Understanding The History And Purpose Of FOX News

[Galraedia]

You’d think a thing like FOX couldn’t happen in the United States. Although they’re free to be crazy and free to support the Republican Party, you’d think Americans would be too smart to fall for the made-up outrages, dishonest reporting and relentless appeal to our meaner nature. Unfortunately, many Americans are not as smart as we used to assume: a huge swath of Americans (especially elderly white Southerners) believe FOX is just another news media outlet. They aren’t.

What is FOX? Pensitore Review (8-18-09) pulled no punches in answering that question: “ FOX News is indisputably the most popular cable news channel. And yet in 13 years, Fox has never broken a story. That’s okay, because it is not in the news business. It is in the news-shaping business. Its programming is an admixture of right-wing propaganda and fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs, served up by spokesmodels who have no clue what they are reading.”


Whew! Could that be true? I report/You decide:

Nixon White House aide Roger Ailes in the 1970′s created fake news stories that favored President Nixon. He shipped these pre-mixed video packages to TV stations around the country at the expense of rightwing extremist Joseph Coors. It was all b.s. all the time, but the TV stations, pretending they had a correspondent in Washington, ran this propaganda as straight news. Now that Ailes runs FOX News, his goals are the same: to spread republicanism by altering the news.

Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/26/understanding-the-history-and-purpose-of-fox-news/



Fox News: Fair like cancer, balanced like Louis XV

[Maccagirl]

1. Yes, it's the fact that they have an audience is what keeps me up at night.

n/t

[DLnyc]

7. Isn't some of that audience captive airport patrons?

I try not to fly, and if I have to, I try not to fly through airports that pipe in Faux Snooze.

But I've always wonder whether Fox twists the arms of the airport management to carry their garbage, and then counts the captive 'audience' as part of their viewership.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. And that most of them actually think this is "news,"

Like my mother. :(

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[doublethink]

3. Like Duh ..... lol .....

Joseph Paul Goebbels, quote about Fascism:  
Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.

We report you decide ..... hahaha .... too funny :eyes:

nice post. K&R.

[The Last Blue Dog]

4. "You’d think a thing like FOX couldn’t happen in the United States."

That statement does not make sense.

I would think--correction, I know--that if market research indicates that people will watch, it will happen.

I could say: How could something like "The Jerry Springer Show" happen? Except I know that my preferences may, or may not, be compatible with the preferences of others.

[Gregorian]

5. I keep wanting to ask the question- Is there a limit to abuse of the 1st Amendment?

On one hand everyone says that we need to keep our hands off of the 1st Amendment right. If we don't it will come back to haunt us. However, that same notion seems to me like admitting that we didn't learn the lesson of world war 2. It's as though we would rather allow the creep of fascism than to put some kind of common sense limit on free speech. By common sense I mean what we all know, see, feel about the very existence of Fox. Propaganda. Lies. Simply a means by which the corporate, conservative, fascist agenda worms it's way into our society. And there is no room for it. Blame the audience, but that doesn't stop it. They are playing dirty just like Goebbels did.

I'm probably way out on a limb, missing some important point. Probably some huge gap in my logic. But it seems that great damage has already been done to the country by the invention of Fox as a propaganda tool.

What was the point of the 1st Amendment if we let it undermine the country? I know I'm sounding like a drug warrior in another costume. But I have self evident, common sense concepts on my side. Hopefully the same ones that created a First Amendment to begin with.

There is no doubt we would be better off without the Ailes invention.

I guess the question is, if we could manage to have the votes in Congress, would it be smart to have some kind of limitation on just what comprises free speech?

[Bluenorthwest]

6. They suck, but calling their rather tiny audience a huge swath of

America is a stretch worthy of their own p.r. department. It really provides valuable perspective to look at the actual figures. They are a mendacity machine, but fewer people watch them than most assume. Cable News is a niche market.

[CatholicEdHead]

9. I think I heard somewhere that Nixon really wanted something like Fox

to get the GOP story out. He probably would have survived Watergate with Fox News on the air.

[hootinholler]

10. Its programming is an admixture of right-wing propaganda and fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs

Bears repeating

fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs