Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
Let's do it this way IM: I will turn on Fox News right now and watch it for an hour. How many mistakes will I see? Not biased, one-sided stories meant to fire up its viewership... just mistakes?
I expect you figure I'll see one right away, because that's all FN airs?
A skeptic will use direct observation to determine truth.
|
Hello UT--
We've had discussions in this area before. I have LOTS of complaints about Fox's behavior, I'd like to pick on this one just now.
I contend that your very normal, regular speech used in the quote I've made above is way most folks view them; Fox *News*, a reporting of facts, "Here's the news". You used it that way in your sentence (to my ears) and in my experience, most other people see it the same way, that they're a news reporting outfit. Journalists, recording and relaying what is happening.
In the next breath you put a qualification on your remarks excluding some kinds of things that, once again, normal, regular people will experience; what you expect to experience, notably bias and one-sided stories broadcast with the intent to foment shit.
Maybe there will be mistakes, maybe not.
My point here is that they have stolen the meaning of the word "News", in the best Orwellian style, and made it into the opposite of what it really means. They are the cuckoo of television, laying this alien egg in the nest and having others expend the energy to deal with it.
They call themselves News, but there's much more attention and energy put into bias and opinionmaking than straight news. That's not a mistake. That's deliberate, and it is misleading.
Edited to add:
This is no semantic nit picking on my part. They actively, vigorously portray themselves as NEWS. Witness their taglines, so frequently repeated they're idioms in our language now:
Fair and Balanced
and
We Report, You Decide.
The first one is an outright lie. The second one is more subtle, but just as pernicious, they may well report, but the decisions will be based from a limited pool of information.