Why I don't like Fox News

[chipotle]

Quoted from Scot Hacker's blog:

Protests clog NY, Philly, Washington. In San Francisco more than 1000 are arrested. Fox brushes up against this news, does all it can not to treat it with revulsion. I mean with Shock and Awe. How can anyone protest at a time like this?, the reporter asks. Our boys are halfway across the world at risk of dying to protect our very right to protest, and they're protesting? The irony is thick like chemical weapons gas, the reporter nearly coughs. Fox puts convicted war criminal Oliver North in the field as a reporter--that's what credibility is all about. 16 die in a helicopter crash--12 brits and a 4 yanks. Or so I hear on CNN. When Fox does the same story a few minutes later, they tell us that four people have died. If you're not American your life isn't worth prime-time mention. The info graphic tells me the cruising speed and gas mileage of the Abrams tank and I feel informed.

Remember, kids, the Liberal Media™ is biased--Fox is there to set things right for us!

Comments

[dajagr.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm in an admittedly pissy mood this evening, but...some random person I've never heard of before doesn't like Fox News. Am I missing the relevance?

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Yes. Was my post titled "Why Scot Hacker Doesn't Like Fox News?" Did I present his name as if that alone is sufficient reason to look at Fox's reporting with a jaundiced eye? Or was the bulk of my post his description of certain choices Fox made in reporting that I'm calling into question?

If you want to argue with my content, it's your prerogative. But I find being dismissive of my choice of quote sources because it's someone you haven't heard of--which, in context, is clearly not relevant at all--to be baffling. To say I'm somewhat nonplussed is an understatement.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

Well I'm calling into question the fact I never saw a single thing he mentions except the fact that Oliver North is embedded in with the troops.

Every time they mention the helicopter crash they mention the fact both the british and american deaths.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Since I don't have any particular reason to call into question either your observation or Scot's, my guess would be that he saw an early report of it that was later corrected. I've had one other friend who heard from Fox that "four people were killed in a helicopter crash." And I have seen some of their coverage of the protests out here; the tone was pretty dismissive.

My complaints with Fox on a more general level have to do with what I see as mixing editorial bias and reporting in a pretty unprofessional manner, and basically using that as a tacit selling point even while they try to present themselves as America's fairest news source. I'll readily grant I tend to be more "left" than Fox's biases (although I think Ronald Reagan might be a little more left than Rupert Murdoch), but that's not really the irritation: I get the same vibe from, and have similar complaints about, the radio news produced by the lefter-than-thou Free Speech TV (http://www.fstv.org). Conversely, I don't get that vibe from, say, the Wall Street Journal, which has one of the most conservative editorial pages you can find--but confines it to the editorial pages, leaving their by and large excellent reporters to report news.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

Well these are some reasons why I watch FoxNews and not CNN.

1.) They are conservative, they'll admit it and that's half the point. They admit it, so you know where they're coming from. CNN seems to be stealthy about it, you have no idea where its coming from unless it's obvious. (Larry King).

2.) They always let the other side speak. Take Hannity and Colmes for example, Hannity does not host the show all the time, sometimes he hardly speaks even. They take turns wearing the pants so to speak.

3.) Self-discrimination by the left. There are many on the left that _refuse_ to ever go on the network, thus they never have their views expressed. O'Rielly talks of this often, he's requested certain upper echelon of the democratic party, but their underlings basically gave him the middle finger and tell him to screw off. They're constantly rude, so he gave up ever trying it again.

Balance can be achieved only when you know your data. CNN offers no data what so ever, thus you cannot make any calculations. Fox welcomingly exclaims what they are, including the liberals on there and there are alot of them, people just seem to ignore that fact. You know where they're coming from and can adjust for your own personal political scale.

[pawslut.livejournal.com]

"1.) They are conservative, they'll admit it and that's half the point. They admit it, so you know where they're coming from. CNN seems to be stealthy about it, you have no idea where its coming from unless it's obvious. (Larry King)."

Actually, CNN says about every half-hour or every hour, as well as posts all over its website, that it's an AOL Time-Warner Company. Everyone who knows politics knows who Ted Turner is, and what party he's a member of. Also: Not all reporting has to be conservative or liberal. It's reporting -- it's not SUPPOSED to be bias. Where as Fox says it's conservative, other news agencies are trying to preserve neutrality and just -report- as opposed to -influence-, which Fox news does a good job of attempting.

"2.) They always let the other side speak. Take Hannity and Colmes for example, Hannity does not host the show all the time, sometimes he hardly speaks even. They take turns wearing the pants so to speak. "

Ever see the show 'Crossfire'? Or 'Larry King Live'? They have BOTH Conservative -and- Liberal dialogue, shows, reports, reporters, and material. CNN shows both sides and makes it a point to be somewhat fair.

"3.) Self-discrimination by the left. There are many on the left that _refuse_ to ever go on the network, thus they never have their views expressed. O'Rielly talks of this often, he's requested certain upper echelon of the democratic party, but their underlings basically gave him the middle finger and tell him to screw off. They're constantly rude, so he gave up ever trying it again."

Maybe they know that Fox News is crappy reporting and doesn't draw in the ratings that CNN does. So why bother? :)

"Balance can be achieved only when you know your data. CNN offers no data what so ever, thus you cannot make any calculations. Fox welcomingly exclaims what they are, including the liberals on there and there are alot of them, people just seem to ignore that fact. You know where they're coming from and can adjust for your own personal political scale."

Read what I said about Crossfire and the answer to number one. I think that's sufficient.

Note: I'm not a supporter of CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, or any of the networks. But at the same time, I'm a supporter of all of them. I believe that you can't ever get your news from just -one- source. To do so would be to deliberately limit your own viewpoint to those who present them. Remember that when you decide ONLY to watch Fox News and ONLY read from Conservative magazines and news sources. By purposely cutting yourself away from the liberals, you're letting people mold you into the conservative they want you to be.

Hell, we spend so much on education in both primary and secondary levels getting people to think for themselves and to -research-, one would think Americans would never resort to this. So, the answer to the problem/debate is simplified: Read more than one source, get more than one viewpoint, and draw your own conclusions.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

As for the co-mingling of the reporting and politics. Well, that's simply a business decision in the end. Both companies exist to make money.

There are reasons why Fox is outscoring CNN despite the fact the country is most likely closer to CNN than Fox politically.

I think it has more to do with the fact that FoxNews is run by greedier capitalists than CNN than politics. That might have a correlation with political stances of course, but not always and not directly.

It simply pays to be entertaining.

[dajagr.livejournal.com]

Okay, I did miss the title.

Let me give you a brief snapshot of my state of mind (which I summarized in my own comment) when I made the post:

My cat had freaked out last night. I've literally never in six years of owning her seen her do anything remotely like this before. She was having a total fear reaction to me--defensive posture, hackles raised, tail completely puffed out, ears flat to her head, pupils as wide as they'd go, hissing and growling like the forces of Hell themselves were after her. Afraid she'd hurt someone (we had company over) or herself, I had to corner her and throw her into the bathroom. In the process of my trying to calm her down and get her into the bathroom, she scratched up my left hand to the point where it was bleeding (and, of course, we'd managed to put her into the only bathroom of the house--we're still moving in--where there were bandages) and pissed all over the front of my shirt.

Meanwhile, the activity that we had company over for was growing increasingly frustrating and, in general, not going at all in a good way.

So, take me with that going on, and add in a seemingly random journal entry (I was running on adrenaline, jittery, and apparently prone to missing details because of this, so I overlooked the subject line) that included a quote from a source that I know nothing about--in particular, its reliability--that struck me at the moment (due, in part, I'm sure, to my state of mind at the time) as being highly smarmy and condescending, and simply unnecessarily sarcastic. Does that put things into context a little bit more?

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

'Where America turns for fair and unbiased reporting,' and if you say it often enough it'll be true.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

Deleted the first because it was repetitive.

Oliver North is obviously a controversial person, but lets look at his history. What was he before he got into politics?

A Marine

When he ran here (I live in Virginia), he garnered quite a bit of votes even though he was a independent candidate. I live approximately one mile from Quantico Marine base. The votes in this district counted over 75% for Ollie in that election. (In school people often looked at me funny when I said my dad worked locally but _wasn't_ military.)

What does that have anything to do with him being a reporter? Well, they have him because he's a good person to stick in with the troops. Given that fact he used to be one himself and obviously they view him favorably.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I think Scot's point really has to do with North's appeal, which tends to be to the fairly far right. Former marine or not, "embedding" him as a reporter makes a statement in much the way embedding Ralph Nader as a reporter would. (Although Nader wandering off and trying to find manufacturing defects in Abrams tanks could be a source of unexpected entertainment.)

[pathia.livejournal.com]

Well, he's only one. I really doubt Fox _only_ has Ollie embedded, and like I said from my personal experience of living where I do, mostly a military town....well, the military is quite right-wing.

When I look at even the local elections here, it's crazy. The way you win, even for something as small as clerk of the court. You try to get the state republican party nomination, if you do, you win. Period.

[pawslut.livejournal.com]

"Protests clog NY, Philly, Washington. In San Francisco more than 1000 are arrested. Fox brushes up against this news, does all it can not to treat it with revulsion. I mean with Shock and Awe. How can anyone protest at a time like this?, the reporter asks. Our boys are halfway across the world at risk of dying to protect our very right to protest, and they're protesting?"

Unfortunately, like I said in a previous post to Sylvan, it's okay to protest 'as long as you're being patriotic'. That seems to be the view, at any rate. The Bush Administration will do anything to bully you into not speaking out against them. And here's the evidence:

Stephen Down's arrest in Albany, New York for refusing to take off his shirt that said 'Give Peace a Chance'.

Vice President Dick Cheney's attempt to threaten legal action, with a threatening letter from the Office of the Vice President, against John Wooden and his website for making parodies of him and his wife. http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=12053&c=83

Bretton Barber of Michigan was instructed to leave his high school for wearing an anti-war shirt.

Students attending a graduation ceremony at an Ohio University Campus a year or two ago were threatened with expulsion, arrest, and losing their graduating status for 'turning their backs' on George W. Bush during his speech.

Thousands arrested in San Francisco.

Dozens arrested in Washington D.C., including famous author Alice Walker, for protesting the war.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You won't see any of this on FoxNews, though. FoxNews is a damned near government run news station.

I advise anyone who is upset by this to write to their congressman, write to their senator, write to their governor, and don't vote Republican.

One last thing . . .

[pawslut.livejournal.com]

To quote Sylvan's sign, which I hope he's printed out and posted on his lawn:

Support our troops: Stop the War with Iraq.


Bring them home.

[chastmastr.livejournal.com]

Once again, I post in agreement with you. "Liberal Media" my ass. I remember when that whole notion was in vogue. Working as a copy editor helped really blast that idea out of the water...

[kareem.livejournal.com]

EuroNews on Sky Television is really good. They run a reel called 'no comment' which is just that, a series of snapshots. One made me upset, when they showed the Iraqi home guard, some sweet old men dressed in smartly pressed blue uniforms, each in their sixties of seventies and absolutely no contest against Western troops. I thought about my grandfather.