help, help, I’m being repressed – you saw him repressing me, didn’t you?
Sean Hannity, Fox News and all conservative media are literally killing people
In recent weeks, three studies have focused on conservative media’s role in fostering confusion about the seriousness of the coronavirus. Taken together, they paint a picture of a media ecosystem that amplifies misinformation, entertains conspiracy theories and discourages audiences from taking concrete steps to protect themselves and others.
The end result, according to one of the studies, is that infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.
Honestly, this deserves it’s own thread but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it here.
Years ago I defended Fox in this thread but no more. I still believe that at one point they were no more biased then the other major news medias but ever since Trump ascended to the scene they have lost their way. Back when Shep Smith left Fox I remember reading an analysis that the opinion side of Fox (led by Hannity) had taken over the direction of Fox from the news side (represented by Smith). That seems to hold true.
I still read Fox most days to keep tabs on what they are saying and a large percentage of their news has a pronounced slant. Their coverage of CHAZ was irresponsible. In my biased unscientific opinion they’ve cut down on their reporting of Trump’s tweets because so many are indefensible, even for Fox. When I read through their headlines I can almost hear their discussion on how to attack certain topics to make them most favorable to conservative readers.
Fox is adapting the playbook used by my area’s flagship news radio station: keep the conversation about Trump down to a bare minimum because all but the dumbest – who have since transferred their loyalties to Breitbart, OAN and Gateway Pundit – know that reporting even slightly truthfully will paint the party in a bad light. The local radio station turns its talk show hosts loose on “crime” and how badly the Democratic dominated government is handling it. Days go by without a chirp about Trump.
Fox lost a lot of its sting when the Dems nominated an old white guy to run against Donald.
I think all the MSM (CNN, NPR, ABC, NBC, etc…) are just as biased but FOX is more open and blatant about it.
The big question is why are they biased? Is it ideology? Is it that they are being paid off?
You “think” whatever makes you feel good but it would be nice, especially in this forum, if you could back up those feelings with a fact or two. BTW, are you ever going to address the fact that FOX is much more willing to outright lie?
There are about 2,600 posts in this thread. Many of them are people chiming in about bias with other media outlets and they are always met with responses and evidence that the issue is not bias, it’s the lying.
I travel around a lot and watch news in a number of different countries, and FOX is in a special category of its own. I can say without hesitation that it is much worse than the state TV of China or Russia, and it’s a joke to think of it being the yin to left-leaning media’s yang.
While the handful of posters that join this thread to say “CNN is just as bad” struggle to think of one or two times where CNN got some information wrong, there are hundreds of times where FOX has knowingly lied that have been cited in this thread. Plus the thousands of times they deflect from the news of the day because it wouldn’t fit the agenda.
Sometimes there are articles about how FOX clothes itself as news, but is really opinion programming.
I disagree with that.
Opinion programs normally feature someone giving their opinion on something with arguments and data to try to support that opinion. Tucker, Hannity et al don’t bother with that. They just directly tell their audience what they’re supposed to think, while making assertions about the evil motives of supposed enemies.
If you trust FOX news then you’re angry at imagined threats, uninformed about what’s going on in the world, and now, more likely to be dying of coronavirus.
We agree FOX is biased. But why? Why does any media outlet show bias?
Why do you refuse to talk about the herd of elephants in the room? FOX LIES. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN-FOX LIES.
It makes them more money. If advertisers stopped advertising on Fox because of their bias, they would stop. This is super fucking obvious.
Also, please provide a cite for your claim above that CNN, NPR, ABC, and NBC are just as biased as FOX or withdraw your claim. Also, FOX is not more open and blatant – they deny it.
So, yeah, FOX News really IS all that bad.
EVERYone should understand that by now.
Is “FOX says so” a valid cite?
That’s what makes them so valuable to advertisers. They’ve got a large and gullible audience. Being able to guarantee an audience that will believe any kind of nonsense they’re spoon fed is worth a fortune to hucksters fleecing their customers.
especially gold sellers. (and buyers.)
Up tight. Outta Sight. Berkeley Barb!
We are affected by FOX language and definitions even if we never watch the network.
All happy families are alike; some unhappy families are unhappy because of Fox News. You might have come across the articles (“I Lost My Dad to Fox News” / “Lost Someone to Fox News?” / “‘Fox News Brain’: Meet the Families Torn Apart by Toxic Cable News”), or the Reddit threads, or the support groups on Facebook, as people have sought ways to mourn loved ones who are still alive. The discussions consider a loss that Americans don’t have good language for, in part because the loss itself is a matter of language: They describe what it’s like to find yourself suddenly unable to speak with people you’ve known your whole life. They acknowledge how easily a national crisis can become a personal one. At this point, some Americans speak English; others speak Fox.
…Fox, for many of its fans, is an identity shaped by an ever-expanding lexicon: mob , PC police , Russiagate , deep state , MSM , MS-13 , socialist agenda , Dems , libs , Benghazi , hordes , hoax , dirty , violent , invasion , open borders , anarchy , liberty , Donald Trump . Fox has two pronouns, you and they , and one tone: indignation. ( You are under attack; they are the attackers.) Its grammar is grievance. Its effect is totalizing. Over time, if you watch enough Fox & Friends or The Five or Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, you will come to understand, as a matter of synaptic impulse, that immigrants are invading and the mob is coming and the news is lying and Trump alone can fix it.
…You might have observed, lately, how Americans seem always to be talking past one another—how we’re failing one another even at the level of our vernacular. In the America of 2020, socialism could suggest “Sweden-style social safety net” or “looming threat to liberty.” Journalist could suggest “a person whose job is to report the news of the day” or “enemy of the people.” Cancel culture could mean … actually, I have no idea at all what cancel culture means at this point. Fox, on its own, did not create that confusion. But it exacerbated it, and exploited it. The network turned its translations of the world into a business model. Every day, the most-watched shows of the most-watched cable network in the country—a prime-time destination more popular than ESPN—take the familiar idioms of American democracy and wear away at their common meanings. The result is disorientation. The result is mass suspicion. Like a vengeful God bringing chaos to Babel, Fox has helped to create a nation of people who share everything but the ability to talk with one another.
…Critics might talk about Fox as an “information silo.” They might dismiss the network’s skewed stories as alternative realities. But even the insults, in their way, inoculate. They imply that Fox can do what it does in isolation. It cannot. Its outrages are atmospheric. Its definitions of the world are communal, even if they aren’t commonly shared. The events of 2020 have been tragic reminders of that. When cruelty is refigured as “free speech,” and when expertise becomes condescension—and when compassion is weakness and facts are “claims” and incuriosity is liberty and climate change is a con and a plague is a hoax—the new lexicon leaps off the screen. It implicates everyone, whether they speak the language or not.
Really long article in The Atlantic. You might be able to read it by going to my Pocket link-- not sure.
I think we’ve got a stopped clock situation here. I don’t really think he’s entirely wrong, do you? Fox is open about the fact that they’re decisively tank for the Republicans. I don’t think other networks are exactly in the tank for Democrats, but they have issue biases that add up to the same thing (which is OK with me).
What we don’t see any network doing is admitting they have a bias, and explaining how they will correct for it. CNN doesn’t admit bias at all. Fox does, but won’t admit it’s something to remedy. I wish we did have a major media outlet that admitted a liberal bias, and then tried to openly hedge against it. It would have to be a valid hedge, not a both-sides crusade that lets idiots spread propaganda, and not a strawman-punching-fest.
Of course you are 100% correct that Fox is different because they lie and fabricate prolifically, and give airtime to truly nutso individuals, and pander to the lowest white grievance politics. There’s bias, and then there’s being a propaganda mouthpiece for demagogues. Fox is absolutely an exceptionally warm turd in this regard.
That’s a really good article.
Time was, before Fox really got up and running, I could talk to my opponents/dumb neighbors/parents. Even though we didn’t approve of one another’s positions, or even respect it, at least we could comprehend one another’s views.
Nowadays, when they talk, often it’s just a miasma of dog-whistles, unfamiliar memes and inside jokes, or some subject that seems way more important than it ought to be, or some viral bloody-shirt video that every single one of them can cite from memory. Just stuff they circulate among themselves until it becomes its own language. (David Dorn! You don’t know him? Well, you don’t know anything about BLM then. He proves they’re all hypocrites).
You do not know David Dorn. You don’t really need to, but if you don’t want to be blindsided by the gotcha, then you need to pay the information tax of learning this piece of nonsense.
I’m likewise sure that some of the academic jargon we’ve picked up on the left (white privilege, consent, BIPOC, etc), is incomprehensibly eggheaded and vaguely threatening.