Is Fox News Racist and/or Intolerant?

Great Debates
1

Hi…So the question here is **is Fox News racist and/or just plain intolerant? :confused: **.

The more I watch Fox News, the more outraged I get. I think Fox can have its intelligent people, but there’s many who are just plain crazy, they use very naive language about how “terror will come if you don’t do this”, and don’t really explain it. Hard to explain unless you’ve watched it.

But more than ever I think quite a few Fox News interviewers are just racist or just plain intolerant if not that.

Now let me get more specific. I don’t think those Fox individuals are take over the world and put the bad breed in the oven kind of racist, or that they work for a conspiracy cause with the governmentt, I don’t buy those conspiracy theories. It’s just that I think they are a little…xenophobic, not intending to wipe out a whole race, but have these fears of other people and their culture and critisize it, but when somebody critisizes them or the government, they throw the “unamerican” card at them, not always but quite a bit. I don’t have a problem with them defending their opinion, just don’t call them “unpatriotic” or “unamerican” as if they’re not one of us and that being “unamerican” makes them unqualified to speak. Also, just the constant interruptions and even sometimes yelling when the guest makes a point from quite a few news hosts would make tham intolerant.

What was the most outrageous and racist that I saw in Fox News that inspired me to start this thread was about year ago when Obama decided to start his campaign is when Fox talked about his middle name (Hussein) and this one guy said, “he’s a muslim” as if being a muslim is a terrible thing. Thats not all, they looked at his school way out in indonesia and some how came to the conclusion it was this radical muslim school, basically because there were a lot of Muslims in it, all from some quotes from some insight magazine (which turned out to be a smear). And they also said at the same time he went to a racit church which makes NO sense if he’s this commited extremist muslim, he wouldn’t just switch faiths.

Anyway, now for the staight dope opinion, and please,no stereotypes of the left and right wing, I hate thins classifation, just answer the question please.

2

It’s all a lie, has been debunked several times in public, and still lives on as a viral spam-meme. See here.

3

Yes, it has been debunked, and anyone who takes a bit of their time to look it up can see. Even Fox now knows it’s a lie. Even when they finally found out it was a lie, they tried to blame it on Hilary probably to stir something up, whn they had no evidence of Hilary’s politics suggesting this crap. It actually turned out to be insight, a conservative magazine, i’m just crazed.

You don’t even have to look it up, anybody can see it’s a lie because he would be violating principles that radical muslims would have to follow, like going to church and not wearing a headscarf. It just makes no sense.

4

The Washington Post also did a story on Barack Obama’s religion. According to Eric Alterman (The Nation ), the sources for the article are dubious and unreliable. Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter’s home, Human Events are included as sources.

I wouldn’t have a problem with Fox News if it wasn’t coined news. Fox opinion, commentary, propaganda, or hate mongering, seems more appropriate. It is disgraceful to consider Fox a legitimate news source or journalism.

5

Amen brother.

6

So how did Crackhead06 see this on FOX News as he states. Also if this is not something that appeared on FOX then how about the rest of Crackhead06’s complaint about FOX being racist and using this as the only “example”? Is it fair to say that at least in this thread the idea has not been proven and the thread should be closed?

7

I don’t follow – are you assuming if the lie had been debunked Fox wouldn’t air it? You seem to be giving too much credit to their fact-checking standards. And in any case, in this forum threads are not closed for the reason you assert.

8

They believe only in money. They’re just pandering to their ignorant audience.

9

I don’t think Fox News is necessarily racist or intolerant, I just think the rewards now go to the biggest loud mouth. There was a time when people loved Judge Wapner, now unless you pull a Judge Judy you’ll never get the ratings to last. Professionalism isn’t as important as sparking controversy. Most of the 24 hour news shows report up to the minute details of the latest tragedy or celebrity debacle then add heaps of speculation during the quiet times. You’ve never seen that type of reckless reporting from Walter Cronkite. Many news shows, and Fox is just the most blatant about it, have taken a page out of Rush Limbaugh’s shtick, it’s better to be an ass than fair.

10

One thing I like about Jon Stewart is his recognition that the whole lot of them, from Fox to CNN, are full of shit. As far as I’m concerned, if people call Fox News viewers idiots, they’re just viewers of CNN. Or worse, the BBC.

11

They also specialize in fear-mongering about undocumented workers and a lot of oblique race-baiting with regards to black issues (“Al Sharpton” and “Jesse Jackson” are their code words for “niggers”).

12

Those are not comparable to Fox. There is no left-wing equivalent to Fox. The meme of a “liberal media” is just right wing propganda invented by people who don’t like facts.

13

I think that is a bit simplistic. Rupert Murdock has a definite right-wing agenda. That it makes him money, I feel, is secondary to him. I also don’t feel it is necessarily pandering to an ignorant audience. He has his talking heads put it out there in its half-truth, fear mongering glory, and lets his audience find it. It does not matter if they are skin heads, neo-nazis, survivalists or whatever. He has built it, they will come.

What was it H.L. Menken used to say? “No man has ever gone broke under estimating the intelligence of the American public.”

14

We need to put this in the FAQ.

15

Well actually, I think there is a far left Fox News equivilent, well, I don’t know about racist (but I’m sure there are), but as anti-right as Fox News is anti-left? Of corse!

Now Fox News doesn’t just disagree with the left, they’re anti-left. And this major assult on Obama’s background, which though proven a smear, will carve a long term cut in his campaign, is only one thing they did.

The left can be just as bad. I don’t know about an actual “left-wing media”, but radicals of the left can piss me off. They have accused the right-wing of this conspiracy theory, which is only proven by assumptions and looking at 9/11 in a funny background and twisting what really happened. This has been on CNN, I’ve heard, but the bigger source of this is some left wing bloggers.

No, but don’t worry, I don’t buy Fox’s take on the issue, it’s way too overexagerated. I mean, general “Betrey us”, that was bad, but that’s only one thing from MoveOn and Bill O’Reilly just slams on MoveOn, and make it look like the cause of all hatred.

And the DailyKos accusation is probably the worst one made by Fox News was the DailyKos. They compared the DailyKos with the nazis and the KKK, NO LIE. All basedon some bad apples. Go to the DailyKos and look at a few diaries and it’s not as bad as Bill O’Reilly likes to say. He calls it anti-semetic, and the most “anti-semetic” thing I’ve seen was this guy’s diary, he calls himself “antizionistJew”, he brings pics about protests about what Israel is doing, I wouldn’t call that ant-semetic.

Bill O’Reilly then just pounce on organizations like JetBlue, that fund TheDailyKos.

16

Murdoch’s News Corporation is also the owner of the Fox Network, which brought us such traditional, life-affirming shows as Married, With Children, The Simpsons, When Animals Attack! and Joe Millionaire.

I’ve always found it odd that the family-values types would get their news from the same source that earns so much of their criticism in entertainment. Murdoch has gotten rich stoking their ire and their righteousness.

17

Except why would you think this? You think there’s a huge untapped skinhead neo-nazi advertising market?

Fox News gets good ratings because it serves a segement of the population that doesn’t like the news and opinion it gets on the other TV news outlets. Rupert Murdoch didn’t create this market, he is exploiting it. It existed before Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh didn’t create it, he exploited it and showed how large the potential market was.

And I agree with Diogenes that the obesession with “Rush Limbaugh is the conservative version of Maurice Sendak, Michael Moore is the liberal version of Steven Hawking” is nonsense. Political movements don’t have mirror image versions of themselves. There is no liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, there is no liberal version of Ann Coulter, there is no conservative version of Michael Moore, there is no conservative or liberal version of anything. Michael Moore is Michael Moore, he doesn’t have other versions of himself with other political agendas working on mirror image projects.

That said, it seems to me unhelpful when things like “Fox News said such and such”, when they wouldn’t use the same construction for any other outlet. If Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly says something, why ascribe whatever they said to “Fox News”?

18

Who was talking about wingedness? I think you may need a pad for that knee. :wink:

19

I don’t think Fox Gnaws has an investment in racism, I think the whole point is to discredit their political enemies, and the left-liberal stance on race is simply another. There are no “racists” anymore as a practical reality, not like there was. Racism is so discredited, the tight-righties have to stretch all the way back around and claim that the lib-left are the “real” racists, affirmative action is a plot, etc. etc. You know the drill.

Hannity, O’Reilly, etc, are not racists, not like the word meant. They have attitudes and opinons that hinder the advance of full equality, but they would be insulted to be called “racist”. The racsists I knew in Texas, in my youth, would have considered the term merely descriptive, back when people used words like “miscegnation” as though they had any real meaning.

“Intolerant”? Hell, I’m as intolerant as all get-out, I want these people to get out of the goddam way!

20

I still think it’s right to call some people of Fox News racist. But sorry, racist is a vague term like too many words in the english language, perhaps you have a better term. Again, I don’t think those people are racist like the KKK or the nazis, I just think they assume things about people based on race and don’t even try to zoom in on the details. For example, they assumed all these things about Obama because of his middle name and what people he was around, and assume he’s a muslim, then assume because he’s a muslim, that he is unqualified to be president. I’m sure most of these people actually don’t have much against all muslims, but they use Obama’s racial background to discredit him. Using race to discredit anybody is racist regardless of what they really think. For example, if I really have nothing against Jews but I go to somebody and say, “Jew!” to discredit them I’m still being racist.

Maybe intolerant isn’t a great way of putting it too. I don’t mean intolerant by disagreeing with something, I mean it by being all out hating them and have this stereotype about the whole group, and maybe that’s not the best way of putting what I feel either.