Posted on 04/17/2005 11:45:26 PM PDT by neverdem
The in-your-face right-wing partisanship that marks Fox News Channel's news broadcasts is having two dangerous effects.
The first is that the popularity of the approach -- Fox is clobbering its direct competition (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.) -- leads other cable broadcasters to mimic it, which in turn debases the quality of the news available to that segment of the TV audience.
The second, far more dangerous, effect is that it threatens to destroy public confidence in all news.
The latter, I admit, is more fear than prediction, but let me tell you what produces that fear. Fox News Channel -- though the people who run the operation are at great pains to insist otherwise -- is deliberately partisan. It is as though right-wing talk radio has metastasized into cable and assumed a new virulence.
The main difference is that radio's Rush Limbaugh, for instance, doesn't pretend even-handedness. As he has said, he doesn't seek to be balanced but to balance the rest of the media, which he sees as generally dominated by left-of-center attitudes.
Part of the FNC approach, on the other hand, is to promote itself as "fair and balanced." I suppose it does so with a wink and a nod to its far-right audience, who must know it isn't balanced. Certainly those near the center of the political spectrum know it.
So why would I consider Fox such a generalized threat? Because I think the plan is not so much to convince the public that its particular view is correct but rather to sell the notion that what FNC presents is just another set of biases, no worse (and for some, a good deal better) than the biases that routinely drive the presentation of the news on ABC, CBS or NBC -- and, by extension, the major newspapers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I didn't know sour grapes were in season yet.
Sour grapes are never out of season here in Washingtion DC!
Fox is dangerous? With Jerry Rivers and his wig? Then there is O'Reiley with his liberal, ego-centric bullying. Neither one strikes me as conservative in any respect.
The other networks are just tiresome. I find few who bother to watch them. The old newspapers are failing too. The Arizona People's Republic is fading with the rest of them. I wouldn't swat my dog with it.
"The first is that the popularity of the approach -- Fox is clobbering its direct competition (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.) -- leads other cable broadcasters to mimic it, which in turn debases the quality of the news available to that segment of the TV audience. "
This hilarious -- it's dangerous, because people like it.
"fair and balanced" means that unlike the other channels, conservatives and their ideas will be given equal time.
The *reason* Fox has gained so much popularity is that its filling a niche ignored by people like Rasberry. I'm really surprised he would flout his bias and ignorance so loudly in a major newspaper.
"The second, far more dangerous, effect is that it threatens to destroy public confidence in all news."
Sure thing. After RatherGate, EasonGate, etc.
Does the opinion piece go on to mention the interview of Roger Ailes by Marvin Kalb last week? Raspberry must be chaffing over that.
http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Issue,MP;&ArchiveDays=100&Page=2
Roger Ailes, FOX News Chairman, Interviewed by Marvin Kalb
Roger Ailes, FOX News Chairman & CEO, talks about his leadership of FOX News. In an interview with Marvin Kalb, Ailes discusses the future of FOX News and concerns about political bias in the news media. A former media consultant to Pres. Nixon & Reagan, Ailes was also Pres. of CNBC, NBC's financial news channel.
4/7/2005: WASHINGTON, DC: 2 hr.
Go to bugmenot.com and find out how deranged Raspberry is.
William Raspberry? I didn't know he was still alive?
He's been absolutely deranged for decades!
This is absolutely hilarious. These guys must write this stuff while looking in the mirror. Does the left-wing MSM ever have a single moment of honest introspection?
This piece gets a big raspberry. One of the big sins of the mainstream leftist media was leaving out stories that would hurt their team. Is FOX guilty of that? Do they hold back a story about President Bush? Would they report a rape charge against the President? I never saw Dan Rather do a Juanita Broaddrick story.
Whew! This guy doesn't get it.
Hey, William! Chicken. . . . egg.
The reason Fox News is so successful is precisely BECAUSE your paper and the rest of the dying, socialist (Democrat) "old media" held a monopoly on the selection, dissemination, and spin of the news for so long that when a non-liberal network came along, the public was delighted to finally brush you off like dandruff.
See, it isn't that the dying, socialist "mainstream" newsrooms are "seen as the left-of-center counterparts of Fox News" - - it is that Fox News is seen as the fair and balanced counterpart of the dying, socialist "mainstream" newsrooms.
Chicken. . . . egg.
By the way, William - - you may be interested to know that Fox News is doing radio now. All across this great nation, as existing contracts with ABC, CBS, etc. for top-of-the-hour newscasts expire, Fox News will be jumping in. William, do you have any idea how many voters get the sum total of their news from their car radios on the drive back and forth to work?
Have a nice week, William.
Exactly. For me at least, Fox restores my faith that I can get at least a fairly straight version of events on televison, not some twisted liberal version that bears almost no resemblance to reality ala Rather, Brocaw, or Stewart..
After all, the MSM still unabashedly talks about the "Social Security Trust Fund" as if it really exists. How can anybody have any faith in that?
Washington Post: "We fear FOX."
FNC isn't that conservative.
I did not need Fox News to figure this out.
It's much easier to be part of the MSM since you don't even have to consider any facts much less a spin.
"Writer Fabricated Boston Globe Story on Seal Hunt"
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