A Proposal to Fine News Agencies That Don't Produce News
I've been frustrated by Fox News Corp and their spin since the last World Trade Center rebar fell from the New York sky eight years ago (on my birthday, no less). After 9/11, the Bush Machine shifted into overdrive, Fox News (a.k.a. Fixed News, Fox Noise, Faux News, and my favorite, Cluster Fox) began an eight year stench as the first news corporation acting as directly as an echo chamber for the White House Briefing Room. While the towers' dust was still settling and people were spinning their heads wondering what the hell just happened, Fox News set sail for uncharted waters, namely suggestive partisan journalism. And sadly most major news organizations at the time followed their lead. Maybe it was out of fear of piercing the brief unanimity we all felt during the aftermath of 9/11. Hell, even some of my closest friends, who couldn't normally stomach the sight of our Monkey-President Bush, wouldn't hear of me speaking a single word in opposition to G.W., even as we stumbled toward an unrelated war.
Bias in journalism is not exactly new, so saying Fox entered "uncharted waters" is an exaggeration. But as long as I've been paying attention to the news in my lifetime, I've never seen such spin directed toward forwarding a President's agenda. Or thwarting it, as their mission has now become. (Funny how it was un-American to speak against the President while their Republican Christian Ideologue was at the helm, but Barack Hussein Obama is somehow fair game.)
My beef with Fox News since Barack Obama was elected is this: the Fox right-wing spin machine, that has the audacity to claim it is "fair and balanced" (!), has switched from greatly spinning news to the right to flat-out lying about the news. There's a term for what they're pulling off (I can't remember what it is off-hand), but it involves a closed-loop news feedback of sorts.
Here's how it works:
Someone at Fox "News" like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, or one of those less-than-friendly scumbags on "Fox and Friends" (Gretchen Carlson, Steve "Doothy" Doocy, or Brian "Oh Just Kill Me" Kilmeade) makes an editorial comment about what people are supposedly talking about. Of course since none of these idiots mentioned are self-proclaimed journalists (they call themselves "entertainers" as a way of getting away with such ridiculously unsubstantiated comments), everything they say, by definition, is an editorial comment. But I'm getting off point...
So one of these stroke-offs make some crazy comment about what they claim "people are talking about". Sometimes these comments are part of some actual fringy stupidness that's already loose on the public, like "Barack Obama doesn't have a birth certificate". But often times than not they try to stir up their Republican brethren by contradicting anything the President is doing with something outrageous that is totally made up.
In turn, people who watch Fox News as their only source of news (always Republican fundamentalists, and often people who seemingly can't decipher editorial comment from fact and can't think for themselves) begin to get worked up about these newfound "facts". Then to close the loop, Fox News "journalists" conveniently pick up the story as something people are genuinely concerned about, which is only true in that people have heard it on their news station earlier from one of those aforementioned idiots or someone else who echoes Fox garbage and plants it on their right-wing blogs, etc.
You see, before Fox initially planted the story, it didn't exist. But now the people who watch this "news channel" farce may really be concerned. After all, the news told them it was true.
So while the thinkers among us are trying to debate the facts of healthcare reform, a bunch of Fox News-watching sheep herd up behind us and try to lynch us for it, all because they heard Obama wants to kill the elderly or some such fucking craziness.
Recently, there was an NBC/WSJ poll in which they found that the people who were gravely and stupidly misinformed about the facts of healthcare all had one thing in common: They all watched Fox News as their single source for news.
I've fucking had it with this bullshit.
I propose that the FCC start issuing large fines to supposed "news" organizations like Fox News who can't substantiate their so-called facts. They must provide This would promote good ol' real, fact-checking journalism, while ousting the blatant lies sold as news.
Furthermore, I also propose that penalties are given to organizations who lay a claim to being a "news station" without having either 100% actual, fact-based journalism OR issuing a disclaimer before shows like Glenn Beck or Bill O'reilly saying that these shows are for entertainment purposes only and are not to be confused with actual news.
Otherwise this self-fulfilling prophesying of fake news will never be tamed. And we'll be left to having two sets of discussions every time we want to get anything accomplished: one based in reality and actual facts, and one based on the stoked fears of people who have been lied to by their trusted news organizations.
Side note: I've personally had to deal with clinically insane people before, and it's absolutely impossible to get anywhere with them. They have their own reality, and they truly believe it to be true, so no matter what you say, you can't win. It's the most aggravating thing in the world. There are real similarities to my past brush in dealing with the insane and talking to the Republican base about healthcare. It's made all the more aggravating by the fact that these are not insane people. These are sane people who made the mistake of believing something other than fact. Worse yet, these believers just know what they've been is the truth and think us to be the ones who are either lying or misinformed. In short, arguing about reality with Republicans is far more aggravating than arguing with insane people. At least insane people are clinically insane.
So wait, you want the gov't to have the power to demand fact-checking sources from media outlets, with the power to fine those who are proved to be relying on faulty sources? Maybe you're not serious, but if you are, that's a slope only marginally less slippery than the lubed-up asses of the journalists that such a system would totally fuck.
ReplyDeleteBut I like your passion, man. Rant on!
-your bartender, j
Actually, more than anything, I want people to deliver NEWS as advertised. Doing otherwise should be fineable just as false advertising or other purposeful misleading of the public. I may not be certain of HOW it should happen, but something has got to fucking give. People are being LIED TO EVERY SECOND on Fox News, and the idiots who watch that station believe the lies and pollute all rational political discourse. What do you suggest?
ReplyDeleteI think we're in a bad period that'll eventually pass. Fox News is hardly the worst culprit, though it's the loudest single voice out of the lot. It's the blogosphere where most of the most ridiculous lies are being bandied about as truth, until people start to believe them.
ReplyDeleteI have sort of a long view about all this, and as much as I hate what's going on right now, I feel like things will change soon on their own, as consumers start to realize that there's a reason they used to PAY for news. The din and racket is beginning to reach a critical level, and people are already once again seeking sources they can rely on to cut through the B.S. (witness Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and, for that matter, Google).
I do fear that we will lose more newspapers and other reliable sources of reasonably objective news before people start to realize how critical they are to democracy. But in the end, I think we will see everyday people once again recognizing the importance of objectivity, balance, and factchecking. Right now, everybody's just drunk on the possibilities of this (still-new) Internet -- an intoxication which has spilled into how we view other news media such as Fox.
Anyway, regulated news is, by definition, no longer objective -- even if the aim of regulation is to make it so. So even if I'm wrong about everything above, I still vote for free speech.
I don't get you liberals. Why would you want social healthcare. Do you really want the government to run healthcare - the same people that created and currently run the interstate hihgway systems? Thanks to Eisenhhower and his great plan, my family lost there busines on Highway 58 in Barstow, Calif. (the way people used to take to get to Las Vegas; and in my opinion the ONLY way to get to Los Vegas from Las Angeles). Now everybody takes highway 15 and zips past the little guys can't compete. Same things going to happen with Health Care. It will be a big mess and the guys that work for a living will be paying for things that put people out of there livelihood. This is my note to you Liberals: Go back to saving trees in Sequoya Nation Forrest or whatever and leave my health Care and my county alone. By the way, Jefe, I live in the US of A and I am proud of it.
ReplyDeleteMr. Anonymously "I Don't Get You Liberals",
ReplyDeleteYou don't get us liberals?? How about this: I couldn't fathom being continually lied to, buying it without fact checking for myself (and it's so EASY to determine where the misinformation is coming from- fake grassroots organizing sponsered by the Healthcare Industry themselves and Fox News), then drinking the cool-aid and trying to pass it on as fact, say, right here:
There is NO GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTHCARE. Some of us would like a Single Payer Option, but it's just too progressive for you people who somehow think the status quo is just fine. The ONLY thing being proposed is an OPTION for gov't healthcare, just as Medicare is an OPTION, and the stoked fear from you conservatives about AN OPTION may have killed that. BTW, fucking Nixon proposed a more liberal healthcare government plan THAT WAS MANDATORY, not an OPTION. And that's Nixon! $100 says you won't deny yourself Medicare at age 65, just like my dad didn't. And that's an option run by the government- the same thing, except you have to be 65. Idiot.
As for your family's business, without "Eisenhower's plan" you so condemn - which BTW, is the condemnation of the PUBLIC HIGHWAYS - just where the hell do you think we'd be today? I mean, without HIIGHWAYS?? *That* was too progressive for you, really?! $100 says you ride a fucking highway almost every day of your goddamn life. You're an idiot.
Finally, being a liberal, for me, means lots of things, including - yes, wanting to have National Forests for my grandkids. Common sense would think that keeping a forest THE WAY IT IS would trump letting big business take that land for a Chucky Cheese - but then again, you're a Conservative, so doing that is just fine somehow. And you don't understand ME? How can you be a conservative who thinks the goddamned HIGHWAYS are too progressive for you, and yet somehow be for cutting down the few National Forests we have left. THINK.
We will leave your healthcare alone. It is an OPTION. That, by definition, means if you don't want it, you don't have to have it. But "Your Country" isn't yours- it's OURS. And the way your sweet little Monkey President Bush left things, it's a fucking mess and I will do anything and everything I can to make it again live up to the promise of being the best country in the world. Since you're so goddamn proud to be from the US of A, one might think you'd understand that.