Posted on 01/31/2014 3:10:34 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
"....A 2007 study found that in the 2000 presidential election, “Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News.” The study’s estimates “imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure.” In addition to being influential, I also learned that Fox News is an extremely poor source of information about current events.
...One of the first things I noticed was how similar all of the on-air personalities were..... Shep Smith seems to be the exception to this. In contrast, he comes across as refreshingly candid and good-humored, and doesn’t indulge in the sort of winking innuendo that passes for news on much of the rest of the network. Within a few days of the commencement of my Fox project,I developed a fervent,Stockholm syndrome-style crush on Shep Smith.(The women of Fox are attractive, which is not an unusual requirement for female TV personalities, but they are dramatically, disproportionately blond and share a particular ebullience.)
The quintessence of the Fox News style is found on “Fox & Friends.” It is the network’s morning show, a competitor to “Good Morning America” and“Today.” It features three hosts, Steve Doocy, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Brian Kilmeade. Doocy seems to be the brains of the three,....Hasselbeck seems as if she might be too nice for the role in which she is cast. She has only a few go-to facial expressions—compassionate concern (generally reserved for children), an angry moue that comes off more as a petulant pout, and a bright smile that she occasionally tries to repurpose, Doocy-style, into one of outraged disbelief. She can’t quite pull the latter off,however, and the effect is sort of disturbing, resembling a fear/aggression response more than anything else. Kilmead plays the part of the dumb little brother,....
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Bingo! Especially given the team Shep plays for. He wouldn’t dare bash a gay guy, even one on Fox.
In terms of news content, Fox tries to play it down the middle. In terms of opinion, Fox gives a forum to both (or more) sides. And there in lies the rub for libtards. They simply can not stand the fact that a right-leaning perspective is given at all.
Libtard intolerance and biases lying media is killing this country.
I used to donate to Detroit Public Radio at WDET 101.9 but that was when they had a ton of great music programming.
Anyone who knows will remember Robert Jones and his “Blues from the Lowlands” program, Ed Love, Martin Bandyke, Judy Adams, Ann Delisi, Dave Dixon...All were worthwhile and you would never hear the content of these programs anywhere else on AM or FM.
That article forgot to mention that Carl Cameron of Fox News broke the last minute story on Bush 43’s DWI conviction the week of the 2000 election.
Its the greatest exercise in projection that I've read in years.
So true.
I did not read the whole piece, but I must admit that the little fairy nailed the definition of the “Fox and Friends” crew pretty well. A big part he missed is the nails-on-chalkboard quality of the female’s voice.
You may ask how I know of this. Every morning I am subjected to the audio portion of this show because the husband watches it in the living room while I am online in the kitchen.
Come on folks. We’re talking Salon. Just dismiss it outright and move on.
That too.
After my initial amusement at this episode, I began to find the whole thing alarming. Karl Rove is, by all accounts, a smart man. How could he and so many of his colleagues on the right have been so thoroughly, so publicly, so humiliatingly wrong? The theory I eventually arrived at was that the right-wing infosphere had become so large and self-referential that people like Rove were seduced by its alternate view of reality.Guess what, John? When you are walling yourself off from Fox News and Talk Radio and FR or any other “conservative” news source, you immerse yourself in a very partial view of reality, yourself.You write of how you had your wife help you isolate yourself from every news source but Fox for a month, and then think of what slight effort it takes to avoid one cable channel while switching among all those “independent” news sources which are like peas in a pod because they are all immersed in your version of reality. That strikes you as absurd? Well, here’s the one thing Adam Smith said that you accept without question:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)Now I ask you, John - what happens if you substitute apply that dictum about people in general “of the same trade,” to journalists? Here’s what it sounds like, John:Journalists seldom meet together, certainly not over the AP newswire, without the conversation setting the agenda of what is newsworthy and what is not, and what slant on the story is congenial to the desires and aspirations of journalists.Well, John, you may think that journalists don’t have any particular desires and aspirations which separate the interests of journalists from “the public interest” - but it is only too easy to show that that is not the case. The public at large just wants peace and quiet, and journalists want to “make a difference” - and those two things are mutually exclusive.The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral SentimentsThe public interest lies in a stable, gradually improving, society. The journalist sees his interest in “a fundamental transformation” of America. Does it not strike you as arrogant, John, to assume that a fundamental transformation of America - one opposed by about half of the public - would/will be an improvement? There was an instructive comment during WWII that I consider germane:A sergeant was watching a man poring over the wreckage of battle damaged planes and taking notes. He asked what the man was doing, and he replied, “I’m determining where airplanes get hit by enemy fire.” Asked what he meant to do with the information, he replied, “We might try to put armor where the planes are getting hit.” The sergeant replied, “Son, planes get hit everywhere, and you’re only looking at the ones that got back. You find out where they got hit, you put your armor everywhere else.It’s called “out of the box” thinking, John. The lesson is that none of us is immune to thinking inside of some box, without realizing it. Which is why a “fundamental transformation” is almost certain disaster. But then, you probably wouldn’t be a card-carrying member of the ACLU if you found it easy to visualize the possibility of disaster coming from “such good intentions.”
Well he was definitely a round peg trying to pound himself into a square hole. :-)
It’s tough to say Fox News is a news channel. I find it tough to get news from TV at all anymore.
Even though they dominate, and even though CNN can’t find its a$$ with map and compass, CNN has faster, and more complete, coverage of breaking news. Very frustrating.
It’s tough to say Fox News is a news channel. I find it tough to get news from TV at all anymore.
Even though they dominate, and even though CNN can’t find its a$$ with map and compass, CNN has faster, and more complete, coverage of breaking news. Very frustrating.”First reports are always wrong.”Breaking news is the pits, so far as accuracy and perspective are concerned. Breaking news essentially never tells you actionable information that you can/should react to now - so precisely why is it important that you hear it?
Looked at dispassionately, there is no reason for it - unless you are so paranoid that you think it likely that another 911 will happen close enough to you that you will be able to influence events. Not saying that you shouldn’t have your own preparations - only that “breaking news” is not likely to be what tells you to activate them.
But FOX will cover subjects the alphabet networks won't, and you don't get as much pc treatment of the news. Which is, of course, why conservatives will mostly watch FOX over the lib networks if they watch news. I get most of my news on the internet.
Funny how people have the option of watching MSNBC, CNN or FOX and are overwhelmingly choosing FOX. While there is no way FOX is as right wing as this idiot makes it out to be, people want a lot less liberal bias. Plus the commentators seem less surly on FOX.
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