Republican party was okay with this because they had a high-quality candidate—a normal Republican—who they were sure would beat Mr. Stolen Valor. This candidate is a former state legislator named Craig Riedel.

It turns out that there is a problem with Mr. Riedel, too.

Last week audio surfaced of Riedel talking about Donald Trump. Here is what Riedel says on the tape:

I think he is arrogant. I don’t like the way he calls people names. I just don’t think that’s very becoming of a president.

Truth is an affirmative defense, but only in a court of law. In Republican politics, this truth may be disqualifying.

Riedel is trying to clean up his mess—he publicly endorsed Trump as soon as the audio leaked. But it might not be enough. Local Republican leaders are worried that, for their constituents, a guy who lied about his service record and lost in a landslide will be preferable to a guy who’s competitive, but has privately said he doesn’t like Donald Trump.

Totally not a cult.

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3. Sia vs. Springsteen

I’m not the biggest Sia fan,⁴ but her “Candy Cane Lane” is catchy.

Bruce Springsteen, the patron saint of New Jersey and author of possibly the greatest rock song ever written, needs no introduction. His version of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” is such a departure from the original that I count it as a wholly different song. The Boss made it his own and it is glorious.

Also, I have an early Christmas present for you: A 1984 essay in which the great George F. Will wrote about going to see Springsteen in concert. It’s everything you hope it can be.

And with that, the first round of our tournament is complete. We’ll do the entire second round tomorrow, the Final Four on Thursday, and we’ll crown our champion on Friday in the go-home for Christmas edition.

1. Lightning sales for Q3 2023 were down by 45 percent from Q3 2022, but that’s because the Lightning factory was shut down for parts of Q3 2023. Post-shutdown, the monthly year-over-year numbers are up.

2. One of the original broken windows theorists, the criminologist George Kelling, believes that in many cases police departments have seized on the idea of broken windows policing without doing any of the background reforms required to make it work. Here’s what Kelling told Frontline:

Kelling has since said that the theory has often been misapplied. He said that he envisioned Broken Windows as a tactic in a broader effort in community policing. Officers should use their discretion to enforce public order laws much as police do during traffic stops, he said. So an officer might issue a warning to someone drinking in public, or talk to kids skateboarding in a park about finding another place to play. Summons and arrests are only one tool, he said.

Kelling told FRONTLINE that over the years, as he began to hear about chiefs around the country adopting Broken Windows as a broad policy, he thought two words: “Oh s–t.”

“You’re just asking for a whole lot of trouble,” Kelling said. “You don’t just say one day, ‘Go out and restore order.’ You train officers, you develop guidelines. Any officer who really wants to do order maintenance has to be able to answer satisfactorily the question, ‘Why do you decide to arrest one person who’s urinating in public and not arrest [another]?’ … And if you can’t answer that question, if you just say ‘Well, it’s common sense,’ you get very, very worried.”

“So yeah,” he said. “There’s been a lot of things done in the name of Broken Windows that I regret.”

3. We take a lot of pride in that, tbh.

4. “Titanium” is my jam. My lady jam.