Well, maybe not literally, but they treat their reporters very unfairly IMHO.
Case in point: Rick Leventhal has been covering the Pennsylvania trapped miners story, but as they got closer to rescuing them, guess who got moved in and took over the story as if it were his? Geraldo fuckin’ Rivera, that’s who!
I sent an e-mail to Fox telling them I wasn’t pleased, and so now I’m posting this to further vent my spleen.
Thanks
Quasi
Fox news is without a doubt the worst crap news network in the history of telejournalism…
The rest of them aren’t far behind, mind you, but for some reason i find Fox particualrly revolting and sensationalistic.
CJ
Couldn’t agree more. (Or could I?)
I watched about 10 minutes of one episodes of “The Pulse.” Yee gads it was ridiculous. It was the one where they were assessing a few possible other terrorist threats. The funny thing though is that the reported kept getting shot down by the experts. For example: (all paraphrased of course)
Shepard: So what would happen if a terrorist drove a boat full of explosives up to the dam?
Expert: Well, don’t allow any access to the water anywhere near it.
Shepard: What about a bus driving over the dam?
Expert: We check all traffic too.
Shepard: What about trained beaver assasins?
Next week: Why are Americans’ asses so fat?
Search your souls. Could it be that you hate Fox News because they don’t share the Liberal Bias ™ that the rest of the news outlets share? Just asking, not accusing!..Timmy
Nope. I’m a moderate (read: fence riding wuss).
I don’t hate 'em cause they’re conservative. I hate 'em cause they suck. It’s sensationalistic, alarmist, garbage.
Just responding, not being a smart ass 
I really hate FNC, but I don’t think it’s any different than any other TV news outlet. If a story becomes really big, the big guns get called in. It’s not a big news story, if the most famous reporter is there, is it?
Most of my relatives (who are hardline conservatives) cheered when our cable system added FNC. Most of them also got very irrate when FNC hired Geraldo Rivera, firing off angry e-mails stating that if this was the direction the channel was headed in then they would stop watching.
I’m a moderate liberal who switches between all three news networks. But Geraldo makes my skin crawl, as do certain other Fox hosts and reporters. Putting the caption “Jihad Johnny” on-screen, and referring to “our troops” or “our forces” during news reports has never struck me as “fair and balanced”. I can understand it during commentary shows like “The O’Reilly Factor” or that fluffy “Fox And Friends” mess in the morning.
I will give FNC credit for having a show like “Fox News Watch” though. Their own programming decisions are questioned also, too bad they bury the show in the schedule.
I feel the same way - the anchors on FNN really bother me. For one thing, some of them are butt-ugly! Hey, it’s a shallow opinion but my feeling just the same.)
-p.
Hearald Rivera waiting to open the mine.
Remember “Al Capone’s Vault”?
Talk about sick.
I saw some of Geraldo’s coverage Saturday night. The most irritating thing to me was that he would go on and on for several minutes, then when the mining representative with him would start to talk Gerald would just turn off. He didn’t give a damn what the man had to say.
I remember the Capone’s Vault debacle. That was one of the most unintentionally funny shows ever.
FOX NEWS ALERT!
Gimme a frickin’ break here, guys! Every time some drunk SOB decides to elude police, they break away for days to follow this guy???
It’s National Inquirer brought to TV, fer Chrissakes!
And don’t even get me started on Shepard Smith! That guy is so full of himself, it’s pitiful!
Just occurred to me: If I don’t like it , then don’t watch it. Well, thanks Quasi!
Anyway, I just thought it was fuckin’ dirty that they took the Miner’s story away from Rick Leventhal and gave it to that idiot, Geraldo!
Quasi
I was periodically reminded of a Kirk Douglas movie, all the more so by Rivera.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0043338
Is there any TV news outfit that doesn’t treat a news event like a circus with their own particular clowns?
“Jihad Johnny” I can understand being upset about, but how is an American news network referring to American troops as “ours” in any way, shape, or form unfair or unbalanced? 
Thats what they are after all.
Ahem… Who owns these cable channels? Fox, AOL-Time-Warner, Microsoft/GE. Yes these are the hotbeds of liberalism.
Fox-News is the epitomy of whats wrong with media in America. Instead of teaching the public what is going on in the world so that they can make decisions, they are chasing runaway cars and shooting real-life soap operas with Elizabeth Smart, and sharks. Cable news has evolved into entertainment. Ratings are the bottom line and not ethics. News is the ultimate reality TV.
Unfortunately though money is the bottom line, I think Ill just be turning on NPR a little more often and turning off the boob-tube. 
I don’t care about what “agenda” a particular network adheres to or tends toward, because I can generally cut through most of that crap anyway.
What really blew me away about “The Pulse” though is their presentation of the rehashed, rejected garbage stories they try to pawn off as news.
I admit that I watched the first and second episodes of “The Pulse” all the way through, out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if they were going to be as bad as it looked like they were. They were worse. It’s a cross between Nightline and Hard Copy, with heavy emphasis on the latter, but enough professional veneer to fool those who don’t know better.
In the first show, Geraldo’s big report about terrorist cells in America never deviated from the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim slant that was most prevalent in the few days after 9/11/2001. They never once looked at home-grown terrorists, or terrorists of any other nationality. And like every good tabloid journalist, they found what they were looking for, and they did their best to prove the idea that “all Muslims are suspect.” Nice touch, that. In the name of respectable journalism, I’d be willing to bet this will stir up more hate crime than a good Jerry Springer episode.
Then in the second show, some even better grist for the mill… one of The Pulse’s “commentators” confronted two guests, both of them homosexual and prominent in the gay community. He questioned their lifestyle and he questioned their right to live the way they choose to live in public, because he “didn’t want to have to explain it to his six-year-old daughter.” His guests remained reasonable and calm throughout, and when he was particularly worked up they asked him what problems he had, specifically, with their lifestyle. His response: “I have a problem with you defining yourself as sexual beings.” I about fell out of my chair. This guy has serious problems of his own… he doesn’t see that all human beings are sexual beings, and he made himself out to be a very stupid and stubborn man in that segment. His guests came out looking like heroes by comparison.
Then the capper was a segment about this famous photo which surfaced a few days after September 11 and quickly made its way round the internet, with the tagline, “The Last Second Before Disaster?”. Apparently the producers at the Pulse don’t check Snopes, Urban Legends, or any other of the number of easily-found websites which have debunked this hoax, but I was laughing even harder as they tried to build up suspense around this months-old story. Pretty slow news week, I guess, to regurgitate this story and try so hard to make it fresh.
Fox News has its moments, but The Pulse is one of its lowest points ever. I predict that it soon gets relegated to the Saturday night time slot, then fades out completely. It’s a news show that seems more about flexing the egos of the various news anchors, but has very little to do with journalism, news, or integrity.
I remember Capone’s Vault. Because I remember my mom was watching it, and we were waiting to see what was in it. I had to go to bed before it was over, (I was about, oh, 8? What year was that again?) but I was still awake when my mom started groaning and yelling at the tv.
I got up and said, “Hey Mummy what’s wrong?”
“There’s NOTHING!!!”
Hehehee…
Of course, at that age, I thought it would have been cool if they had found old booze.
An equation:
Rupert Murdock + Bill O’Reilly + Geraldo Rivera =
Actually, I’m not sure what it equals, but it sure isn’t news. I was hopeful when Brit Hume was hired to be in charge of FOX news early in its development. With him at the helm, I had hopes for the venture. Boy was I wrong.
It equals my idea of Hell. And you spell Murdoch this way.
I had never seen the Fox News Channel until last September 11, when I was flipping through the channels to try and find new information. I saw talking heads on both CNN and FNC, but on CNN the heads were generals, former State Dept. officials, terrorism experts, etc. On Fox they were… Oliver North and Jerry Falwell. Two of the last human beings whose opinions I would ever give a shit about. I haven’t seen it since, but I’m not surprised that they’re treating Geraldo Rivera as if he were an actual reporter.
Oliver North-shudder
