Fox News – driven by conservative bullshit

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, April 11th, 2010 - 24 comments
Categories: Media, tv, uncategorized - Tags: , , ,

Rachel Maddow has a look at exactly how much Fox News just makes stuff up and calls it news. It uses selectively edited stories like the ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) ‘pimp’ story, the ‘climategate’ e-mails, and many other highly inaccurate ‘stories’, and promotes them for ratings.

In effect Fox News is the (un)official spin channel for conservative activists to peddle garbage entertainment on. It bears little relationship to a news organization. Have a watch of Rachael as she tears the facade of conservative story telling apart.

Fox have to know that stories like this are just complete rubbish so why do they run them? Like ‘climategate’, they will eventually be shown up to be almost entirely fabrications.

Well, it is all about change. Most people have a dislike for change, but conservatives actively fear change. Our local conservatives, like those in the US, view this as an opportunity of co-joining the fear of change with getting getting votes. The more extravagant the claims the better, because they are harder to disprove.  It is just a cynical vote catching technique.

For similar reasons, Fox News and other conservative media are the channels of  fear. They drive their ratings cynically exploiting a fear of change. Using fear of change to help drive ratings is a hell of a lot cheaper than actually reporting news. They report conservative activist spin stories instead with a lack of skepticism that is simply extraordinary.

Rachel Maddow points out the final resolution of the ACORN claims by a rapscallion conservative activist shows that virtually everything he claimed in December was untrue when the raw unedited footage was viewed.  He didn’t parade into the ACORN offices dressed like a 1970’s pimp asking for advice on how to improve his business. He was dressed like a law student in suit and tie. Even so he was nearly arrested for some of the outrageous things he was saying.

Did any of this come through on Fox, or for that matter the New York Times? Nope. They swallowed the crap this activist was claiming without bothering to check. That isn’t reporting the ‘news’. It is simply playing to conservative prejudices to get more ratings by lazy journalists. As far as I’m aware neither of these two organizations has even retracted and apologized for their idiotic and irresponsible reporting.

Fox News and similar ‘news’ channels are the modern equivalent of orators trying to incite mobs to riot and revolution for their own benefit. The only thing that you can be sure of is that they’re the ‘news’ that you can’t rely on.

It looks like some of our journalists are headed the same way. For instance Duncan Garner seems to be following a lot of the same tactics.

24 comments on “Fox News – driven by conservative bullshit ”

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  1. Rex Widerstrom 1
    11 April 2010 at 5:20 pm

    Good, but the best Fox News fiskings I’ve seen are still those by Jon Stewart. Like this:

    http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-8-2010/the-big-bang-treaty

    taking apart Foix’s coverage of Obama’s recent nuclear treaty. Beautifully lines up Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and other intellectual giants.

    It’s brilliant. Just watch.

  2. ianmac 2
    11 April 2010 at 5:27 pm

    The catch is that once the message is out there, a rebuttal is too little too late. (Mr Carter cannot undo his damaged reputation.) Fox News is clearly the voice of Conservative USA. In NZ it is less clear if any MSM is partisan but is treated with suspicion according to the tone on individual items. But the smears published before the last election are a worry. It is the insidious nature of the Textor lot to find a fear and publish it. To casual readers it sticks.

    • Steve 2.1
      12 April 2010 at 7:16 am

      “In NZ it is less clear if any MSM is partisan…”

      I’d say it’s fairly clear that elements of MSM are highly partisan – name me a Newstalk ZB host who isn’t a right wing conservative? How about Paul Henry’s attacks on Helen Clark in the run-up to the last General Election. The whole “Nanny State” lie was sold to the electorate with the assisatnce of the NZ Herald, Talkback Radio and Breakfast Television.

  3. Psycho Milt 3
    11 April 2010 at 7:13 pm

    Sure it sticks. Just read what the NZ right-wing loony blogs are saying about Obama – it’s all regurgitated propaganda from Fox and similar. Still, pointing out Fox is driven by conservative bullshit is like pointing out Socialist Worker is driven by Marxist bullshit. It’s kind of a given.

    • lprent 3.1
      11 April 2010 at 8:52 pm

      Yeah, but occasionally it just needs said again, and the defects pointed throughly out.

      I’ve had comments here seriously suggesting that Fox News reported real news…..

      • Psycho Milt 3.1.1
        11 April 2010 at 9:26 pm

        Yeah, well, it all depends on how you define “report,” doesn’t it? If you’re going to get all pedantic and rule out deliberately lying for political propaganda purposes, then sure it’s not real news…

        • lprent 3.1.1.1
          11 April 2010 at 9:42 pm

          Thats why I referred to it as being …the (un)official spin channel for conservative activists to peddle garbage entertainment on.

          The last few times I’ve watched it on topics I know something about, it has been appalling how shallow and vacuous the treatment has been. Makes our vacuous TV news look relatively intelligent by comparison. Hell, it makes Paul Henry look intelligent.

          As far as I can see Fox is largely about running shock and faux-outrage because it is entertaining. So long as you pump a message that fits the format and allows some talking heads ego-time, it will fly on Fox.

          Basically Whale and some of the talkback stations are the closest thing to Fox here.

      • Draco T Bastard 3.1.2
        11 April 2010 at 11:00 pm

        It needs to be said time and time again just in case people start to think that the conservatives actually have anything to say that relates to reality.

  4. Draco T Bastard 4
    11 April 2010 at 7:59 pm

    Rachel Maddow has a look at exactly how much Fox News just makes stuff up and calls it news.

    National did exactly the same in their attacks on Labour. Nothing they said had any connection to reality. Unfortunately the accusation was enough and actually proving that National was lying achieved nothing because the MSM didn’t report it.

    As far as I’m aware neither of these two organizations has even retracted and apologized for their idiotic and irresponsible reporting.

    Of course not, as we saw with the Worth Affair, conservatives don’t take responsibility for their actions. They hide them away and do everything in their power to deny their responsibility.

  5. Phil Lyth 5
    11 April 2010 at 8:05 pm

    @Rex, Foix? AFAIK, the proper terms are ‘Faux News’ (written) and ‘Fox Noise’ (spoken)

    Captcha: ‘sticking’ as in mud

  6. h1 6
    12 April 2010 at 7:52 am

    Charles Johnson of LGF fame, sad when his is the sanest voice on the American right, has long been connecting various Faux News talking heads with some very unpleasant people..

    Google: Fox News Fascists

    edit: Oddly, when I dropped the first s in Fascist I get a much better result.

    [lprent: We have a list of over-used words for helping the moderators weed out people who think in slogans (aka trolls). You use them and you go straight to moderation for consideration. ]

  7. Quoth the Raven 7
    12 April 2010 at 10:34 am

    Here’s a bit on Rachel Maddow – The Left and the Politics of Rapture

    I suppose the fear is that armed Americans with an active interest in bringing on the rapture through violence will commit domestic acts of terrorism. But wait a second. What about U.S. foreign policy? As Maddow’s guest notes, millions of Americans subscribe to somewhat similar views on eschatology. But whereas a small sample of them, allegedly, are inclined toward violence directed against the U.S. government that they hate, many more are inclined toward the U.S. government committing its own violence, on a massive scale, in the Middle East — also with the goal of bringing on the rapture. The main difference is the latter group is much larger, more influential in mainstream politics, and has the satisfaction of believing their goal is being implemented, right now, thanks to the wars started by Bush, whom they loved, and continued now by Obama.

    Hundreds of thousands of innocents have been killed in these wars, and millions of Americans defend them for religious reasons. But strangely, this is not considered worthy of discussion at MSNBC, at least not these days when this crazed foreign policy is being carried out by a left-liberal, for secular reasons, rather than a Republican with ties to the Christian right like Bush.

  8. grumpy 8
    12 April 2010 at 11:42 am

    MSNBC is the polar opposite of Fox News in the US. Cringeworthy as some stuff on Fox is, the same can be said of some Maddow contributions on MSNBC.

    The overall quality of political comment in the US is low, with a jingoistic style taking precedence over in depth debate.

  9. lprent 9
    12 April 2010 at 1:54 pm

    Someone (or something) obviously doesn’t like this post. I’ve been sequestering trackbacks on it all morning into spam and adding the addresses to the spam filter. There have been a hundred that I’ve killed manually and that doesn’t count the ones dying automatically.

    Yep, akismet shows it as being the biggest spam day since March 2nd.

    Oh well that spambot network is happily feeding itself to the whole wordpress system. Give me a sense of satisfaction…

  10. mike 10
    12 April 2010 at 2:47 pm

    This makes me think of the same sort of crap peddled in our media during the last government’s term. Take just one: David Benson-Pope – he got done for stuffing a tennis ball into a pupils mouth – yet nobody cared to check that a tennis ball cannot possibly fit into a human mouth. No that would ruin a good story.

  12. gingercrush 12
    12 April 2010 at 8:11 pm

    MSNBC may be guilty of the same thing but you’re missing the point. Indeed one example for New Zealand is the pathetic news report Barbara Dreaver did last year. Where she reported there was gang problems in Samoa with the report having the gang being shown on screen. The entire thing turned out to be bullshit. Dreaver claims ignorance but it was obvious the thing was fake. It was honestly one of the poorest pieces of news shit I’ve witnessed in New Zealand. Anyway I’m going off track.

    The point is Fox News is literally 24 hours of this stuff. The sole exception may be its news hour. Though even then its very slanted with what it covers. The fact it claims to be fair and unbalanced is an attempt to confuse the viewers. They do it very successfully too. And unlike MSNBC, CNN or any the networks. Fox News is basically cover for the Republican party in particular the conservative side of things. They Fox News may well be right when they say the networks etc are more liberal. That’s beside the point of course. None of those are covers for a political party.

  13. Kleefer 13
    13 April 2010 at 8:52 pm

    The only way I can cope with watching Fox Noise is to treat it as a comedy show. Sometimes it has me literally laughing out loud at how inaccurate it is. One minute Beck comes along and absolutely nails the progressives over the rewriting of history with regards to the Great Depression and the New Deal. Then he’s telling us to believe in something, “even if it’s wrong”. What? Is he deliberately making fodder for the Daily Show?

  14. SimonTheTall 14
    13 April 2010 at 10:50 pm

    I’m a libertarian who enjoys reading and learning about the viewpoints of others across the political divide. Sometimes it is much easier to see the bias inherent in your opponents’ position than it is in your own. Given that, what would commentators on The Standard consider to be an even handed, balanced news source (both in NZ and in, say, the USA)?

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