Why would a news organization retain the services of someone who calls their veracity into constant question and may actually cost them money by making advertisers queasy and uncomfortable at the flow of misinformation and distortion and psychodrama?
Well, perhaps one of the ways a chronic failure in the prophecy business covers up an unblemished record of being wrong is to maintain the distraction that theatrical extremists provide. The Fox Faithful aren't likely to reflect as much on such failures when their ears are filled with brand new, fresh and fabricated outrages from their stable of performance artists.
Why, for instance, allow speculation and comparison with our failed attempts at nation building and regime changing so vehemently supported by the GOP News Outlet with spontaneous and indigenous and possibly more successful attempts we had nothing to do with other than supporting the status quo? If Egypt moves toward democracy without and in spite of American economic and military assistance to a dictator, people might become cynical.
So keep them busy with visions of the Apocalypse and associate it with people exercising their endowed right to assemble, to speak out, to petition peacefully. Find a video clip where hazy air, a dirty lens and bright lights create lens flare. If you're a photographer, if you have aging eyes, you know what it is, but if you're a sheep in the Fox Flock, it's an apocalyptic horseman:
You get paid actors to report this idiocy with a straight face. You get Glenn Beck to howl insanely about a Muslim Caliphate to the illiterates who buzz about him like flies. You use everything you can to keep the audience focused on the moment and to make the moment seem perilous. You do anything you can to keep them from remembering that they've been on the wrong side of every prediction, whether dire or deliriously optimistic. If you run out of smoke and mirrors, dust and streetlights, you just make it up.
It's a bit like a Ponzi scheme. You need new lies coming in to cover the old ones, but sooner or later, no matter how gullible the patsies are, it blows up. It becomes an Abeckalypse. And they are gullible. According to a University study, Fox watchers will believe anything and the more they watch, the stupider they get.
It looks more like a deliberate manipulation with added special effects. And I suppose Beck is salivating as he chomps that the bit to name the antichrist - this Muslim Caliph who will now rise from the desert sands of Egypt.
ReplyDeleteDid he even notice that Tunisia and Iran are also rising up AGAINST the Muslim regime that has ruled their countries?
Or that the woman at the forefront of the Egyptian uprising is NOT Muslim?
It is human nature to want to control our own destinies and to choose our own paths. No matter how oppressive a ruling government is, sooner or later the people will revolt. The communists learned that and now Islamic leaders are also on a learning curve.
I'm hoping this is the world shifting toward peace and freedom.
Glenn Beck and Fox News set such an impossibly low standard, it is hard to measure down no matter how hard we try.
ReplyDeleteCaptain,
ReplyDeleteI am still thinking through the next steps of this campaign to shut down Glenn Beck and stop the partisan witch hunts being perpetrated on the public.
Perhaps the next letters should go directly to Roger Ailes and Fox News and have a slightly different slant ... one that holds them accountable when people are hurt due to these broadcasts. The legal concepts are "malice," and "reckless and willful disregard." In other words, Fox News and sponsors may face contingent liabilities (in addition to a consumer boycott) unless they clean up their act.
Perhaps this is the only language they understand. In any event, I am sharing these thoughts here for community review and feedback.
Octo:
ReplyDeleteI just fixed the broken link about Fox making up stories. There's a lot of evidence for just that "recklessness" you mention.
Flooding Ailes's desk might bring some results, but I have to wonder who really calls the shots at Fox. With the recent leak of in-house e-mails at Fox, it seems like much of their out put is dictated by the GOP itself. They're just following orders.
I wonder how one gets to where the buck stops - or where the crap originates.
Captain,
ReplyDeletePerhaps we no longer have the luxury of sitting idle, or merely complaining about these media abuses in our weblogs. Sometimes, I think armchair blogging is just another point source of noise unless we leverage it to advantage our cause. When decent citizens no longer feel safe in their homes or in public, then there comes a time to confront these outrages … before more people get hurt or killed.
“ I wonder how one gets to where the buck stops - or where the crap originates.”
I do not think persuasion alone will have an impact … especially on persons lacking a conscience. However, money talks … and the lack thereof. That is why a consumer boycott might have an impact. Between elections, we have the power to vote with our pocketbooks. Why should we patronize companies that represent a threat to our core values? Why should we patronize advertisers that sponsor a proto-fascist TV program that treats us as public enemies?
During the civil rights and anti-war era, we demonstrated in the streets. Within living memory, we have shown that acts of conscience do matter. Although older and hopefully a bit wiser, I am by no means dead yet. I can still ink the aquarium with the best of them.
"Why should we patronize advertisers that sponsor a proto-fascist TV program that treats us as public enemies?"
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't. I try not to. I do however think the science of manipulating perceptions and opinions is increasingly hard to overcome and more so in hard economic times.
Of course we have to do more than write to sponsors, we need to actually avoid doing business with them. That can take more effort than writing, but it's important.