I thought they had a lean, a tilt, if you will, that made them appeal to certain audiences, and that their lean was self-perpetuating. More good feedback for the lean leads to continuation of the lean.
And, I believe there’s no such thing as media without a lean. We are all biased, all of us.
Covering the event has merit. Pushing the event? Not so much. Going to the event and rallying the crowd so that it would look more enthusiastic and energetic has no merit. It’s a lie.
So, it seems I was naive. I thought there were lines that people wouldn’t cross, the line between covering the news and being the news, reporting the news and inventing the news, filming a rally and rallying a rally.
So, Fox News supporters, fanwank this one. Can you spin it into something less damning?
Fox News damners, are you surprised? Is this anything new or just par for the course?
I’m not surprised. In the documentary outfoxed an ex-producer said that fox news journalists were allowed to ask probing questions of Al Gore after the 2000 election mishap (before they knew who really won) but not of George Bush.
Fox News took out a full page ad saying that they were the only one covering the 9/12 “rally” and CNN’s Rick Sanchez takes them to task for it. Pretty good video.
What he doesn’t say, though, is how pathetic it is for Fox to take out the ad in the first place. It basically reads like “We threw a party and nobody else covered it =(” and clearly all they’re trying to do is turn everything into a faction. Hey, True Patriots, CNN and MSNBC don’t love you. Only we do. Hey, look at that foreign-looking guy. I bet he’s a terrist.
Now that you mention it, I saw the same thing about the cheerleading, and shrugged. Expected it, didn’t much care, so I find myself thinking never mind what happened to them, what happened to me?
You’re right that it’s not about bias. It’s about the Benjamins (baby). The Fox News audience, and most people in general, don’t want news. They want infotainment. In the case of Fox News, conservative-leaning infotainment. And Fox gives it to them, good and hard.
If all you want is infotainment, you don’t much care about the niceties of whether the reporter is creating or covering the story. What you want is fun images to watch as you eat your Stove-Top stuffing before you head to the NYSE/NASCAR.
To the extent that MSNBC is any different, it is because its target audience wants their infotainment packaged with more trappings of integrity. More newsiness. The Fox audience is proudly anti-intellectual, defiantly Limbaugh-listening, and so integrity and a buck will buy them a cup of coffee.
Not 100% related to the OP, but about Fox news in general. I was flipping through the channels earlier tonight, and on Fox news they were at a rally in California for farmers, and they question of the day was “where is our government to help us?”
It seems the farmers needed some water, or something, and was pissed the government wasn’t doing anything to help them. The people all rallied in the background had don’t red on me flags and looked to be the same sort of people at the tea party rallies…
Nothing new from Fox kinda expect them to do things like that. They have no credibility as a news network to me. Its more like an entertainment show, last week they lied about this next week lets see what they lie about this time!
Thing is, in a way, the lies are the news. Its perfectly possible to construct a self-sustaining bubble of reality with Beck, Hannity, Fox, a few websites, and your world view is reflected back to you in perfect harmony with your world view.
So, whats the news this week? The giant octopus of corruption, ACORN, which fixed the last election for the socialists, has been brought down in a huge, shattering triumph for the right! A true American patriot was mercilessly hounded by the liberal media for saying out loud what the vast majority of America’s citizens are thinking.
The tea party times are pretty funny when they aren’t sad. The median age of a fox news viewer and talk radio listener is 65-67. So the people getting all this info about the evils of big government collect 25k+ a year in social security and medicare subsidies. They are the biggest welfare queens in the nation and collect single payer health care, then they protest government assistance and a public option.
Here is another funny one. The tea party activists went to DC on 9/12 to protest government programs got upset because the DC public transit system (which is taxpayer funded) wasn’t advanced enough for them.
Sam, my friend, that was totally inap… (the video starts) …DAMN! Okay, I joined the TeenAged Republicans because of a young lady, but I had a chance there. Sam, you and I are shot with this one.
A variation of the line goes back to the Korean War, was modified to fit in Viet Nam, and likely extends to this day. Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if variations on it go back to Alexander. Anyway, its stock verbiage.
