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

[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?