Posted on 02/16/2014 7:50:42 PM PST by campg
We deserve better than Fox News
I’ve gathered information for this column from two recent books: David Brock’s “The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine” (2012) and Gabriel Sherman’s “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” (2014).
Both books deserve serious attention, if only to refute. If you watch Fox News, you owe it to yourself to understand its history and outlook. If you find Fox News unbalanced and unfair, both books offer powerful support.
Thinking Americans — whether liberal or conservative — have every reason to feel deeply, constantly, seriously dissatisfied.
Consider:
(1) Watching Fox News/Nation degrades your knowledge of our world. Granted, a few hits of Hannity or O’Reilly now and then won’t hurt, but regularly believing Fox pundits’ assertions only makes you ignorant. Brock points out that “Polls consistently find Fox News viewers among the most ignorant on a variety of issues.”
He goes on to list several bits of misinformation that Fox viewers tell pollsters they believe because they heard it on Fox. Moreover, “the University of Maryland released a study finding that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed audience of any major news network.”
According to that study, 91 percent of Fox viewers believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs, 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit, 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse, 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts, 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout. It goes on.
And Fox viewers constantly get told that Obama has become a dictator because of his constant use of executive orders. The truth: Obama has issued the fewest executive orders of any president, certainly including G.W. Bush. (168 to 291).
I strongly believe in checking with a variety of sources on all assertions from media, but especially anything from Fox News. By the way, if you think the “mainstream media” is just as bad, you’ve already been Fox-newsed.
2. Fox’s pundits and its biased news amount to paranoid and melodramatic nonsense much of the time, thanks to boss Roger Ailes. Ailes, the founder and overseer of Fox, behaves as if the whole world is out to get him and runs his news outfit like any paranoid would -- obsessed with grand conspiracies, filled with fear and hatred of anyone who opposes his wacky ideas.
As Sherman points out, “Through Fox, Ailes helped polarize the American electorate, drawing sharp, with-us-or-against-us lines, demonizing foes, preaching against compromise.” At least some of our current gridlock goes back to hard right groups who leap off the deep end at the very mention of compromise.
Brock’s book enhances that point, “Ailes’s paranoid style and its resulting aggressive and over-the-top reactions create a climate of fear among current and former employees. [A biographer of Rupert Murdoch] observed, ‘Everybody outside Fox News and Inside News Corp. is afraid of Roger Ailes.”
3. The best reason to question Fox? Personal health, both mental and physical. Taking Fox’s distorted worldview seriously will make you as paranoid and angry as they are. Fox viewers become victims of “confirmation bias,” meaning they get told only what they want and need to believe.
They assert that Obama is a socialist, then only show stories that supposedly prove it. Or the “worst president ever.” That opinion is simply ridiculous, but not to those who only watch Fox News. That’s all they hear and know.
In a surprisingly short time, steady viewers see evidence of Fox’s absurdities everywhere. Any ideas to the contrary get put in the “enemy” camp.
They grow to distrust anyone who brings up opposing ideas, and end up stressed out, furious, and impossible to talk to about anything but weather and sports. That’s where we are now, thanks partly to Ailes and Fox News.
We all deserve better.
You would think there would be at least one conservative channel on cable TV
News is news and opinion is opinion - there should be no merging of them.
David Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America, is not one of my patients. I have not interviewed him, and I would never hazard a diagnosis of him. He is, however, a public and influential person whose history of destructive behavior, admitted drug abuse and even reported psychosis, may be best seen through a psychological lens.
Now, onto David Brock.
First, it is important to note that Brock has a history of allying with whichever political group has shown him the most regard.
During the 1990s he attacked Clarence Thomas’ accuser Anita Hill and also wrote sharply critical articles and books about Bill and Hillary Clinton.
In a somewhat ominous and psychologically violent use of language, he described himself as a “right-wing hit man.”
Yet, when his book “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham” wasn’t embraced by politicians on the right, Brock grew bitter. He then recanted a great deal of what he had written about the Clintons, exposed one of his confidential sources (despite this being journalistically unethical) and began to cultivate a left-wing following.
A sailboat adrift, in danger of capsizing, looks for the strongest wind to keep it moving. Direction matters little or not at all when drowning is the other option. Brock would seem to be captaining such a ship-of-self.
Without stoking and tapping the hatred of one political group for another, without basking in the praise of elders who tell him he is worthwhile, his own self-loathing might be unbearably palpable.
Indeed, even as a young man, Brock was so needy of attention—so desperate for regard from an audience (and perhaps any audience)—that he admits, “I demonized my enemies on the staff...” at his college newspaper while he was a student at Berkeley.
Snip
So it is also no surprise that Brock suffered for a time with delusional thinking—fixed and false beliefs, such as paranoia. A man cannot live untethered from his soul forever, lest he float free of all tethers to reality.
Seen through this psychological lens, Brock’s reported obsession with arming himself and being protected by body guards and running from snipers on rooftops would be nothing more than fleeing from the overheated projections of his self-loathing.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/02/17/whats-wrong-with-media-matters-founder-david-brock/
Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
David Brock? David Brock? David Brock...Really?
Oh for crying out loud, quit looking at Fox News or any-damn-place to do your thinking for you. Gather information from various sources and use your brain. It’s called “critical thinking”....much more productive than WHINING.
Media Matters’ ‘Volatile and Erratic’ Founder David Brock
“Brock wasn’t a liar for any larger cause, but simply … a liar.”
The contentious life of David Brock, founder of the leftist media watchdog, Media Matters for America, has made headlines since his radical conversion from self-described “right-wing hitman” to self-imagined media rebel leader of the far left.
Brock made himself an instant darling of the left when he published his infamous tell-all, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (2002). The book covers in lurid detail his period as a self-described “right-wing hitman.” Brock presented it as a confessional, chronicling the seductive evils of conservative media. Obviously, the left loved him for it.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/media-matters-volatile-and-erratic-founder-david-brock
Brock’s rockstar status in leftist circles eventually opened doors to big leftist donors. The result: his brainchild Media Matters for America, which has aggressively selected members of the conservative media to discredit and discard. Despite Brock’s self-chronicled dishonesty and his reported “volatile and erratic” (and increasingly paranoid) behavior, Media Matters’ relentless attacks on conservatives in the media have at times done real damage to individuals and organizations.
The last time I was able to watch Fox News was August 12th, 2013. That's when we cancelled our DirecTV. I used to think I'd miss it .... however as time passed I watch far less television and have taken on more productive things.
David Brock, Liar
A lifelong habit proves hard to break.
By Timothy Noah
Chatterbox is slightly taken aback at the respectful attention some liberals have given David Brock’s Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. In the New York Times Magazine, Frank Rich called it “a key document for historians seeking to understand the ethos of the incoherent 90’s.” In The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg called it “an astounding account of fin-de-siecle Washington politics,” “an entertaining backstage sketchbook of scores of eccentric and mostly obnoxious characters,” and “a valuable book.” In The Nation, Michael Tomasky called it”mind-boggling. ... You cannot fully understand this fevered era without reading this book.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/03/david_brock_liar.html
Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations
David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs.
Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe.
The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.
“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said, explaining that Brock’s bodyguards would rarely leave his side, even accompanying him to his home in an affluent Washington neighborhood each night where they “stood post” to protect him. “What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.
Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.
Yet those same interviews, as well as a detailed organizational planning memo obtained by The Daily Caller, also suggest that Media Matters has to a great extent achieved its central goal of influencing the national media.
Why not a Freeper Video channel on Youtube?
Good idea. You know the left will organize campaigns to “flag” everything. Of course.
Moreover, “the University of Maryland released a study finding that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed audience of any major news network.”
Isn’t that a study that got several basic things wrong as far as what was and wasn’t?
When I see that the MSM totally ignore the IRS scandal and Benghazi, say nothing about Obama unconstitutionally making laws and always seem to be reading from the same talking points it is pretty obvious that not only are they biased, but do not have a shred of integrity. Also telling is that Obama is constantly ranting about Fox News, but says nothing about the other lapdog media. More revealing is the often voiced wish by liberals that the government should somehow shut down or muzzle Fox News so the stupid majority should only get their news from a liberal perspective.
The regressives are sociopaths.
Sociopaths ALWAYS accuse you of doing the very thing of which they are guilty. Especially so when called out or confronted with evidence of their perfidy. It is called sociopath projection by some and deflection by others.
Sick, insecure, damaged little children in adult bodies.
Of course what did Freud and Jung know. They would probably watch Fox News.
If God had created David Brock earlier, He wouldn’t have needed snakes.
Is this thread a joke? DAVID BROCK???
He is not a dictator because of his EOs. He is a dictator because he picks and chooses what laws he wishes to follow.
He is a thin skinned bigot socialist. And I never watch fox past noon.
Folks who watch Fox, CNN or the rest of the alphabet networks do it because the view presented closely represents that individuals particular world view.
They are all selling a product after all, and aiming it at a particular demographic. Anyone who believes any news source is providing anything but a biased view targeted to their particular audience is deluded.
People by nature only want to hear views they agree with.
I quit reading as soon as you started relying on David ? Bleech
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