Did Fox News kill this man's mother?

Great Debates
1

http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2012/03/tracy-knauss-fox-news-killed-my-mother.html
Mr. Knauss originally posted this on his FaceBook page but I don’t think you can permalink a FB post. The link above should be less fleeting.

The FB post will probably be easily visible, along with comments, on FB for a day or two: https://www.facebook.com/photodoctor

Okay, I don’t even know if this is true. I have several questions, the first of which we probably can’t answer.
[ol]
[li]Is this true?[/li][li]Assuming that it is, does Fox News hold at least some moral responsibility for this?[/li][li]Assuming that it is, does Fox News hold some legal responsibility for this?[/li][/ol]

For the sake of debate, even if this story turns out to be not true; what if it, or something like it, were?

I’m guessing that they wouldn’t hold any criminal responsibility because of free speech protections, but could this woman’s family successfully sue them?

I know anyone can sue for anything, but would they be successful in this case? Supposing they were successful, would that be a good thing and increase the accuracy of our media, or would it result in a chilling of speech and a suppression of the reporting of certain types of stories?

I personally absolutely despise Fox News and think they are a wholly destructive force in this country, and I think they know exactly what they are doing, and are doing it in support of a particular radical political agenda.

However, I place the first amendment in a position of near reverence and I’m wary of anything that interferes with it.

I know that certain types of speech aren’t protected. For example, speech that incites a crime. What about speech (especially false or intentionally misleading speech) that incites what amounts to a suicide?

I know that there have been lawsuits against bands and music distributors because of songs that supposedly incited suicides. As far as I know, none of these suits have been successful. Is this the same thing?

I think it’s different in that the bands weren’t claiming that what they were singing was news or even true. There was no intent to mislead people, and there certainly was no intent to incite suicide.

I also don’t think that Fox intended to incite suicide, but I do think that they intend to mislead and frighten people or, at the very least, they don’t mind if they do as long as it makes a profit.

Can an intent to needlessly frighten people be considered a crime?

Can indifference to possibly deadly consequences be considered a crime?

2

Even if it is true, the man could have called an ambulance at any time and had them forcibly take his mother to the hospital. Especially since she’s clearly not in her right mind.

But this just sounds like more satire to me.

3

I’ve no idea if this is actually true, but it reads like a lefty version of a chain e-mail; so count me suspicious.

I think the answer to your second question is: Maybe a tiny bit. The problem though is that it takes two to tango here. She could have watched something else. Hell, the poster could have taken five seconds out of his time and used the TV controls to block FOX News on his mum’s set when he started to notice this issue. If you defend the rights of people to make their own decisions about their bodies and rights, then you have to defend the choices you *don’t *like as well.

I"m not a lawyer, but I sincerely doubt they bear any legal responsibility for anything at all. I’ve argued on here before that we do need media reform of some sort, but it is a difficult and tricky thing to tackle. Particularly when we value our freedom of expression as highly as we do.

The problem with the argument made by the photo creator is that it basically boils down to: “If FOX News wasn’t telling lies then my mum would still be here today!”. It just isn’t so cut and dried. Even as a FN-loathing, staunch lefty, I can only answer with: “Them your mum was a twit, and you obviously didn’t do enough early on to arrest the creeping paranoia that ultimately contributed to her demise.” It is just as easy for me to assume that she would have latched onto some other tinfoil hat theory.

4

  1. I highly doubt it is true. If she suffered enough damage to die from a fall, chances are she was in immense pain and would have sought medical care. There are some fruity nutcakes out there though, so there is a possibility of it being true.

  2. If it is true, then no, Fox News has no moral responsibility in this case. They didn’t force her to not seek treatment. They didn’t force her to believe in them. Anyone with any sense knows to get their info from more than one source. Hell, we’re taught that in middle school when doing research papers.

  3. I’m not a lawyer, so I have no clue if they’d be legally responsible.

5

You might as well blame her school for not teaching her how to think for herself.

6

I think Fox News should be held accountable. This is an organisation that doesn’t just parrot untruths - it deliberately, repeatedly fabricates untruths and presents them as fact. If Fox “News” is brazen enough to act in such a manner and to provide proof of its unethical behavior, it’s their own damn fault if it comes back to bite them.

7

They morally responsible for their dishonesty. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that their dishonesty caused this woman’s death (assuming this was not fiction, a pretty big assumption).

8

I want the press to attack the press, not the prosecutors.

9

I think they should be held responsible the same way Rush is currently being held responsible. Nothing forced by the government, or adjudicated in the courts, but let their precious free market do its job. Let the outcry to advertisers be so great that companies have to withhold their dollars. As long as these cretins are making money, they’ll keep getting bolder and wackier and more divisive and dangerous.

I don’t care if this story is true or not, if it can create a public perception that Fox News cause something reprehensible to happen due to their over-the-top rhetoric, then good. Let the outcry begin.

10

If true, her own stupidity killed her.

11

I disagree that such a woman would “clearly not be in her right mind.” She could easily simply be a person of strong conviction, much as a Jehovah’s Witness or Christian Scientist will, because of their convictions, refuse many life-saving treatments.

Neither her beliefs–if even simply because they are not unusual–nor the result of the strength of her conviction constitute her as “not in her right mind.”

12

"I personally absolutely despise Fox News and think they are a wholly destructive force in this country, and I think they know exactly what they are doing, and are doing it in support of a particular radical political agenda.

However, I place the first amendment in a position of near reverence and I’m wary of anything that interferes with it."

This is how I feel about it.

13

In Canada, a licensee (a licenced broadcaster)“may not broadcast any false or misleading news.”There was an attempt to loosen this law to“any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”

When the public got wind of the proposed change, the popular up swell against the proposed loosening of the law caused it to be shot down in flames.

In short, we do not want rabid foxes in Canada, for we have seen how the USA has let itself go off the rails.

14

I don’t see how such a law would help. When I watch Fox News, they are careful not to state any outright falsehoods. (And what does “misleading” mean in a legal context?) To create the impression that there are death panels, they don’t say there are death panels, rather, they quote people who say there are death panels. That’s neither false nor misleading in any sense I can imagine being applicable.

15

To continue (sorry about the interupted post):

There really isn’t much of a legal remedy to tie a hate mongering broadcaster to the harm a nutty follower suffered due to her believing the boradcaster. Remoteness and capacity come to mind.

Where regulation can be effective is in helping limit the volume of unfettered nonsense that weak minds all to easily buy into. It is one thing to have freedom of speech in presenting opinions, but it is quite another to have freedom to lie. The social benefit of freedom of speech is that it permits alleged facts to be tested and for opinions to be discussed, so that society can move forward. There is no social benefit at all to having the freedom to lie, for that makes it more difficult to test alleged facts, and makes it more difficult for opinions to be discussed on a rational basis, for rather than factual investigation and informed, logical debate, it leads to arguments based on solely on belief.

Just as there is harm in shouting “fire” in a movie theatre, there is harm in what Fox and the like are shoulting on the airwaves, but the harm is societal, rather than easily, directly and immediately tied to the fate of any one person.

16

No, he couldn’t have. Or rather, he could have, but the paramedics could not transport her. They are not qualified to determine mental competency.

He could have gone to a court of law and gotten a judge’s order that she was mentally incompetent and move to be made her Power of Attorney for Healthcare and THEN he could call the ambulance for her and against her will. Bit time consuming, unless he happened to be an ER doc with a judge on speed dial.

While I’m a strong, strong proponent of the First Amendment, I do also feel that Fox News, by the very fact that they use the word “News”, is in fact committing fraud. When called on it, they’re quick to point out that they are simple entertainers (The Jon Stewart Defense). So I find their efforts to mislead people into thinking they are a legitimate news source dangerous and fraudulent.

I don’t have the right to say I’m a doctor, or to set up an office with scales and tongue depressors and wear a white lab coat and a nametag that says WhyNot, MD and perform surgery on you. I have the freedom of speech to talk about medical issues, but I do not have the freedom of speech to call myself a doctor unless I am one.

17

I’d be surprised if Fox News ever told anyone not to go to the doctor.

18

They often go further than that. However, it is the US news, and it is all deceptive in nature. But Fox is the only one that manufactures news out of whole cloth on a consistent basis.

19

It is morally wrong to make conclusions when we know that we have something that probably didn’t happen, and assign blame to FOX for something that never happened, and for which they were not responsible.
There would be 100 million variables, and we hear junk like this instead of ‘facts’, to determine variables, and, ultimately, the yes-no votes would probably line up along party lines .
Reading the OP’s quote, the bereaved goes into what a pimp the owner/president/whoever was for the Republicans. How it is ‘not fair and balanced.’ His mother is in the ground because of FOX, and he gives a biography of the owner. That’s something I’m going to trust. :rolleyes:

I think that is more than enough to show it is business as usual for an election year.

20

As much as I hate FOX, the people that take them seriously as a news source don’t exactly have both oars in the water in the first place. The woman in question might have had some mental issues even before she started to watch the Network of Darkness and Fear. Even FOX can’t cause someone to become paranoid, they need to be predisposed to become that way.

There are a lot of sources that call themselves news that are no such thing- just look at the tabloids in your grocery store checkout. It’s better to have too much information, even if it contains a lot of misinformation and even if outright liars call themselves a fair and balanced news network.