The Bizarre Reality of Fox News
By Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer, Nation Books
Since this book skewers two of my least favorite things in the media: FoxNews and (PUKE) Bill O'Reilly and is written by the guys at one of my favorite websites: SWEET JESUS I HATE BILL O'REILLY - I am giving it some space on my blog.
The following is an excerpt from Fair and Balanced, My ***!: An Unbridled Look at the Bizarre Reality of Fox News, by Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer (Nation Books, 2007).
Well, that's your opinion! Those of us who watch Fox News professionally, or simply to unwind at the end of the day with a few well-earned belly laughs, dismiss the network at our own peril.
While there may be a considerable measure of Schadenfreude involved in tuning in to, say, The O'Reilly Factor, it's hard to overlook the fact that he influences millions of people nearly every day. Indeed, watching Fox can be a little like watching Jeopardy! During kids' week. Even if you know more than they do -- and you probably will -- it's hard to feel good about yourself for the experience. But it's not like the leading lights at Fox actually enjoy turning America into a nation of fatuous morons. If they could accomplish the same goals by not making their viewers morons, they'd probably do so, just as the tobacco companies would probably prefer their products didn't cause cancer, and Ann Coulter probably wishes the sound of her voice didn't make young men's and small animals' testicles shrivel. But none of that is going to stop any of them from making their money and spreading their propaganda. To be sure, Fox News' sensationalistic brand of personality and opinion-based journalism is a well-crafted sales strategy. And whatever else you want to say about them, they're excellent salesmen. Indeed, with just about any story on Fox, you can ask yourself three questions: Are they pandering to their viewers, peddling right-wing propaganda, or both?
Now, preaching to the choir can be quite lucrative, particularly if the choir has an almost unlimited budget for Rascal Scooters and Civil War chess pieces. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Lots of media outlets preach to the choir. For some, it's their bread and butter. The Nation's not going to solicit a commentary on Social Security privatization from Grover Norquist, after all, and Us Weekly is certainly not going to report that Brad and Angelina aren't hot.
But most people who are engaged in some form of advocacy journalism -- be they Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken -- have the decency to admit it. Fox not only doesn't admit it, it famously cloaks themselves in a tawdry veil of objectivity, endlessly shouting their "Fair and Balanced" and "We Report, You Decide" slogans until their viewers are finally programmed, Clockwork Orange-like, to believe them.
But again, by objective measures, Fox does a demonstrably poor job of presenting the cold, hard facts in a spin-free fashion. For instance, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's 2005 State of the News Media report, 24 percent of the stories on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews contained the host's opinion, compared with 97 percent on The O'Reilly Factor. The report also analyzed coverage of the war in Iraq, finding that 73 percent of Fox's Iraq war stories contained opinion, compared with 2 percent for CNN and 29 percent for MSNBC. Fox was also around twice as likely as its competitors to run positive stories about the war and far more likely to run positive stories than negative ones. So what we're seeing more and more in today's news business, and particularly at Fox, is that personality and opinion sell. Not reasoned and informed opinion but blustering, loud, obnoxious, in-your-face opinion. Archie Bunker opinion. We're right and you're wrong. We're going to heaven and you're going to hell. We're patriots and you are traitors. We're men who love women, while you, my good sir, are a homo.
Of course, Fox News' one saving grace is that it's hilarious. Watching Hannity pummel Colmes won't make us better people, but it's kind of like seeing the school bully beat up the really irritating kid. It's not right, but you don't really want anyone to stop it. Seeing O'Reilly get his panties in a bundle when someone questions his ratings is always a good laugh. And having those three loons on Fox & Friends spout hateful lies with racist overtones is like music -- sweet Clay Aiken music.
But Fox can be frustrating, too, because its employees are so unswervingly dedicated to denying their true nature. If your local weatherman dressed up as a Viking every day, called himself Hjørt Bjornsen, and told you there was a 60 percent chance of snow flurries and a 30 percent chance that Thor would rain fire and canned hummus from the sky during midmorning rush hour -- all the while claiming he absolutely was not dressed as a Viking -- eventually it would stop being cute. That's essentially what it feels like to be sane and reasonably intelligent and tuned in to Fox News. It's hard to look away, because there's a guy on TV making a complete ass of himself while saying obviously untrue things. But it would be nice to get the forecast every once in a while. So we understand your pain.
And we're here to turn that frown upside down.
It's like news for 14-year-olds
Of course, the above is just a small sampling of the cornucopia of insanity you get every day from Fox. But O'Reilly's thoughts on gay cannibalism are actually the deep end of the pool compared to the stream of inane chatter and bright, shiny things the network likes to toss at TV screens minute by minute. "News with a pulse . . . News not boring" was the old mantra of Shepard Smith's Fox Report. Somewhere along the line he's dropped it -- probably because it's an awful slogan. Yet it really sums up the Fox approach to journalism.
While the "elite" media bore you with straightforward news couched in civility, Fox is like the dentist who tries to lure people to his practice by handing out fudge and Snickers bars. Flashy graphics and bombastic music, women who look like they may have started out in the soft-core porn industry, and stouthearted men who talk loud enough to cover up the fact that they don't know what the hell they're talking about -- that's Fox News.
As Fox News anchors go, we like Shepard Smith. Of all the network's personalities, he's one of the few who dares take little digs at O'Reilly, and he still appears to be walking around with two intact legs. But let's face it, he's running the McDonald's of the news world.
His show has taken the already dummied-down approach of Fox News and hammered it into a thin film that can be eaten like a Fruit Roll-Up. The graphics are bolder, the music more intense, and the copy even "hipper." You'll hear stuff like, "Now with your G-Block Quick Hits. "What does that even mean? It's the sort of thing you'd hear if they made Ashlee Simpson managing editor of the CBS Evening News.
Rest assured it's much the same throughout the broadcast day. For instance, on nearly all Fox News Channel shows, random local car chases have become programming staples. And we're not talking about the ones featuring wife-murdering football stars. Those are kickin'. We're talking about the guy who steals a Camaro from the parking lot of the Travelodge in Van Nuys and spends the next 15 minutes driving down Sepulveda. Will the guy get shot? Will an innocent pedestrian get creamed? Will the police drag one of those spiky things across the street to blow out his tires? How far can he drive on the rims? Most important, why is this a national story? And why is a report on nuclear disarmament talks being interrupted to cover it? Is this news for people who find Deal or No Deal too intellectually taxing? And why, when we do return to regular programming, is there a little box in the corner of the screen to show you exactly how things are going back in Van Nuys?
But that's Fox for you. When it's trying to be serious, it's laughable. When it's trying to be light and breezy, it's like a railroad spike in your frontal lobe.
The sad part is, this lowest-common-denominator approach to journalism is working. Whatever else you want to say about him, O'Reilly's right when he says his show is crushing his competition. The easy response to that is it doesn't matter. After all, what do ratings really have to do with running a respectable newsroom? But it does matter. We should all be concerned when so unworthy an enterprise triumphs -- whether in the marketplace or, even more crucially, in the marketplace of ideas. In this introductory chapter, we've given just a few examples of Fox's unbound hubris, stupidity, tawdriness, fear mongering and not-so-subtle bigotry. Ah, it is but an aperitif. We hope you'll follow us to the feast, where we'll serve up the full smorgasbord of crazy, insipid, inane, oafish, dishonest, didactic, quasi-entertaining delights that together make up Murdoch's nightmare. As they say in the publishing world, if you like Bill O'Reilly, you'll love Fox News.
Now, if you were able to hop in a time machine and go back 12 years to warn the people of 1995 about Fox, and they asked you to describe this dreadful new phenomenon, you'd probably say, "It's as if you approached G. Gordon Liddy and the Entertainment Tonight crew and asked them to go cover the war in Bosnia." Indeed, this is where the sacred of old-school journalism meets the profane of pop-culture disinfotainment. Truly, Edward R. Murrow would not be amused. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be.
Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer launched sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com in the spring of 2004. They are the co-authors of Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly.
VIEW THE WHOLE STORY BY CLICKING HERE
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO JBLOG ME
Comments