Here's What's Left: Keeping it real

January 28, 2005

Keeping it real

We all know, and often ridicule, the the famous Fox News slogans. "Fair and Balanced." "We report, you decided."

But has anyone else noticed that recently Fox anchors have been calling it "the only network for real journalism, fair and balanced"? And they kind of emphasize the words "only" and "real."

I'm just saying, when CNN calls itself "the most trusted name in news," they may be exaggerating. But it's a different kind of thing when you're claiming that yours is the "only" network that has "real journalism."

Just an observation. And we wonder why people still think that Saddam was Osama's best bud.

-- Michael

Posted on January 28, 2005 at 12:49 PM | Permalink

Comments

Michael,

It's called advertising. Keep in mind, a third of Americans think poor people pay higher income tax rates than rich people, when in fact, poor people DO NOT PAY INCOME TAXES AT ALL.

And as you stated, more than half of Americans think there was a connection between Iraq's former president and 9-11.

Nearly half of college graduates cannot answer the most simple basic questions about how our government works. Let alone the high-school grads and dropouts. Our society has been dumbed down tremendously.

The left is just as dumbed-down as the right. Lefties go ballistic when you tell them, for instance, that the biggest health threat to America's "poor" people is heart disease from obesity related health conditions. (I hesitate to call them "diseases" any more than I hesitate to call drunkenness or suicide a disease)

A third or more of the left do not know what FICA is.

You ask shocked and amazed that a network might make big claims. Do you know what the goal of the Fox network is? It's to MAKE MONEY.

Are you surprised to hear companies tell fat people that their diet pills will slim them down? Or that they can eat anything they want and take these pills and lose weight?

Then why would you be surprised that a network might toot their horn a bit?

Posted by: Buckshot | January 28, 2005 at 06:25 PM

The KKK used to use phrases like that --- "100% American" and so on --- references to being the genuine article, pure (in faith and in patriotism and in race), and "real". You could see it as a throw out towards that part of fascism that values a "moral" resurgence, a return to the golden age. What David Neiwert refers to as palingenesis Fox is suggesting that although the rest of the media is "liberal" and unAmerica etc, they represent the real American values.

Posted by: DavidByron | January 28, 2005 at 08:31 PM

A third or more of the left do not know what FICA is.

So enlighten us already. What is your understanding of it? And why is it so goddamned important that you have to keep repeating it? By the way, how did you measure 1/3 of the left? Did you count progressives, liberals, Naderites? Who took the survey? Are you sure it was exactly 1/3, or was it perhaps 2/5?

Or did you just make this up on the spot?

Posted by: Cheryl | January 29, 2005 at 03:54 AM

Comment #1 is the typical apologist bullshit that tries mighty, mighty hard to blanket over the atrocious with "Aw heck, everybody does it, you know?" It's true enough that corporations DO exaggerate and overheat and super-excite regarding their product(s), whatever they are, but in the case of Fox, CNN, the L.A. Times, etc., what's been added into the mix is journalism, and that's what makes it different. We're not talking about a better aspirin or a bigger burger, we're talking about information that directly affects day-to-day life. Just as advertising agencies are capitalist linchpins, sending out the clarion notes of "look at this" and "you can't live without it" (car, computer, wireless phone, medication, cereal, fast food, etc.), so journalism is the clarion call of unvarnished truth...or, it's supposed to be.

I've watched Fox for a number of months now, analyzing this monolith, dissecting it, pondering its true value, its propagandistic side, etc. Know what I've found? Fox is never balanced, hardly ever fair and assuredly NOT a trusted name in ANYTHING, let alone news. Stacked guest-panels, all Republicans; O'Reilly's infamous statistics that don't add up (and outright lies; Orwellian fear tactics that are far from hidden, in fact they're framed by impossible-to-ignore graphics; softball interviews with Cheney, Bush, et al, wherein nothing is learned and "great leader" status is implicitly (sometimes explicitly) conferred; it just goes on...I've never seen anything like it, and there are times, not so rare, when a kind of bitter contempt for objectivity emanates from Fox. There's something so ugly and brutal about it, I think any feeling person can detect it. If you're not shut down. If you've experienced something else, something better.

Fox represents nothing less than the decadence of American culture - the corruption of tastes, the debasement of objective truth, the "nastification" of community-based anything in America and, well, just plain abject bootlicking/kowtowing when it comes to those in power (as long as those in power are Republican). But the ultimate point I'm trying to make (all apologies on the Fox digression) is this: people get their information from the media, and if the media at hand is corrupt, the information will be corrupt, as will the recipients of that information. A corrupted public is a tyrant's dream come true, and people should be fighting to the death disinformation campaigns aimed at solidifying said tyrant and currying favor with him/her. And that is incontestable truth (read your history).

Posted by: clankin joe | February 01, 2005 at 01:46 PM

FOX and CNN are both festering carbuncles on an increasingly dumbass nation. How is it possible that after 2 congressional investigations, which found no evidence of any collusion between Al Queda and Iraq, that people still believe it? Well, let's see; you had Bush administration officials continually asserting it, even when they could produce no evidence of it, and you had the likes of FAUX news actors espousing the same lie about 600 times a day. Freedom may be on the march, but ignorance has settled in nicely for an indefinite stay.

Posted by: pjr | February 02, 2005 at 10:06 AM