:mad: I assume you have something besides your own opinion to back up your allegation that Fox News “wave[s] cheerily at the facts en route to a more entertaining sociopolitical perspective.”
My overwhelming experience is that your statement apllies far better to NBC than Fox.
I find the news from Fox very straight-forward and I totally enjoy the fact (yes, fact) that Fox doesn’t run with the pack (joke, but true). CNN and MSNBC not to mention ABC/CBS/NBC tend to run the same stories at the same time with the same slant. We need Fox.
The opinion shows on Fox can cause the “just the facts ma’am” crowd some heartburn, but we need diverse opinion shows as well.
This has got to be the most unintentionally hilarious OP ever.
You mean, like, if there’s a political protest, that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC all tell you same thing, that 25 people showed up? And Fox puts the camera in real close to imply a huge crowd (or shows footage from a completely different rally) and says that there were thousands of people at the biggest protest ever? That kind of “tend to run the same stories at the same time with the same slant”?
What exactly is diverse about the opinion shows on fox? I admit I don’t watch much, so maybe I’ve missed them, but are there any non right wing opinion shows on fox news?
Joe Friday would not have been happy. “Just the facts, ma’am” doesn’t apply to any of the major TV news outlets. With Fox the spin is brash and loud, with the others subtle, quiet and perhaps all the more insidious because of it.
So we have real choice. Corporate propaganda brash (now with added lies!) or corporate propaganda subtle and insidious.
Someone once posted an a SDMB thread that the BBC found Al Jazeera to be a more credible news source than Fox.
Does anyone have a cite for that?
…as though Cecil has any obligation to defend his snark. It’s a cut against your precious. Cecil does that in his columns a lot, or haven’t you read them much?
Besides, he’s right.
How dare you make such a statement. Fox would never do that!
Instead, Fox uses video archive footage of a large crowd at a previous event, and then claim that it was the current event they’re covering.
For example, Fox news presented a rally by Glen Beck as an anti-healthcare rally that took place three months later. And just recently, Fox news presented footage of Sarah Palin campaigning with McCain as the crowd attending her book signing.
Deep down inside, Fox simply doesn’t think too highly of its viewers. You can tell that they way the various personalities act. There’s a certain smurkiness about the way the talk and behave. For example, Gretchen Carlson always going on about how this confuses her or she doesn’t know what a certain word means. She’s a damn Stanford graduate who studied abroad at Oxford University.
If I was a Fox viewer, I’d find the whole thing quite insulting.
Or their regular mis-attribution of Republican elected officials who’ve gotten in trouble as Democrats. Or the fact that people who regularly watch Fox News are 88lesss88 informed about the world than those who watch no news program regularly.
–Cliffy
Oh for crying out loud, they recently showed results of a faked Gallup poll that showed 96% of Americans thought that scientists were either very likely or somewhat likely faking climate change data. The poll results added up to 120%.
When caught they refused to apologize for it or admit it was a mistake insisting that they could merely have been more clear. The explanation is actually worse than the unexplained reason a poll would ever add to 120%. They took all the people who said very likely and somewhat likely and turned them into 1 group called ‘very likely’, then counted the somewhat likely responses a SECOND time and then totally excluded the 15% of respondents who said they were unsure. How is that news?
I think that misses the point. Don’t get me wrong: I’m OK with “spin” on the opinion shows. But there’s a difference (IMHO) between “spin” and “lies.”
I don’t mind “Mangy cur bites postman” vs “Adorable pet bites postman.” That’s spin; the underlying facts are still the same. I do object when FOX reporting that same event as an escaped lion from a Democratic Party sponsored circus devouring six schoolchildren and burning a flag.
You want to describe a protest rally as “large” and someone else wants to call it “small”, that’s fine, that’s “spin.” Large/small are subjective, within a range. but showing footage from a completely different event, that’s not spin, that’s just lies.
I used not to mind Fox’s news reporting (in fact, I often prefer it to CNN as being more in-depth), but it seems like they have gotten sloppier. For instance, I recall a Fox News article a few months ago where a scientist argued that painting the roofs of the world’s buildings white would save bazillions of tons of CO2 each year. The person the reporter called to comment on the scientist’s claim–Steven Milloy, amateur scientist and paid debunker of global warming and the perils of second-hand smoke (and Fox News opinionista, although he was not identified as such in the ‘news’ article). Milloy trashed the scientist’s claim. Not, mind you, based on any competing research he had done, or had access to–he just ridiculed it as a stupid idea. My favorite part was Milloy’s unintentionally hilarious ad hominem “This just goes to show what happens when scientists talk about stuff outside of their area of expertise.” That is not unbiased reporting–that is just political hackwork masquerading as journalism.
This looks like a bona fide example of “wav[ing] cheerily at the facts en route to a more entertaining sociopolitical perspective”, as the OP requested.
Link to the article at foxnews.com
I don’t think that that’s a rational concern.
[quote=“Lestrade, post:16, topic:520873”]
Link to the article at foxnews.com
To say the least. Mr. Milloy apparently believes that sunlight is controlled by sympathetic magick.
Bootis said:
Methinks you missed the point. Fox opinion shows are the diversity that the other channels lack. Fox doesn’t present a diversity of ideas, it presents a different set of ideas from everyone else.
Sophistry and Illusion said:
Which requires at least one step in a chain of logic to understand. How does painting roofs reduce CO2? The answer is that painting roofs white means they will reflect more sunlight, which means they will absorb less energy. Absorbed energy becomes heat, so it means buildings will be slightly cooler, which means their cooling needs will go down, which means less energy required to run A/C. That energy typcially comes from fossil fuels, so less energy used equates to less fuel burned. Ergo, less CO2 produced.
I don’t know anything about the numbers, but the principle is sound-ish. (One could argue that same amount of energy will be produced, just used some other way. Perhaps.)
Bwa ha ha ha ha! He’s not arguing the numbers, nor is he arguing that the fuel would still be burned and the energy used for something else. He’s not even missing the chain of logic to get from white roofs to less energy. No, he’s worried that reflecting the solar energy will mean less energy reaching plants and less being absorbed by skin. He’s either a moron, or he does a good impression of one.
Hint to Mr. Milloy: the sunlight being absorbed by roofs is not being absorbed by plants or skin. If the sun somehow managed to decrease output, painting the roofs black so they absorb more energy won’t help plants photosynthesize or humans make vitamin D. All it would do is make buildings warmer. And possibly increase the amount of fossil fuels being burned.
Pew Research released a study in 2007 that showed how well-informed the audiences of different news sources were.
The Daily Show and Colbert Report audiences were the best informed (answered the most factual questions correctly), with 54 percent rating as “highly informed,” 25 percent moderately informed and 34 percent not well informed. Fox News watchers were near the bottom of the list --35% well, 30% moderate, 35% poorly informed. CNN watechers were in the middle, 41%-30%-29%. MSNBC wasn’t ranked, perhaps due to an insufficiently small sample.
It should be noted that The O’Reilly Report came off very well in this survey, with 51-32-17, and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show rated 50-29-21, compared to NPR’s 51-27-22.
The conclusion I would draw from this is that audiences tend to be a little better informed when they don’t take their news sources too seriously. Viewers understand that TDS is a comedy show and that Rush is part comedian, part commentator, part information source.
Fox’s news division is actually more dangerous than its commentators because they purport to be actual news, fair and balanced, when in fact they present facts in such a way that the audience does not a clear picture. Other straight news sources also guilty of this, although not as blatantly so IMO.
That’s actually kind of hilarious.