Fox News - The Crux of What Divides Us
by Shawn K. Inlow
Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in 1996, but its beginnings wind all the way back to the 1970s and Watergate.
In a world where worm-tongues surround the throne, the henchmen from the Nixon era never die. They just sink into the shadows until their time is right. With the news media tearing into the Nixon White House, aides like Roger Ailes dreamed of a way to get around the media and provide pro-administration coverage to the public.
"People are lazy," the Nixon aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit - watch - listen. The thinking is done for you."
Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "Our own news" from a network that would lead "A brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."
That Nixon. Man, people just don't remember how corrupt that guy was. He had been turning the tools of the government against his political opponents, a kind of sexy that DJT is bringing back these days. And you need to, if you're not old enough to remember, think about why Nixon's vice-president did not ascend to the presidency. Spiro Agnew was perhaps the single most corrupt politician we've ever seen until now, taking literal bags of kick-backs, payoffs and bribes right there in the White House.
The Department of Justice had Agnew by the balls and he had to resign from public office or face the music. (It was a gentler time.) So Nixon nominated ... Gerald Ford, of Michigan ... as V.P. and he ascended when Nixon, too, was forced to resign. Ever the good soldier, Ford presided over the Neutering of Presidential Power and assassinated his own chances of a second term by pardoning Nixon.
The dirty tricksters disappeared from public view, but they kept on working like orcs underneath Isengard. Ronald Reagan emerged from the cesspool and nearly took out Ford in the republican primary which opened the door to Jimmy Carter in the ultimate swing to the left. And in a sequence of one step forward and one step back that I've endured all my lifetime, Reagan clawed his way to the top in 1980 and became the conservative god.
AMONGST Reagan's many shenanigans were his appointments of four commissioners on the board of the Federal Communications Commission. And by the mid 1990s these bureaucrats' fingers had seeped like bad water into the rules and regulations governing media ownership in the United States. The Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to present issues of public importance fairly and reflecting different viewpoints, fell in 1987 and broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh followed into national syndication in 1988.
Foreign ownership rules were next and by 1996 - with hellish amounts of money circulating in the regulatory swamp - the F.C.C. rules prohibiting ownership of radio, television and newspaper in any single market fell. This opened the floodgates to large scale media mergers and allowed for Rupert Murdoch to enter the U.S. Media Landscape with Fox News.
Unsurprisingly, 26 years after he'd dreamed it up in the Nixon White House, Ailes was named by Murdoch as Fox News's Founding C.E.O.
We have been beset by Ailes' style of propaganda ever since. And I posit that Fox News is the means by which this country, and arguably the world, suffers such division on matters of politics and culture.
HERE, I suggest, is where the "mainstream media" became infected, polluted by ideas bubbling up from right wing think tanks and spoon-fed to elderly white viewers on Fox and in the youthful snake-dens of right wing talk radio.
Fox created a sort of upside-down in the media, providing republican talking points without balance and subtly wrapping the wolf (or should I say "fox") of propaganda in the sheep's clothing of "news."
In order to sell Ailes' republican talking points, they had to sew distrust in basic journalism, offering broadsides against political opponents and name-calling reportage they didn't like; tactics legitimate journalism had no use or answer for.
They've done a dandy job. And their license to ill has grown to the point where another old Nixon Henchman, Roger Stone, could introduce and transmogrify a reality TV star into a poli-sci Frankenstein. Where they could take a con artist and shine him up until he could be taken for a political and cultural savior.
The republican party. Ever the example of image over substance.
Last week, we were talking about "Mental Hygiene, Intellectual Character and the Bullshit Artist." Today, we are examining what a bad news-feed will do to you. We are talking about your intellectual character here. And if you've read nothing, you ought to really think about the stinking ground from which the founding documents of Fox News emerged.
The talk in the Nixon White House was not to provide a "fair and balanced" kind of news. Not at all. The republican media aides said this about their viewers:
"People are lazy."
"With television you just sit - watch - and listen. The thinking is done for you."
They're talking about you. You, my Fox News friends, are the literal sheep. And the fox is watching you. Telling you things. Whispering in your ear. Did you hear that there is a liberal war on Christmas???!!! Don't you think girls who want birth control are sluts???!!! The immigrants are coming and they're gonna rape our women!!!!
We got trouble my friends. Right here in River City.
They provide just enough news content by legitimate reporters that you swallow the dressing, the chirons and the explosive misleading headlines whole. You are lazy. You're not thinking. Rupert Murdoch knows you better than you know yourself.
What if your trusted news source lied to you? Well, Fox has lied to you thousands of times. In laying the groundwork so viewers would doubt the outcome of the 2020 election, Fox aired countless stories calling into question voting machines by Dominion Voting Systems and those of Smartmatic as well.
Both companies sued Fox and Dominion was able to show that Fox News was intentionally lying to their viewers. Fox paid a settlement of $787.5 Million in damages rather than go to a public trial that would have been even worse for the network.
Smartmatic is still in court with Fox seeking $2.7 Billion in damages and both have moved for summary judgement against each other. Smartmatic still has bombs to drop on Fox News, but they'll apparently take the money.
Question. If it has been shown that your favorite news network has lied to you, why should you trust them? If your trusted news network has a long and notorious culture of sexual harassment cases it has to defend itself against, does that make them more or less trustworthy to you?
Item: Four in ten Americans trust Fox News.
Item: Nearly the same number of Americans distrust Fox News.
Item: More people distrust Fox News than any other network.
Thinking about the McDonald's principle in your media diet here. The idea that something is popular is no indication that it is good for you.
I think, without Fox News there would be no Donald Trump. I think without Fox News there would be no One America News. I think without Fox News you and I might have less to argue about.
I have been a news man for much of my life. Worked in news rooms as a reporter. Worked as a radio news director. And I find this notion of reporters who lie to you offensive. Any news reporter who you catch in a lie, you drop them.
And television is an incredibly powerful media that can be powerfully misused. Let's face it, it costs a bundle to put the 9 p.m. SnarkWatch on the BoobTube and it is therefore prone to powerful influences on one side or another.
Therefore, I'd like to suggest a change in your media diet. Instead of watching the news, READ it.
I suggest this because watching something is, as Ailes first posited back in the 1970s, passive. Reading something is active. In order to read something, you have to make up your mind that you want to learn about the world and you're willing to take a quiet moment to do so.
For one week, try to pick up your local newspaper every day. Around these mountains of Central Pa, The Mirror, the CDT, The Progress, The Courier. Down east pick up The Morning Call, The Patriot or the Philadelphia Enquirer. Pittsburgh has the Post-Gazette and The Tribune.
Next, I'd like you to appreciate the difference between national and local news and how it is represented on the front page. What are the headlines? What is the mix of stories about? Then think about the editorial page, where opinions are fielded. Almost all newspapers separate what is news from what is opinion.
For instance, The Wall Street Journal, another Rupert Murdoch owned property, has a noteworthy conservative bent on its eddy page, yet its award winning news coverage plays it straight.
You need to know the difference between news and opinion, and between fact and persuasion. You need to figure out how to tell the difference and then apply it to your media.
Come back after one week and tell me what you've noticed and whether or not you feel any better than you did while you were on a diet of TV news.
Until next time, Enjoy!
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