At this point, it’s abundantly clear that Fox News not only fails to be “Fair and Balanced,” but actively produces ignorance and misinformation on a host of issues: see this thread for detailed arguments and cites.
So now the question is…what do we do?
As much as I’d like to believe that “the truth will prevail,” frankly, I don’t think that’s the case. No matter how much the “liberal” media points out the hypocrisy and inaccuracy of the claims put forth by Fox’s opinion shows (and even it’s “news” segments), every bit of it is dismissed by Fox’s followers as part of the liberal conspiracy.
However, legislative or judicial action seems to be right out. The First Amendment, after all, is the cornerstone of our society. Moreover, even if Fox was doing anything that technically wasn’t protected by freedom of the press, there is no doubt in my mind that any government prosecution would merely energize their base, and that any successful civil suit would spawn hundreds of baseless copy-cat cases against MSNBC, NPR, etc.
So how do we, the educated elite (mostly liberal, but I hope that some conservatives will acknowledge the harm Fox is doing to their own side and to the nation), fix this problem? How do we prevent future misinformation, and undo past harm, caused by the Fox News channel’s shameless agenda?
I agree we should all watch it, but not for the reasons you think.
We need to watch it so we can see the kind of utter bullshit they’re feeding the misinformed so we can speak intelligently to them about these topics to demonstrate to them the astounding extent Fox has lied to them.
“Watch”? Is watching television news common amongst netizens these days? Seems like most of us get real news from the series-of-tubes rather than the tube.
Don’t be so sure than the “Liberal” media are much better. In fact, they’re the ones who should be smart enough to know better. And what the hell do you intend to do about Fox anyway? Do you want to take away their free speech? How do you think that’ll go over?
Your way of thinking is far more dangerous than Fox news could ever hope to be. Conservatives know how to pick out the bullshit just like liberals do. The liberal base has it’s own nut groups just like the conservatives do, it ballances things out.
I think if you can wait long enough then a majority of Fox News (and Limbaugh and his ilk) will die of old age. Their median age seems to be mid-60s from what I can find, which admittedly is not much.
