But the thing is is that charge can be leveled against the rest of the networks as well. But the Fox broadcast network and Fox News have generally been fairly seperate from one another. True, Fox broadcast affiliates will pick up the national feed from Fox News if something big is being covered and there is Fox News Sunday on broadcast, but I actually have seen less coverage devoted to the so-called “news” items of TV shows on Fox News than I have watching broadcast news, especially the broadcast morning news and the newsmagazines. CBS, after all, kicked off the silly thing with their Survivor coverage on the Early Show, and here’s a story in CNN about Dateline NBC. Network television overall seems to be getting worse and worse, but I don’t see why just having crappy non-news programming doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to put together a good news program.
Well, it’s an indication of how seriously they take their job – or even of whether their job is to inform or spread cheap propaganda. When you crank out a documentary like the Moon Landing special – my favourite item of ignorance to date – and not only support it but air it repeatedly even when experts have picked the show apart, it is safe to suspect there may be something amiss at the network. If they take such liberties with a documentary, which is supposed to be factual representation and reliable analysis of known and established facts, what’s to stop them when it comes to partially-glimpsed and mutable (not to mention politically charged) current events? As we have seen, the answer is very little. Hence the practically comprehensive damage to FOX credibility.
They are the limited-understanding idiot little children of the media world, big mouth and grubby hands working overtime to make life difficult for everyone else. Rather a lot of people acquire “information” (in the form of news or documentaries) from FOX after all, which may explain quite a few of the rampant kooky beliefs out there.
But you are right, a lot of network television in general seems to be getting worse, and this may be related to audience demand for simple and attention-grabbing material. It’s interesting to compare domestic CNN and the international version: the latter we get out here retains redeeming aspects, whereas the domestic broadcasts I have caught in the US were pretty poor-- little better than a repetitive gossip channel blaring about the indiscretions of this senator, that scandal, etc. News analysis wasn’t very good, and I found the presentation skills quite poor across the board. Thankfully CNN has avoided reveling in the kind of bias such as FOX is famous for, we can give them that much credit.
Since you object to the “constant use of “hero””, you must have something in mind to replace it. Care to share with me what word or descriptor you would replace it with?
