Outfoxed: Why continue to watch when they're clearly partisan and dishonest?

Great Debates
21

HA: * The DNC isn’t so much news as it is a liberal love-in. Unless something unusual happened (terrorist bombing etc.) what was there to cover? Kerry has been the defacto nominee for months. Its all just pomp & circumstance at this point.*

Well, Bush has been the de facto Republican nominee for years, right? So does that mean that the RNC in September won’t be so much news as it is a conservative love-in, with nothing to cover unless the terrorists bomb it or something? Will Fox therefore not bother covering it?

22

Conservatives like Fox News because they actually get to hear conservative stuff on there, as opposed to being completely ignored by other news outlets (unless they are making fun of conservatives, anyway).

Liberals like CNN because it’s one big bleeding heart fest, 24 hours a day. They watch so they can be reassured that there are others out there who think like them. Nothing wrong with that.

I don’t like liberalism, not so much because I’m not a liberal but because I’ve heard everything liberals have to say, and until they come up with something new, I’d rather not waste my time.

Don’t like conservative commentary? Don’t watch Fox. Why would you want to prohibit others from doing so, though?

23

Really? I’d like to see an example of this. I’d be delighted to find out that my basic cable includes a liberal news network.

24

Abbie will come up with substantial proof of his crack pot claims when bat winged monkeys shoot out of my ass singing ‘Losing My Religion’.

25

Ah! The classic elitist liberal! Fox is dangerous because too many Americans are too stupid & ignorant to make up their own minds!

Sigh… Must I state the obvious? Yes, the RNC will be a right-wing love feast so Fox viewers will want to watch more of it so they’ll provide more coverage of it. I figured that was obvious in my first post and didn’t need to be spelled out.

Well gee, being how liberals love to harp on the fact that Fox News was created by Murdoch, then the fact that CNN was created by Mr. Jane Fon- I mean Ted Turner.

26

That does nothing to back up the claim that “it’s one big bleeding heart fest, 24 hours a day”. Care to try again?

27

From Hail Ants: The DNC isn’t so much news as it is a liberal love-in. Unless something unusual happened (terrorist bombing etc.) what was there to cover? Kerry has been the defacto nominee for months. Its all just pomp & circumstance at this point.

From “The Vanishing Voter” ( based on the Harvard project of the same name ): *Many Americans also picked their candidate during the 2000 conventions. The number who said they had not yet decided on a candidate fell from 55 to 41 percent, the sharpest drop of the campaign. Although the October debates are usually portrayed as the major showdown of the campaign far more votes are decided during the conventions. More voters are undecided about their candidate choice at this stage of the campaign, and the conventions give the nominees a nearly unobstructed opportunity to make their pitch. In an era of ten-second sound bites and thirty-second political ads, conventions are a throwback to the time when lengthy speeches were the main form of address. Even with fewer viewers, the conventions provide by far the largest audiences the candidates have to themselves during the entire campaign. As the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz said of the 1992 Democratic convention: “A remarkable thing happened [last night]. Bill Clinton was allowed to address the nation for 53 minutes without being interrupted by Rather, Brokaw, or Jennings.”

The audience for the nominees’ acceptance speeches is a receptive one. If Americans’ attention span, as some have claimed, can now be measured in seconds, the acceptance speeches are an exception. They are the most anticipated part of today’s conventons, and the most favorably received.

Conventions have a final noteworthy effect: They lift the voters’ spirits. They are upbeat events during which candidates get their most favorable news coverage. During the 2000 convention period, the public saw the campaign as positive, not negative ( 49 to 22 percent ) and encouraging, not discouraging ( 41 to 27 percent ). Both were election year highs.

These contributions are not small ones in a campaign process that often dulls interest, learning, and trust. But they are small by comparison with the impact of these quadrennial summer events once had.*

28

I never said it was, that’s someone else’s quote. I merely said they (often) have a liberal slant, particularly on political stories.

And yes, I think stating who created & owned them is a perfect way to explain their respective slants. TV journalism grew out of print journalism. And American newspapers are now and have always been heavily influenced by their publishers own POV. It determinded who they hired & promoted as editors, senior editors, reporters etc. In fact, American print journalism, say in the 1800s, used to be much, much more slanted. Yet democracy prevailed.

Look, this is one of those never-ending debates. Let me just explain my POV a little better.

I used to love CNN. Back in my teens & twenties, before I had any interest in politics, I thought they were great. Their coverage of the first Gulf War made the networks look pathetic. That is, from a purely technical point of view. They had an established, world infrastructure far better prepared to cover it then NBC, ABC & CBS. And they didn’t have ‘regular programing’ to get in the way. They showed raw footage without a know-nothing anchor yammering over top of it. And they showed raw footage repeatedly.

Then, after Clinton took office, I started hearing people talk about CNN’s ‘incredible’ liberal bias. And I didn’t see it, partly because I didn’t have any strong political beliefs and partly because I didn’t want to. Like I said, I liked CNN.

Long story short, after 8 years of Clinton and me now being 35, it became pretty obvious to me that old Bill was not especially honest and that he had no real core beliefs, he just morphed into whatever he thought people wanted him to be. And it also became pretty obvious that CNN, while not a ‘24 hour bleeding heart fest’, did cut him and his administration way too much slack, repeatedly and consistantly.

And in the middle of all this comes Fox News Channel with their tagline “Fair & Balanced”. To which, as a reasonable adult, I had to eventually say, “Hmm, well, yeah, kinda”.

My point is that those of you who insist on believing that Fox News is a joke, or is a bunch of ‘right-wing nutjobs’, you’re just plain incorrect. Fox News is a legitamate, respected, credible news network. And the vast majority of people who like Fox aren’t rednecks with framed pictures of Pat Buchanon on their walls next to their gunracks. They’re people who, perish the thought, just aren’t liberals!

29

HA: Yes, the RNC will be a right-wing love feast so Fox viewers will want to watch more of it so they’ll provide more coverage of it.

I see. I thought that at first you were arguing that the reason Fox would be justified in not covering the DNC is because it “wasn’t really news”. But what you’re saying is that it doesn’t have to be “really news” if it’s conservative-oriented, because Fox viewers like hearing about conservatives whether they’re “really news” or not.

Fine by me. I admit, though, that I don’t see how that kind of double standard about newsworthiness can be described in any way as “fair and balanced”.

HA: * The slogan “Fair & Balanced” was used because its a none-to-subtle dig at the liberal slant of every other TV news network, CNN in particular. Its not so much that Fox itself is being overly fair & balanced, rather that when they came into being in 96 TV news in general became a lot more so.*

That’s an interesting interpretation of the use of “Fair & Balanced”, but it doesn’t seem to be what Fox actually intended: they seem to have meant it the way it sounds, that they are claiming that their own coverage is in fact fair and balanced. As Fox commentator Trace Gallagher claimed:

And according to Brill’s Content (same link),

Statements like that don’t sound to me as though Fox is trying to say “We spin conservative, they spin liberal, so now news in general is more fair and balanced”. Rather, it sounds as though they’re saying “They spin liberal but we’re fair and balanced”. It’s interesting that even Fox’s supporters here don’t seem to back them up on that one.

30

This is a pretty stupid OP: partisan, dishonest, propaganda, yap, yap, yap. What if we assume Washington Post is partisan, dishonest, chuck full of propaganda and just plain evil, why do people still buy it?

There’s no such thing as unbiased news. In this regard Fox is no better or worse than any other channel. I no longer watch TV, but if I did and I could take FOX I’m sure I’d watch it. I figure a dose of BBC and a dose of FOX and I’d get both angles covered. I wonder why FOX incite such a rage in some liberals – is it that they’re pissed that their media monopoly is broken or that the assumed unbias of other news channels has been exposed for what it is – a lie? People who by principle never watch FOX are just as partisan and stupid as people who solely watch FOX – it’s important to get your news from a variety of sources, including those with a political leaning you disagree with.

31

Did you see the documentary Outfoxed? If not, your post is stupid and is just spouting drivel.

32

So, how many of the Fox News fans/defenders SAW Outfoxed.

33

This is spot on I think, at least for me. I watch Fox every now and then (ironically probably because of all the hype it gets here on the SDMB). There’s some pleasure to be had in spluttering at some old guy’s inane ramblings. For instance, I swear I heard someone ask a Christian minister (who was saying some characteristically unChristian things, of course) who he thought Jesus would vote for in November, given the opportunity. WTF!!!?

There’s also a value, for those of us not used to US TV, in just observing the differences. There was a report of a murder on over the weekend and FOX must have spent at least an hour speculating about the suspects, the motives and the means. They talked to retired police officers, people who knew the victim and, bizarrely, held an interview on a rubbish dump (‘y’know, we could be standing on her dead, dismembered and decomposing body right now’). In the UK, you get the plain facts and no more. Anything else is, I think, considered to endanger the chances of a fair trial. But perhaps not a Fair and Balanced one…

34

Collounsbury used to make a convincing case for comparing Fox news to Al Jazeera. Neither explicitly states untruths with any frequency, they merely skew their stories way towards the nationalistic tendencies of their audience.

I loved this quote:

Any more irony and he’d be a sand wedge.

35

You did specify that you only wanted comments from people who had seen outfoxed, no you set the premise: FOX = clearly dishonest, partisan and obvious propaganda. With other insults thrown in for good measure.

Well it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you start out with a premise that the other side is evil, degenerate Satan spawn you’re not setting the stage for an interesting levelled discussion with replies from all over the spectrum. Rather it’s simply a call for back clapping and outraged howls from those you already agree with. The OP is everything you accuse FOX of.

“If I had a daughter and she was raped I would still consider it less grave than if she was married to a journalist.” Søren Kierkegaard

36

umm… “You did specify” -> “You did not specify”

37

No, it isn’t. I did not call anyone any of the slurs you stated.

I was asking honest questions based on the movie which I saw yesterday.

If you didn’t see the movie, and you haven’t said you did, you’re just talking out of your ass.

With the level of revisionist history you are trying to claim I either said or put forth I have to wonder if you’re Sean Hannity.

38

This is GD, if you want to discuss a movie take it to the cafe – and rephrase your OP while you’re at it.

39

Stop junior modding and go to another thread if all you want to do is hijack and cause problems.

40

Then surely you can provide an example of this liberal slant, right? I don’t mean “they’re owned by Ted Turner so they must be biased!”, I mean something biased that has actually aired on CNN.

I agree, their respective ownership would go a long way in explaining why they’re biased, if that indeed is the case. But ownership in itself doesn’t prove that they really are biased.

More than they cut Bush 41 and Bush 43? Can you share any specific examples?