Fox News Makes Fools Out Of MSM Again
One story that the MSM has been very enamored of this year is the Obama administration vs. Fox News. The administration (rightly IMO) has accused Fox of being biased. The MSM has circled the wagons in defending Fox and going as far as saying Fox = MSNBC (someone please remind me at what time Fox shows 3 hours of liberal talk). Ever since the MSM has started defending Fox (some even going so far to say the Obama administration was “Nixonian”), Fox has made fools of them time and time again.
Then Rupert Murdoch says that maybe Glenn Beck is right that President Obama is a racist.
Jon Stewart at The Daily Show is about the only person outside the blogosphere doing serious media criticism. This time he catches Hannity trying to pass off the 9/12 Tea Party footage as the footage from Bachmann’s much smaller rally from last week. (Hannity also tried to pass off crowd estimates from Obama’s inauguration as crowd estimates for the 9/12 Tea Party.) At what point will the rest of the media say “enough is enough?” Seriously I don’t care if Fox is partisan or not, but I do care that Fox calls themselves a news network when they are anything but that. Fox is talk radio on cable.
Do you ever feel like you’re watching a co-dependent relationship? The mainstream media wants so badly for the rightwing to like them that they continually grovel while the rightwing continues kicking them in the teeth. Please media – you’re embarrassing yourselves, just stop. The world will not end if you admit that Fox is not a news channel but a propaganda channel. Treating Fox as an equal partner has allowed them to create an alternate reality for their fans that does not exist. Our country is divided because the media is too busy being “objective” to be informative. Telling us who is truthful and who is lying should be a part of the job description.
Tags: Fox News, Jon Stewart, MSM, The Daily Show
Once it is said on Fox the rest of the media can justify reporting “some people say” crap and that jacks up the ratings. Do not, for one moment, forget that our news industry is in it for the profits. They are not some sort of non-partisan, benign fourth estate and never have been. This is why what you do here at DL is so important.
Don’t forget, Rebecca, that, as The Daily Show pointed out last week, the “some people say” junk starts within FOX News. Someone on one of the “opinion” shows, whether it be O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity, or one of their guests, says something ridiculous and completely unsubstantiated, then (sometimes in the next hour) someone on one of the “news” shows repeats it with the “Some people say” tag. At that point, it becomes a “legitimate” meme that the MSM outlets can then repeat. They don’t bother to go back and fact-check the point, they just use it as a valid side of an argument. That’s what passes for journalism today.
Fox has made profit from making news “appeal” to a certain demographic and loading up on Obnoxious “Opinion” shows, expect others to follow. As noted, networks are in it for the money. Having said that all forms of media seem terrified by actual creativity and have a great love of The Same Old SH*T (SOS). And yet, at some point the Aussie Curse of Rupert Murdoch will be gone and the fight will begin over his empire.See ya’ then Glenn.
I know that some people are evil, but the problem is, most people just aren’t very smart, and they’re poorly educated. This goes for “reporters” as much as in any profession. You don’t just take your car to anyone with a wrench, but people think that the fact that someone is on TV means they’ve passed some sort of test. If we teach more critical thinking, how to evaluate a source for validity, bias, , etc., which is largely absent from our school curricula, we’d have a better shot at an informed electorate.
Brooke,
Thanks to NCLB we’re too busy teaching to the test to teach the kids how to think. Another Bush legacy to the “sheeple”. Ignorance is the Republican Party’s strongest source of support.
I don’t like NCLB, but it started a long time before that.
When I was in the 5th grade, we had an assignment to make a poster of our values, using cut-out newspaper and magazine clippings. Everyone put up posters of women in mink and fast cars. The teacher decided not to use the project as a grade, because the kids had “not understood the assignment”. I disagreed. Now, understand, I disagreed partially because I HADN’T put up those pictures, and wanted my proper grade, lol.
But still, I said, “No, I think they understood the assignment and money is what they think is important.” She, being a teacher in the 60’s, wasn’t able to imagine the world they were planning to make for her, and rejected my premise.
NCLB codified long mistakes.
Fox News is not cable! It broadcasts on the airways as do all the other major networks and is regulated by the FCC. It is conceivable that for some viewers this maybe their only channel for entertainment and news. Claims of bias and misrepresentation of facts against Fox News have been leveled and substantiated by watchdog groups such as FAIR, MediaMatters and the Columbia School of Journalism. During the development of television, FCC rules were formulated for the networks to broadcast unbiased news to the public in exchange for access to our airways. Has not Fox broken this promise? Don’t we the public have the power to demand the removal of Fox’s FCC license?
Xusumo – Fox News does not broadcast over the air anywhere. They are cable only.
There are FOX stations (like Ch 29 in Philly) that are Fox stations, but they are entertainment and I would submit that their news programs are not particularly biased.