Is seen in just how many people hate and despise Fox News and dismiss it as bilge and word drool and right wing hate and stupidity. And yet, you know what? Democratic leaders and politicians still appear on various Fox programming, especially the Sunday Morning show with Chris Wallace.
I'll admit, I'm no fan of Fox. I've always cautioned against confusing Fox's brand of Conservatism with Christianity. It's more libertarian, with some pop culture liberalism thrown in. Especially the old sex-it-up tendency. After all, is there a woman on Fox who doesn't wear low cut tops with impossibly short skirts?
Not that the other networks are any better. Many of them are willing to be just the same, though usually with a focus more toward women (having stories about gorgeous hunk guys and male models and actors as general fare). Different demographics I guess. But I used to say that everything I wanted to know about porn stars, I learned on Fox.
Nonetheless, though Fox is clearly to the political right, it obviously has credible journalistic qualifications on some of its shows and with some of its contributors. No less so than other networks. I don't watch it regularly, though I do try to touch base along with other networks just to get a feel of the modern television media. But it's worth noting that those who simply hate Fox and dismiss it as completely stupid and hateful either don't watch Fox, or live in a world of such hyper-partisanship that reality can't break through their tribal loyalties.
I don't have cable any more but I've generally noticed that it seems like the public perceptions of Fox News are about as accurate as the general public perceptions of the Catholic church.
ReplyDeleteSomeone also once (I forgot who though) pointed out that often times the mocking images of Fox that float around on the internet are of local fox affiliates not of the news channel itself.
And other times it does just mess up - about as often as any other 24 hr news channel, just (again) like Christianity and some other religions, one of them has their sins ever remembered, the other has their sins immediately forgotten.
Yeah, it's not without problems. But you are right, many of the things it's accused of are from affiliates, not actual FOX NEWS. Plus, many come from places like the Internet or Comedy central, where they are more than happy to edit clips to make it look worse than it is. I caught Comedy Central and Jon Stewart doing that a couple years ago. I happened to see Stewart's show after I had seen the segment a couple days earlier when I was applying for a job. Because of that, I could tell Stewart had taken the conversations out of context to make it worse than it was. plus, of course, many who hate it don't watch it. I remember Dave Letterman interviewing Bill O'Reilly. Letterman said he thought O'Reilly's show was terrible. Bill asked him if he watched. Dave stammered around and then admitted he didn't. That alone spoke volumes. But it's not uncommon nowadays.
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