Posted on 11/23/2006 6:03:45 AM PST by bert
It has been ten years since Fox News came on the scene. As one who has followed one of the favorite sports on Free Republic namely Main Stream Media bashing, it seems appropriate to look back at the change Fox News has brought and to have a thread that gives one and all the opportunity to praise or bash the folks at Fox News. As the conservative core of their audience, our views should be important be they praise or criticism.
There was a start our own TV station thread….. Some for and some against. From that thought of making some expensive positive action there came the thought of a cheap and readily accomplishable effort. Here is an on line Freep, something positive that is free and everyone can lend a hand and a few thoughts..
It is now fashionable among some to bash Fox. This bashing seems to come from a few who insist on their way or the hiway. An intolerant view of all thought that is in the slightest way a variance from that of the poster is posted as criticism. There is also much praise and over time the praise probably surpasses the criticism. Years ago we applauded loudly the birth of the MSM antithesis. That feeling of goodness when we could feel the breeze of media change is now a full blown gale as the other MSM is struggling to find the way. Fox News remains the only viable hope for conservative news watchers in spite of the bashing by those who insist on seeing a reflection of their narrow views.
This thread is for posting opinions on Fox News…. praise or criticism. It will be printed out in total and Fedexed to Roger Ailes. It will in actuality be a Fox News Freep. Good and bad, we can let Mr Ailes know how we condemn or appreciate his efforts over the last ten years.
I will post the thread to activism in hopes it will stay around for a while and coax comments from the depths of many PING lists. A few hundred posts will be good, but an all-out big time rousing 1,000 post discussion will be great.
We should include the various personalities. A Fox Babe discussion is mandatory. There might be a similar Hunk discussion as well. We can express our happiness at the removal of Julian Phillips and Rita Cosby. If there is still animosity toward Geraldo, let it out. Shep haters can get their licks in……. if they give a good reason for the disdain. Shep makes me sick won’t get it. Because a good reason must be added.
What were the really great moments…… Brian Kilmeade’s killer impromptu interview with a Bill Clinton drawn mothlike to the TV camera on the post 911 streets of New York. Rita Cosby breathlessly reporting incorrectly from the steps of the Supreme Court that Gore won. Shep’s hardcore disgruntled report from the New Orleans Bridge. The Greg Kelly report as he, live on camera, entered Baghdad with the conquerors. Tell Roger Ailes what you liked or disliked.
Then there are the segments. Fox and Friends is Great. Fox and Friends is too silly for me in the morning. Brit is the greatest but O’rilley sucks. More Cavuto. Less Wesley Clark.
The opportunity to present our views is too great to pass up. Rather than bitch and moan, we can make a real contribution to the movers and shakers at Fox as they toil to increase their ratings. We are the core of their viewer ship. We matter.
Five hundred words……… did I make my point?
I'll PING this.
When i signedup for a satilite dish I had to upgrade to a higher package just to get FOX News. CNN, MSNBC, and all the rest came with the low price package.
I've been paying the extra money for 2 years.
Yes, I too admire Molly from afar. She's not only good at her job, she is the babe next door.
Without the MSM, or DBM as they truly are, Limbaugh nailed them with that name...Pres. Bush would not be hated, he would have an approval rating of the supposed 65% or so they claimed Clinton had. Everyone would know he is intelligent and sincere. The Republicans would not be seen as the only "culture of corruption" and they would not have lost control of both Houses. The war in Iraq would not be seen as a total failure, and the reaility of our economy's basic strength would be known by everyone. Kerry would be seen as the fraud he is, and the Clintons (and others) would be in jail. Mel Gibson would not be the only "disgraced" movie star/producer out there. The list of differences with a more honest and professional and fair media is endless.
The "media" has gone from biased to corrupt to criminal in fast succession in very recent years. They lie and make up news and overlook important information and cover for the crimes of the Democrats, the U.N., the terrorists and anyone else that fits with their agenda. I never thought I'd live to see a media worse than the one Russia had, but we have it now. And...what can be done, anything?
Fox has tried to be different and we can give them credit, but lately the influence of the other networks and sources has taken them another direction too. Still...they remain the best of what we have.
On the other hand, the production and presentation at FOX is so surreal and bizarre, I just can't watch it.
CNN is only marginally less strange.
Lets face it, television news presentation has - at the local and national levels - become so existential and insane that it's essentially impossible to watch any of it, except in the most dire of emergencies.
The only thing more bizarre are commercials.
Frankly, I only watch DVDs anymore. TV is way too much of a head game.
LOL
Thanks for Ellen Ratner, Alan Colmes, Eleanor Clift, etc.
Forget about "Fair and Balanced", give me "True and Truer" or "Real and Factual". Get rid of the clueless. Who really needs them?
****
By the way........... is dear Julian Phillips canned? If so...... excellent.
This includes the morning shows, the newsmagazines, Daily Show, the View, etc. They're weakening, but still standing and need another whack.
As for the reason for the aforementioned drift left by Fox News, I have read and believe Fox News has been boycotted by east and west coast corporations and they're liberal advertising agencies so as not to be perceived as "conservative" by their liberal east and west coast associates/friends.
I suspect Murdock told Ailes, 'we've got the ratings, but we're not making the money. We're perceived as conservative whackos by the players in our game. Fix it.'
Totally ridicuous, of course, that they dare present both sides of a debate and then be tagged as conservative whackos, but that's the deranged upside-down view of liberals.
Talk about a formula for arrogance, this was a self reinforcing mantra. If you ever get to look at a class of journalism students, please take some time and get to understand them. This is a level of reportage rarely studied anymore. One of the scariest things I saw while watching was that most of the students did not have a firm grasp of the obvious. Their attitudes were overwhelmingly left, extreme left, and they never questioned the rhetoric from their side. Anyone on the right was an automatic liar.
More conservatism is needed. O'Gasbag should be replaced with someone that is more informed about the day's issues (global warming is a prime example) and less apt to set up strawmen and knocking them down (his child predator stchik is getting real old).
The Lineup should be discontinued. So should "on the record" with Greta van Lawyer. Boring.
There is a wealth of conservative talent out there that can dialog on the issues. See if maybe someone like Walter Williams will do a show. People from the Science and Environmental Policy Project (Fred Singer). Maybe not as a continuing show, but certainly as specials (and hosted by a reporter that has done his homework, most on FNC haven't.
HHC's husband.
You've summarized the net affect of the liberal nets perfectly. I despise old media.
Brit Hume should be a standard to which starting journalists model their careers after.
On the other hand I find FNC prime time unwatchable. O'Reilly's egomania and self-promotion take up so much of the show time that little time is left to shine a light on any information that I am not getting from other sources. If you believe in evolution, then O'Reilly is the 21st century hybrid of Morton Downey Jr. and Joe Pyne.
Hannity and Colmes is a very tired shout show which should be put to rest as the originator Crossfire was put out of its misery.
Greta Van Sustern's show is truly depressing. Searching the world for personal tragedies and then exploiting the tragedies for a few ratings points.
I find John Gibson watchable, I think it's the hair, it fascinates me, what happens to that head of hair as he grows older? It keeps me tuning in.
My only "must see" segment is The Grapevine w/ Brit Hume. I could be in the middle of anything and I got to get to the tube at 6:30 Pm for "The most riveting 2 Minutes on Television"
BonnieJ: All very, very, true. The questions is, what do we do about it?
It's past time to approach their advertisers and tell them of our unhappiness.
Mine too, at least until Greta comes on, it's like a built-in screensaver. "The Missing White Girl Show" every night is despicable.
LMAO...I forgot to mention her. It creeps me out to see her mouth move at that angle while the rest of her face is fixed in place. I enjoy quite a few of her guest experts and the discussion they have.
Greg gave the best reports I ever saw. He rode an APC into Baghdad as the conqureors swept up the palm lined hiway and killed the enemy as they went......this was live. Fox Did it. It was truly magnificent.
Greg has a fan site here... his credits are stunning (He is a fox reporter.......he is best of show )
http://www.mindspring.com/~jdpnlp/
"A survey of journalism students in the late eighties or early nineties revealed that most of teh students wanted to be journalists so they could 'change the world.'"
As a journalism student in the early seventies, I agree with you. I attribute the sea change on attitudes mostly to Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein and their action in bringing down Nixon induced an attitude on the part of journalism students to be similarly powerful. Even while I was in school about '75, the attitude changed from getting and giving accurate information to schemes for the most egregious muckraking possible. I was once chided by fellow students when I spoke to an official about a matter which he then immediately corrected. I wrote the story and pointed out the changes. My confrers stated unequivocally that I should have "exposed" the problem without talking to the official first so I (or the student paper) could have the credit for any corrective measures the official instigated. My opinion was that had I done so, the official would probably have found some reason to justify not making the changes.
I guess I just don't have the pitbull mentality of a lot of journalists these days.
As to Fox News, I watch it when something big is happening. I used to like Hannity and Combs and others but I got tired of listening to people argue over each other to the extent that you can't make out what anyone is saying. I also got tired of the smirks of those who did the loudest over-arguing. It was pure performance and competition to see who could block the other from being heard. O'Reilly's self-righteousness bothers me, and his condescending "I'm looking out for you little guys" attitude. Van Susteren bothers me because she is too focused on the salacious stories as opposed to hard news.
Fact is, I got turned off most of them back during the Natalie Holloway story. As I think one Freeper pointed out during that time, FNC seemed to be the "missing white girl" network. I admire Brit Hume, miss Tony Snow and enjoy some debates from time to time but I don't watch it more than probably half an hour a week nowadays.
In the spring of 2000, we cancelled our local rat controlled cable and went to Dish to get Fox.
When the Dish installer finished the installation and was showing me how to use the remote, I asked him to block all CNN channels.
He laughed and said that was a popular request. He blocked all of the CNN channels, and they still remain blocked since then, for over 6 years.
My first bad impression of Fox News was the night of the 2000 elections. They like ABCNNBCBS basically declared Gore the winner in Floriduh and other key states before voting was over in many parts of America. Billy, the rat mole Kristol and Paula Zahn were gleeful about Gore's victory and GW's defeat, in their eyes and words.
Finally, my wife said she couldn't see any difference between Fox News and ABCNNBCBS. She thought that Kristol and Zahn were terrible, and she went to bed. I turned off the tv and went to bed shortly after she did.
I have never watched the screaming head shows on Fox, because the conservatives never get to talk.
The Saturday Morning Business talk show after 9/11 turned into a bash GW show with the DNC lines and jabs about why Benny Laden was still alive. I stopped watching these clowns after GW's tax package was approved, and they basically laughed at it and trashed it.
I can't stand O'Reilly, who isn't a conservative. Hannity and Colmes is a joke because of butt head Colmes.
Fox did the same bs re in the 2004 elections before, during and after the elections.
Murdock seems to be getting into bed with the Clintoons, the Green envirolist terrorists and other rats.
The only time I now watch Fox News is when they cover something the president is saying, doing or having a press conference. As soon as President Bush is through, off goes my tv, and I return to FR. Or something bad is happening during the week, and Fox News has coverage. Their weekend coverage in America sucks and is non existant around the world.
If Fox continues their lurch leftward, they will be in the same category as ABCNNBCBS, a zero entity in our household.
We are not by ourselves. A lot of people, we know, who are conservative, retired or could be, with a lot of university degrees in the households, incomes just under the 6 figure mark or significantly over it are not watching Fox as it lurches to the left. Many younger relatives, who are well educated, conservative and in the top 10% of the income brackets, are not watching Fox News as much or they are like us, seldom watch Fox News.
If we wanted the left wing mantras and garbage, we would have stayed with ABCNNBCBS. If advertisers are trying to reach conservatives who are over 60, well educated with disposable income, Fox probably isn't worth the investment. They may be turning off a lot of 30 to 40 something conservatives with their leftward lurch.
We are waiting for a conservative network news organization to come on the seen. When one does, Fox will blocked like CNN in our home.
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