Yep. I think the case against Fox News Channel has been made pretty well here. Just one more comment. I was reading some old news articles recently and was reminded that back around 1974 Rupert Murdoch started a tabloid paper called “The National Star”, later known as just “The Star”, which became very profitable and was eventually sold off in the early 90s as part of a News Corp consolidation. “The Star” said a lot about Murdoch’s values: it was a supermarket checkout type rag intended to compete with the National Enquirer – you know, stories like “baby born with three heads”, or “mom abducted by aliens”. Murdoch and the editorial staff were unapologetic about the paper: it was crap, they knew it was crap, and it was supposed to be crap, because it was crap that made a lot of money.
In the same era and continuing until recently there was Murdoch’s News of the World in Britain, the paper that was recently forced to fold in the wake of the disgusting email hacking scandal. To me, this is all typical Murdoch. The gigantic empire of News Corp now runs some nominally respectable institutions like the Wall Street Journal, but the unmistakable touch is still there in the opinion pages. I have read articles in the WSJ opinion pages on climate change, for instance, that were just simply a pack of lies. Note here that this is not the same as saying that I disagreed with the authors’ point of view, or that the articles were slanted or incomplete. The articles were an unmitigated pack of lies, period. Sort of like the baby born with three heads after Mom came back from the alien encounter.
All of this reflects the famous quip of journalist Mike Royko that “no self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper”. If one understands that the same stigma extends to his broadcast holdings, Fox News in particular, then one begins to understand the nature of Fox News, and much of what’s been said here shouldn’t be surprising.
Wow wolfpup. I thought I was the only person left who remembered that quote. I remember reading that in one of Royko’s early columns for the Chicago Tribune, if not the first column after he left the Sun-Times.
Fox News did a story on the South Korean ferry sinking, showing people morning the dead. The problem is, they actually showed footage of Tibetans mourning the death of the Sherpas on Mt. Everest.
“Hey Bob, get us some footage of the Sooth Koreans mourning.”
Bob: “Grumble, grumble. Here’s some vaguely Asian looking people with tears in their eyes. One Gook is as good as another.”
Actually, coming from that pack of liars, hypocrites, whiners, and half-wits, it’s VERY believable (unfortunately). Such a shame that so many dipsh1ts find that “news” station to be their one source of “news.”
As I understand it FOX beats all the others in its rating, and no wonder. It’s entertaining and doesn’t treat you like an idiot. I don’t believe anything I see on TV anyway, and they are as credible as any of them, just a good deal more honest about their slant. They all deny a slant and they all have one.
If I want news, I read Christian Science Monitor, not that I’m a Christian of any sort, because I’m not, but because they don’t feel they have to educate you and just tell you the story.
“Fox News’s The Five‘s Eric Bolling,” Colbert continued, “has an iron-clad explanation for why they did whatever it is we’re accusing them of having done after the Benghazi attack.”
He then cuts to Bolling, who is saying that there’s one more piece to this. Don’t forget that [Benghazi] was prior — prior — to Osama bin Laden being taken down, and the thought was, the discussion was, ‘Is President Obama, going into the reelection, soft on terror or not?’”
Bolling then interrupts himself, as an off-screen producers informs him of something: “What, it was after?”
“Yes, much after,” Dana Perino can be heard saying.
“My bad,” Bolling said, “I take it back.”
“But a great point, if it were true,” Perino added.
“Yes,” Colbert replied, “that’s undeniable. A great point, and a fantastic new motto: ‘Fox News: Fair and Balanced. A Great Point If It Were True.”