People–many stupid, some smart, are lied to about factual issues, then encouraged to take their misinformation to the ballot box. Furthermore, these lies and encouragements are working; again, see the other thread about Fox for countless sites about the ignorance and political views of Fox’s viewers.
Bear in mind, I’m not discussing purely political. True, as a liberal I’m pissed off when Fox tells it’s viewers that Romney is awesome or that Obamacare is the devil. But Fox News viewers believing that global warming is not accepted by the scientific community, that Obama is a muslim Kenyan, that we had actually found WMDs in Iraq–a network spreading this level of factual ignorance should be a call to action for both sides, liberals because the lies are tailored to harm their causes and conservatives because relying on those lies undermines the credibility of their own political organizations.
But this large group of ignorant people persists. And as a large block voting from manufactured cluelessness, their skew on the political process has the potential to cause wars, prevent us from stemming global warming, and spreading that ignorance contagiously through misguided nonsense like “teach the controversy.”
So damn straight, we need to do something about the problem. Call me an optimist, call me a utopian, but there has to be a way to combat Fox–I can’t bring myself to lower my opinion of humanity so much to think there’s really no hope for these people.
Personally, I think the Colbert Report does a much better job of counteracting the lies of the liberal media with in-depth investigative research, hard-hitting reporting, and generally providing more truthiness in news. It also keeps America abreast of the progressive threat of those godless killing machines, bears. Note that Fox News has not even once provided an expose on the threat posed by bears, which is a clear indication that radical liberal elements have conspired to undermine the journalistic standards of Fox News in order to conceal the danger posed to all God-fearing Americans.
“Fair and Balanced” indeed! More like a tool of the liberal bear-hugging Commie-pinko-leftoid minority. Don’t be fooled!
Except you are focused on Fox News, and I was talking about left verses right there. As to ‘equivalent examples’, well, again, that’s going to boil down to oxes and gores, because, you see, what’s one persons propaganda is another persons facts…and vice versa. Since I wasn’t talking about Fox there, however, I think I’ll go ahead and move on without playing the 20 cites of Liberal Hypocrisy in the Lib’ral Media game today, but thanks all the same.
[QUOTE=Reyemile]
People–many stupid, some smart, are lied to about factual issues, then encouraged to take their misinformation to the ballot box. Furthermore, these lies and encouragements are working; again, see the other thread about Fox for countless sites about the ignorance and political views of Fox’s viewers.
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And, as I said, the scary thing to me is you want to fix all those wrong thinking folks and make them see the errors of their ways. Especially since they don’t vote right either. That attitude scares the shit out of me. Has nothing to do with this tripe here:
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
But Reye, some liberal organization somewhere did something vaguely similar awhile back, so they’re both exactly equal.
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Which both misses the point and attempts to focus on something I never said in any case.
As I’ve already said, absolutely nothing wrong with discussion and presentation of the facts. Of course, you guys are ALREADY doing that, so I guess if your answer to the OP is ‘we are already doing this, but it’s taking longer than we thought’, then I’ll just agree and bow out. But that is not the vibe I get from the OP or in these kinds of discussions in general about fixing folks and doing something about this problem.
The problem is beyond just Fox it has to do with the whole right wing Echo chamber. When you have a set of people getting all of their information from right wing sources and seeing all other sources as guilty of liberal bias, then there is no incentive not to lie. Independent fact checks are fine, but when the right puts out own set of fact checkers and claims that those that disagree with them are biased how can it help.
The right has convinced people that Obama is a Muslim, communist, born Indonesia, who has a secret goal of destroying America. If they can convince people of this they can basically convince them of anything. Unfortuately, I think it is just starting to dawn on the right the extent of this power and its going to get worse. Soon they will realize that other than things that can be directly checked by the average person (the sun comes up in the east) any other facts can be made up at will.
George Bush turned the Clinton deficits into a 4 year budget surplus.
Unemployment under Obama is currently at 17%
Obama used 100 million dollars in tax payer money to buy underage boys for Afghan warlords.
Anyone who says these are false is part of the liberal media and is hiding the truth.
I mean, full disclosure: I’d love it if 100% of the population was liberal as I was. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m not discussing how Fox ends up promoting unsupportable religious beliefs or some of the more noxious far-right conservative political positions.
I’m talking about people who, due in part or entirely to Fox, believe things that are provably, factually incorrect.
That’s kind of my stance. I don’t really care if “100% of the population was liberal as I was” as long as they had their facts straight and based their views on facts.
I don’t need everyone to agree with me, I just need them not to lie to me.
We did this a while ago, I’ll suggest now what I did then.
Revoke their status as a “news” organization, and have them run opinion disclaimers before every show, just like we do for long infomercials or the disclaimers that run on lawyer commercials about the seriousness of not hiring an attorny based solely on an ad… something along the lines of: " The content of the following entertainment program is solely the opinions of the producers and presenters. This program should not be construed as a factual news or educational program; viewers are strongly encouraged to research the facts about any issue or topic and form their own opinions accordingly." Then let them blather all damn day. Oh and YES I’d suggest that for any station on the left that is doing the same thing.
Yes, many areas of the media are already discussing things and presenting facts. And it is taking “longer than we thought”.
The point of the OP is that one part of the media (Fox News) is not presenting facts. In fact they are presenting the opposite of facts. They are presenting lies, and telling their viewers that they are the ONLY holders of truth and fairness. And this is working, as studies have shown that Fox News viewers are MORE ignorant of FACTUAL INFORMATION. The believe the LIES that Fox News tells them.
This is the problem that we’re talking about here, and one that seems worthy of fixing.
Gotta admire the new “BIAS Alert” section on the front page of fox news .com. So basically anything they want to point out to the right faithful, but isn’t really news they can just list on the front page as opinion and as an added bonus fuel the fire that all media is liberal.
I do wonder tho at what point does someone think “Okay, so every major news org is liberal, and only Fox is conservative. If the conservative viewpoint was so compelling wouldn’t it be the other way around??”
My (very limited) understanding is that there is no particular “right” to be a broadcast news organization. They are licensed and regulated by the FCC.
Fox News is not a broadcast channel. It is a cable channel and not subject to the same FCC oversight that NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox are. That is why the Daily Show can use words that would earn a broadcast station a fine.
And I don’t what the government to be the Truth Police in what news or analysis I get.
I also don’t think you can craft a rule that will affect FOX but not MSNBC. We can argue that MSNBC isn’t as “bad” as FOX, but it’s just a matter of degree.
I could see a requirement to clearly label “news” and “opinion” shows being enforced on broadcast channels using public airwaves. How those two are defined and who gets to choose could be tricky, but not impossible. The biggest drawback is that I think most people won’t care.
