In a vast sea of left of center broadcast news those on the left will froth at the mouth about the one island of Fox news.
I see it in my own family the hypocrisy the left has on this.
I have a nephew who spews and rants about how awful Fox is and it’s bias and such. Yet you talk to him about MSNBC and their bias his answer is along the lines of. “Well yes but everyone needs to be exposed to alternate viewpoints”
So to him alternate viewpoints are good as long as they are the ones he approves of. I suspect that is the general feeling on the left. Alternate viewpoints are ok, as long as it is the ones they approve of. Fox they not like therefore is an unauthorized alternate viewpoint.
The reason Lefties seem to froth at the mouth about Fox “News” is that those who watch Fox “News” vehemently believe in what they are fed there, and that it is obvious that misinformation is not good. (And that it is obvious that misinformation is what’s being dished out.)
As I said a few months ago, bias is not the problem. I agree that MSNBC is as biased as Fox, although MSNBC doesn’t constantly claim to be Fair and Balanced, like Fox does.
MSNBC is Fair and Unbalanced. Fox is Unfair and Unbalanced.
The bias would be OK if it only manifested itself in story selection, like on MSNBC. I have no problem with MSNBC talking about Christie every night, and Fox talking about Obamacare every night, although I don’t know why they think people want to hear it every night.
But Fox goes far beyond just bias. It makes shit up, and it deliberately takes things out of context. MSNBC doesn’t do that. They make mistakes, but they correct them, usually within a day or two.
If a Republican leader makes some verbal flub, Maddow might note it in a humor segment, but she’ll acknowledge that it was just a misstatement, laugh, and move on. Fox will take four words out of a speech, remove all context, and spend the next several months claiming it is the foundation of all liberal thought, e.g. “You didn’t build that.”
Disclaimer — again, I’m talking about the flagship, primetime shows — O’Riley, Hannity, and Kelly on Fox, and Matthews, Hayes, and Maddow on MSNBC. I don’t watch the others.
Fox News becomes dangerous since it pretends to be a “news organization” and then passes onto its viewers, a lot of mis-information. Just look at their recent coverage of the Flight MH370 incident. They kept harping on the fact that the pilots were Muslim.
And they kept on doing this …terrorism … Muslim … Muslim-terror connection … … day after day. They had “terrorism experts” on their shows claiming that the flight might be used for future terrorist activities.
And if you look at the questions on surveys like Sandman1 cited, you can see that they are very simplistic. Questions that go into some detail would reveal a much larger lack of knowledge in Fox News viewers.
A couple of examples. Both MSNBC and Fox News do lots of stories on voting laws and abortion laws.
On voting laws, MSNBC points out how hard it is for some people to get the new ids, but notes that even bigger problems are caused by Republican-led changes that cut down on voting locations, machines per location, voting days, and voting hours per day, all of which make it more difficult to vote whether you have a new id or not, in full knowledge that low turnout favors Republicans. Fox News stories on voting laws typically mention only the IDs, and make it sound like anyone against the legislation must be in favor of illegal aliens voting.
On abortion laws, MSNBC notes that clinics are being forced to close because of new regulations specifically targeting them, with requirements on facilities and staffing that are impossible for a small clinic to meet, and that are not required for any other type of outpatient facility. A recent Fox News story on the subject didn’t mention any of this, and implied that the clinics are being forced to close only because the time limit for abortions was shortened.
These deliberate errors of omission keep their viewing audience blissfully uninformed.
That doesn’t show that Fox is more biased (but it does say something about their viewers). People who read People magazine are probably less informed than those who read US News and World Report; does that make People more biased? What I want is a study that compares bias between the networks, not the network viewers.
Yeah, well we already went through your lovely false equipment seen a few pages back. I’d suggest you just go back and see your arguments have already been debunked, but to put it briefly, your assumption that the rest of the media is biased in the same way is false and unsupportable.
Additionally, you also ignoring the point that it is not bias which makes Fox News bad, it is there cavalier attitude when it comes to things such as facts which is the problem.
But FOX news isn’t really conservative. They are moderate, pretty much in the middle. They will tee off on anyone right or left. The reason that libs claim they are conservative is that the MSM is so far to the left that being in the middle looks conservative.
Pordun mt spellnk A cam;t ser my minoter rihht now!
That’ll teach me to eat breakfast and read SDMB at the same time. I just recovered from the most amazing spit-take! Took a whole roll of paper towels to clean off my monitor!!
Even those that work at Fox would start choking with laughter if they heard this. I have no idea what audience you’re playing to when you say things like this-are you hoping Roger Ailes will discover you while Googling “Fox” and give you a job?
I know the quoted post is years old, but I have to say how much I like the term “weaponized ignorance”. I think that this may be exactly what Fox News (and others) are doing; putting out misinformation designed by propaganda experts like Frank Luntz to cause the narrowing of minds, discourse, and even language.
I’ve always accused Fox of being guilty of “manufactured outrage”. I’m adding “weaponized ignorance” or possibly “weaponized disinformation” to that description.
