Posted on 07/11/2004 9:18:35 PM PDT by quidnunc
Edited on 07/11/2004 9:50:27 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
When Fox News Channel was founded by Rupert Murdoch, the consensus was that no startup all-news cable channel could possibly compete with CNN, and if any startup had a chance, it was MSNBC, which had the combined clout of NBC's esteemed news division and Microsoft, which in those days was believed to own the future.
Now, almost a decade later, Fox News Channel has left both CNN and MSNBC in the dust. There's no guarantee that this is permanent, of course. But it certainly has the left in a panic. They hated it that American conservatism had any voice at all, back when it was confined to a few radio talk shows — remember how everybody wanted to blame Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-radio hosts for the Oklahoma City bombing?
Now, though, to have Fox News Channel be the source for the largest portion of America's TV news junkies just sticks in their craw. How could such a thing happen? Scott Collins, author of "Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN," thinks he has the answer.
It's not what Fox claims — that the American news media have a pronounced and painful liberal bias, so that huge numbers of Americans had given up on TV news, only to return in droves when Fox News offered them a balanced, trustworthy source of information. No, it's that a large number of Americans believed that the news was biased. How they got this idea is that they were … hmmm … idiots? But no matter. Mr. Collins repeatedly states that the perception is what mattered, and by homing in on the audience dumb enough to think the media was biased, Fox News won the ratings race (but not, of course, the race for quality news coverage).
I'm painting Mr. Collins's book far too negatively, and I'm doing it deliberately. In fact, you can finish "Crazy Like a Fox" and think you have received a balanced story. Nowhere does Mr. Collins actually say that Fox News viewers are idiots. But Mr. Collins is a product of the liberal American news media, which are deeply offended at any accusation of bias. They don't twist the news — they inform their readers of the truth. And when they see Fox News trumpeting slogans like "we report, you decide" and "fair and balanced," they see red. They take it for granted that those slogans are true of every news outlet except Fox News.
So when Mr. Collins sets out to write a fair and balanced account of Fox News's triumph, he does not realize that his own reporting is biased, too. He scrupulously avoids demonizing the folks at Fox News.
But the bias is there. It is simply taken for granted that Fox distorts the news, that Fox is unusual for taking sides, while all of the allegations about liberal bias are refuted so that one could close this book believing that liberal bias in the vast majority of the American news media is a delusion shared only by dimwitted conservatives who don't like it that the world has passed them by — and blame the messenger.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
FYI
The left sure is pulling all the stops out in this election year. If they lose the election, I expect riots in Beverly Hills and Greenich Village.
Never thought I'd see the day when Fox would beat CNN and an offspring of NBC news, msnbc, in the ratings game. It's been about two years now. I hope it never ends.
Pray for W and Our Amazing Troops
I have always felt that most people in Hollywood were dumb. They are so afraid to be different or hold an opposing point of view. The same thing with the liberal media. They are just sheep and are pathetic. FNC is a breath of fresh air. Hollywood and the liberal media are using their star power to get Pres. Bush out of office. People are not as dumb as these people in the media and Hollywood.
WOW.
Presstitutes.
The Leftist media will of course gnash their teeth mightily, and offer all manner of protestation, before, in the end, their tombstone receives the same engraving: "You Are Obsolete"
If you think that the news media isn't biased, then simply ask yourself how many doctors, who've been sued by Democratic Senator Edwards into bankruptcy, have been interviewed. Then ask yourself how many women who simply *claimed* to have been groped by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger got interviews and articles published.
And suicides. They're kooks!
How many days after the election will Michael Moore call on his worshipers to "drink the kool aid"?
Maybe riots, maybe suicides-- but, damn, they never leave like they threaten to.
What is more amazing is that the Hollywood crowd is a very uneducated group. A good share of them are high school drop-outs.
How the public adores them as 'stars' is beyond me.
It doesn't understand yet that it is about as relevent as the UN.
It's whining about FOX is evidence of it's own weakness that it somehow chooses to ignore.
I hope self-immolation is in vogue with the left on election night
Yeah, promises, promises. It's like all the HollyRATs who said they would leave the country. All talk and no action.
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