We deserve better than Fox News

http://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/columnists/we-deserve-better-than-fox-news/article_aed777c2-3a5f-5000-a6bb-ca902ff84d96.html ^

[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.

[campg]

Fair and Balanced in the tradition of MSNBC.

[House Atreides]

The Left ALWAYS tell you what and who they hate and fear.

[cripplecreek]

Does David Brock still think Glenn Beck is sending assassins after him? LOL

[usconservative]

Brock points out that “Polls consistently find Fox News viewers among the most ignorant on a variety of issues.”

That's funny, I have a poll right here that states anyone who believes a word David Brock says is, or immediately becomes a flaming homosexual with flames shooting out of their arse.

[napscoordinator]

Some Conservatives have tons of money. Why don’t the really rich ones start a conservative channel. I think it is easier to complain.

[digger48]

Local radio plays one of Rushs shows on Sunday afternoon, and then goes to an audio of Fox News Sunday.

I only lasted about 3 minutes into Rove today before I hit the tuner.

[kcvl]

Scott Cawelti

Scott Cawelti was born and raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He attended the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), graduating with a vocal music education degree in 1965 and a Master’s Degree in English in 1968, and a Ph.D in Modern Letters from the University of Iowa in 1978. Dr. Cawelti taught at UNI from 1968-2008. During his career at UNI, Dr. Cawelti taught numerous writing, film, and literature courses, as well as American Civilization, collaborating with three other faculty on a humanities “cluster course,” consisting of Humanities II, American Civilization, Expository Writing, and Oral Communication.

[deweyfrank]

I wonder what this dude would think of Free republic?

[far sider]

We deserve better than Fox News but it’s for the opposite reason from what Brock thinks.

[DemforBush]

“72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit”

Uhhh...it IS. Medicare Fix, anyone? Pending insurer bailouts, anyone?

“72 percent believe the economy is getting worse”

The funadmentals sure ain’t getting better, bub. Cut off that Fed money inflating the market and let’s see how things fare.

“63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts”

It didn’t. It contained gimmicky tax credits and temporary (and super gimmicky) payroll tax shenanigans, but there were no true and permanent tax cuts in the stimulus that I am aware of.

“The truth: Obama has issued the fewest executive orders of any president, certainly including G.W. Bush. (168 to 291).”

The real truth: It’s not the number of executive orders that is the problem, it’s that the one’s he’s been doing of late are beyond the scope of his constitutional authority.

What a butt-kissing little weasel this author is.

[smoothsailing]

What a doofus. I bet bunny rabbits scare him too.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Brock is still playing in the bathhouses of the liberal elite.

The author of this column is doing a “fronting” hitpiece for Brock and his Democrat Party masters and for George Soros.

Some of his “points” have already been shown to be lies and disinformation, esp. regarding the Stimulus Bill (losing $650+ million on Solyndra should be a wakeup call to anyone with half a brain. That obviously leaves out the writer and brock. Lost, gone, stolen - political contributions to Obama for giving them the guaranteed loan (who pays for a guaranteed loan except for the taxpayer. Under Obama, it isn’t the unions at GM, nor Solyndra’s donor head/flunkies).

File this column under “Fiction - Smear piece” and read it once in a while to imagine what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany with Der Sturmer putting out stuff like this every day.

[old curmudgeon]

The writer is correct if you think that:
The DOJ should smugle guns to the Mexican cartels.....and then arrest gun dealers who followed their instructions.

If you think that it is OK for the IRS to be used to beat down political opponents.

If you think obumbler care is a good idea.

If you think the red house should call major news reporters and news paper columnists and threatening them.

If you think it OK for NSA to spy on your lawyer, as well as on you.

If you think that it is OK for obumbler to write law through executive action rather than through congress.

Then you are right. MSNBC is preferable to FOX.

[kcvl]

David Brock has spent the last decade apologizing to liberals for his role in creating the vast right-wing conspiracy. Now he’s trying something more ambitious and hoping it gains him the respect he craves from the White House.

At Media Matters’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., scores of headphone-wearing staffers spend their days (and nights) staring into their television screens and computer monitors, waiting for the latest bits of “conservative misinformation” to emerge from the Fox News Channel and other corners of the right-wing media landscape, all of which are saved on “the big TiVo”—270 terabytes’ worth of hard drive that store over 300,000 hours of TV shows—so that the offending clips can be uploaded to Media Matters’ website. Are you in need of a compendium of the “50 Worst Things Glenn Beck Said on Fox News”? Fear not, Media Matters’ site has one.

[Rome2000]

Hes a cluster alright
Homosexual propagandist imbecile

[AlexW]

America’s young Marxist can not tolerate dissension.
They expect ALL of the media to be in the line of the old Radio Albania,(faux)Pravda, and Radio Moscow.
Radio Tirana was the best. Every sentence had the term “Marxist-Leninist” inserted. They also expect all of the people to have great respect for Dear Leader.

[Baynative]

You're trying to tell me Bill Clinton was accused of rape!
Do you people make this stuff up?

[Fiji Hill]

Yes, we deserve better. That’s why I listen to Breitbart. They keep the faith. No Karl Roves, Ann Coulters or Bill O’Reillys on that program.

[cherry]

fox news should be better....its gotten pretty lame and pretty blase and just too much entertainment and not enough hard driving facts...

however, conservatives always score high on current affairs and history...that's just the way we are...we are critical thinkers and don't drink the koolaid.....

[kcvl]

Media Matters founder and Hillary Clinton ally David Brock has co-authored a 90-page e-book called “The Benghazi Hoax,” a tome intended as a counterweight of sorts to criticisms of the former Secretary of State and President Barack Obama over the 2012 attacks in Libya.

The book, which comes out Tuesday, is as much about pushing back against criticisms by the right that Obama is a weak president who has hurt America in the world, Brock said.

These groups are all relatively new and untested, he said. However, “Rand Paul, who may run for president, said that Benghazi was a disqualifier for Secretary Clinton for higher office, and you know, I mean, that’s baloney.

“And I think we show in the book that Secretary Clinton was involved in forming global anti-terror policies that were tough and successful moreso than I think the last administration’s [were],” Brock said. “She took responsibility for the security lapses even though [it was found] that she didn’t have knowledge of the reductions. That night she was engaged and a steady hand, and then after the fact, I think her focus was on trying to keep diplomats safe in the future. … I think every step of the way she did the right thing.”

The book offers a sweeping criticism of a number of Republicans, including last year’s GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, as well as members of the media. That includes but is not limited to several Fox News anchors, whom Brock describes as “hoaxters” interested in tarnishing Obama and Clinton, and, by extension, former United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice.

“People have missed the fact that Benghazi was not only a tragedy, but it was a night of valor,” said Brock.

The book also addresses criticism of Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff at State who was accused of trying to muzzle testimony from within her department.

Brock was adamant that people pay too much attention to the portion of Media Matters’ work that deals with the Clintons.

“I think that sometimes there’s inordinate attention to the work we do on the Clintons, because the media is obsessed with [the Clintons], especially lately,” he said.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/media-matters-boss-david-brock-calls-benghazi-a-hoax/