Would that I could wave a magic wand and turn Fox “News” into an actual news station, one that doesn’t actively distort reality and organize protest marches against their home country’s government in order to undercut gains made toward providing health care to everyone by cutting out the profit-motive health insurance racket. After being explicitly targeted by Fox, along with her compatriot Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow lays the whole charade bare, and explains exactly what the difference is between a news organization with a political tilt, and a political organization with the intentionally crafted veneer of being a news organization.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Make no mistake, Fox is not a legitimate news organization. It’s a well-funded way of disseminating only the most basic aspects of the news, packaged in such a way as to not offend the conservatives that watch it, while at the same time attempting to foment dissent against the Democratic party and the current government. I’m SO glad the Obama administration is calling them out on their disingenuity and their true status as propaganda arm of the Loyal Opposition. Maybe now they’ll either be held accountable (*snicker*), or eventually go out of business (*HAHAHA*).
Hat tip to Greg Laden. And Rachel Maddow, of course.
It’s quite true that Fox News is closely tied to the Republican Party, but sometimes I think that it would actually be more healthy if other news networks were like this as well. At an earlier period in US History, most newspapers (THE major media sources of the day) were openly and flagrantly partisan, with no pretense of being objective or impartial. The party that they were aligned with was usually printed right beneath the title, in case there was any doubt. Since bias is inevitable in any news coverage, I often wonder if it would just be better if everyone was completely open about it.
That’s exactly it though, Paul — Rachel admits they have bias at MSNBC. And at CNN. And in the nightly news on the major networks. It’s this recent trend toward trying to pretend at being “fair and balanced” (especially where the phrase is nothing short of self-parody in Fox’s case), that’s both cloying and damning at the same time.
It’s just a shame that honest debate is getting squelched. Instead of debating about the topics, what you get is news reported as though reality favors one party or another with no indication as to lean. Even when reality objectively does favor one party or another, there’s no need for propaganda to reinforce it — that’s just shameful.
Fox News definitely takes their biases further than everyone else, and the Obama administration is definitely justified in considering it as a media outlet for the Republicans. I was just speculating on whether it might not actually be a good thing if other networks did the same thing and become openly partisan to the extent of actively promoting political activities in support of various political ideologies. That way there would be no disputes over how impartial or biased anything is – everyone’s bias would be clear and out in the open.
Of course there are downsides to every media organization being openly partisan, not the least of which would be that politicians might simply refuse to have any dealings with unfriendly media if everyone dropped all attempts to appear objective.
So if you admit your bias, no matter how biased you are you aren’t biased. So Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman (a true lowlife) are good, CNN is good because they hire democratic strategists as their talking heads and Fox which is the only successful news network is bad because you don’t like the “fair and balanced” tag?
brilliant stuff….Let me guess hiring a communist Van Jones to create jobs is a brilliant idea, Obama really didn’t know that his minister was a commie racist, and Acorn is really a wonderful organization being picked on by those conservative meanies and voter fraud charges be damned….Maybe if you take one more hockey puck to your butt your head can pop out of your ass?
Thank you, [email protected], for your insightful comment intent on fostering genuine debate rather than merely villifying anything you don’t like and/or don’t understand.