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.
Thank you for this great post.
I've heard this meaningless factoid at least a half a dozen times and the only news network I watch is Fox. I don't think the author of piece actually watches Fox.
I grow to distrust liars, the two-faced, hypocrites, cheaters and theives.
Sarah must make him pee his undies a little.
We deserve MUCH better than ABCNNBCBS!
The problem is that you can't trust many of those "various sources" to give accurate information, or in some cases ANY information.
Oh yah, I remember CNN was on top of the world until Fox came out of the den. Grateful is an understatement for sure.
Unfair and unbalanced is what Fax News is now. Since they hired all the let go liberals from the other commie stations, I have quit watching them. I get my news from the internet. I have not watched Fax News for at least four years or more now.
If rate em on a 0-10 for fair and balanced. Fox would at least be a 6;-)
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