Reagan adviser: Fox News ‘self-brainwashing’ Republicans into a radical fringe party

[Stephanie]

ran across this. slammed them as they should have been.

SNIP:
What Liberals Still Don’t Understand About Fox News
ByJACK SHAFER

May 24, 2015

And it came to pass that the earth turned and another campaign season spun into view and the liberal commentariat rose from its siesta to begin its usual moping about the perverse political powers wielded by the Fox News Channel.

This time, the sentinel waking the commentariat to the alleged Fox menace is not a liberal but a self-described conservative,Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett, aprolificwriter on politics and economics who has worked for congressional Republicans (Ron Paul and Jack Kemp), Republican presidents, (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and conservative and libertarian policy shops,brokewith his party a decade ago when he leveled President George W. Bush as an opportunistic pork-barreller in his bookImpostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Bartlett recently added a media component to his critique in apapertitled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics,” which has heated the blood of liberals to the boiling point, including theAtlantic’sJames FallowsandJosh Marshall,Talking Points Memo, theHuffington Postand other outriders of liberalism.

Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base. This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about inThinkProgress, theNew Republic,Slate,The Week, Nicholas Kristof’scolumnand theAtlantic. According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by (1) convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and (2) to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t aselectableas they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory.


ALL of it here:

Read more:What Liberals Still Don t Understand About Fox News - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine

 

[Pogo]

ran across this. slammed them as they should have been.

SNIP:
What Liberals Still Don’t Understand About Fox News
ByJACK SHAFER

May 24, 2015

And it came to pass that the earth turned and another campaign season spun into view and the liberal commentariat rose from its siesta to begin its usual moping about the perverse political powers wielded by the Fox News Channel.

This time, the sentinel waking the commentariat to the alleged Fox menace is not a liberal but a self-described conservative,Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett, aprolificwriter on politics and economics who has worked for congressional Republicans (Ron Paul and Jack Kemp), Republican presidents, (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and conservative and libertarian policy shops,brokewith his party a decade ago when he leveled President George W. Bush as an opportunistic pork-barreller in his bookImpostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Bartlett recently added a media component to his critique in apapertitled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics,” which has heated the blood of liberals to the boiling point, including theAtlantic’sJames FallowsandJosh Marshall,Talking Points Memo, theHuffington Postand other outriders of liberalism.

Fox News isn’t just bad for America, which is the usual liberal complaint. It’s also bad for the Republican Party, the still-conservative Bartlett holds, because it has stunted the GOP’s growth with a news agenda that ships “misinformation” to the party’s far-right base. This is the so-called Fox “echo chamber” effect you’ve read so much about inThinkProgress, theNew Republic,Slate,The Week, Nicholas Kristof’scolumnand theAtlantic. According to chamber theorists, Fox “breeds extremism” within the Republican Party by (1) convincing viewers to reject other news feeds as biased and (2) to partake only of Fox content and like-minded conservative radio fodder. The echo chamber, so the theory goes, has deluded the party into thinking that support for its radical-right views is greater than it really is. This, in turn, has convinced the party to run radical candidates who aren’t aselectableas they seem to be. And all this extremism prevents the GOP’s presidential candidates from reaching centrist voters, who are essential for victory.


ALL of it here:

Read more:What Liberals Still Don t Understand About Fox News - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine

Umm... that's the same piece the OP of this thread is about, Steph.
Thanks for that trip down memory lane.

 

[BULLDOG]

Giveaways to the rich don't create jobs. They just increase profit. Trickle down has never worked.

What give away to the rich are you talking about?

They just increase profit.

Profit is bad. There's no profit in Venezuela. No toilet paper either.

Are you trying to say low capitol gains tax is anything other than a giveaway to the rich? Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

We can all benefit from a low capital gains rate.

Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

How much does this working man earn?

Doesn't matter. When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

How much does this poor worker have to make for his rate to be higher?

You really don't understand at all do you?
Read this before you ask any more stupid questions. Pay particular attention to long term capitol gains (1 year or more)
http://apiexchange.com/index_main.php?id=8&idz=238

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

What give away to the rich are you talking about?

They just increase profit.

Profit is bad. There's no profit in Venezuela. No toilet paper either.

Are you trying to say low capitol gains tax is anything other than a giveaway to the rich? Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

We can all benefit from a low capital gains rate.

Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

How much does this working man earn?

Doesn't matter. When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

How much does this poor worker have to make for his rate to be higher?

You really don't understand at all do you?
Read this before you ask any more stupid questions. Pay particular attention to long term capitol gains (1 year or more)
http://apiexchange.com/index_main.php?id=8&idz=238

Capital gains, not capitol. LOL!

If you can't tell me how much this sainted laborer has to make before his wages are taxed more than a "Wall Street capital gains realizing meany", I'm going to keep laughing at your ignorance.

 

[BULLDOG]

Are you trying to say low capitol gains tax is anything other than a giveaway to the rich? Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

We can all benefit from a low capital gains rate.

Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

How much does this working man earn?

Doesn't matter. When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

How much does this poor worker have to make for his rate to be higher?

You really don't understand at all do you?
Read this before you ask any more stupid questions. Pay particular attention to long term capitol gains (1 year or more)
http://apiexchange.com/index_main.php?id=8&idz=238

Capital gains, not capitol. LOL!

If you can't tell me how much this sainted laborer has to make before his wages are taxed more than a "Wall Street capital gains realizing meany", I'm going to keep laughing at your ignorance.

Oh my, you caught me in a typo. How will I ever be able to live with myself? Obviously you didn't read the link. Do that, and then you will have your answer.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

We can all benefit from a low capital gains rate.

Doesn't a man who works for a living have a right to be taxed at the same rate as someone who makes their money in the stock market?

How much does this working man earn?

Doesn't matter. When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

How much does this poor worker have to make for his rate to be higher?

You really don't understand at all do you?
Read this before you ask any more stupid questions. Pay particular attention to long term capitol gains (1 year or more)
http://apiexchange.com/index_main.php?id=8&idz=238

Capital gains, not capitol. LOL!

If you can't tell me how much this sainted laborer has to make before his wages are taxed more than a "Wall Street capital gains realizing meany", I'm going to keep laughing at your ignorance.

Oh my, you caught me in a typo. How will I ever be able to live with myself? Obviously you didn't read the link. Do that, and then you will have your answer.

Yeah, a typo you made 3 or 4 times already. Idjit.

If you pull your head out long enough to figure out what "marginal tax rate" means, you might still be able to salvage some dignity, but I doubt you will.

 

[francoHFW]

I don't think Fox News viewers are brainwashed.

Newscorp has focus groups in the budget for it's "news" holdings. They find out what keeps their target demographic tuned in, and then say that.

What Fox News found out is there was a huge demographic that was on the social losing end of the 60's revolution. In 1993-1996, that was white men over 60, without college degrees, who attended a Christian church once a week. Basically socially conservative baby boomers. Now those people continue to be Fox's strongest demographic, only the original 1996 demographic is dying off, they are getting replaced with socially conservative Gen X'ers. These people grew up at the tail end of the hippy generation, and into the Reagan revolution. Fox News has been transitioning it's message towards them since 2008.

They're not being brainwashed, they're being told what they want to hear, and only the things they want to hear that help the GOP's electioneering efforts.

At the end of the day, they're still filling a niche that the mainstream media never has.

The old days of "Journalism", as a means of informing the public about current events, has become mostly obsolete before our eyes...over the last 15 years of course.

The profitable Fox News business model has the industry changing in ways that require heightened critical reasoning skills from viewers to dig down to reality.

By reality, in this instance, I'm referring to the conditions in your life affected by how you vote

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

And there ends your logic. Of course the reasons you're against it are RW brainwashing bullshytte from your greedy idiot billionaire masters, hater dupe lol....

 

[francoHFW]

Doesn't matter. When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

How much does this poor worker have to make for his rate to be higher?

You really don't understand at all do you?
Read this before you ask any more stupid questions. Pay particular attention to long term capitol gains (1 year or more)
http://apiexchange.com/index_main.php?id=8&idz=238

Capital gains, not capitol. LOL!

If you can't tell me how much this sainted laborer has to make before his wages are taxed more than a "Wall Street capital gains realizing meany", I'm going to keep laughing at your ignorance.

Oh my, you caught me in a typo. How will I ever be able to live with myself? Obviously you didn't read the link. Do that, and then you will have your answer.

Yeah, a typo you made 3 or 4 times already. Idjit.

If you pull your head out long enough to figure out what "marginal tax rate" means, you might still be able to salvage some dignity, but I doubt you will.

You ought to figure out what "effective tax rate" means, brainwashed chump.

 

[JimH52]

He is correct. FOX is in the business of mind control.....well for the viewers who still possess a mind.....

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I don't think Fox News viewers are brainwashed.

Newscorp has focus groups in the budget for it's "news" holdings. They find out what keeps their target demographic tuned in, and then say that.

What Fox News found out is there was a huge demographic that was on the social losing end of the 60's revolution. In 1993-1996, that was white men over 60, without college degrees, who attended a Christian church once a week. Basically socially conservative baby boomers. Now those people continue to be Fox's strongest demographic, only the original 1996 demographic is dying off, they are getting replaced with socially conservative Gen X'ers. These people grew up at the tail end of the hippy generation, and into the Reagan revolution. Fox News has been transitioning it's message towards them since 2008.

They're not being brainwashed, they're being told what they want to hear, and only the things they want to hear that help the GOP's electioneering efforts.

At the end of the day, they're still filling a niche that the mainstream media never has.

The old days of "Journalism", as a means of informing the public about current events, has become mostly obsolete before our eyes...over the last 15 years of course.

The profitable Fox News business model has the industry changing in ways that require heightened critical reasoning skills from viewers to dig down to reality.

By reality, in this instance, I'm referring to the conditions in your life affected by how you vote

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

And there ends your logic. Of course the reasons you're against it are RW brainwashing bullshytte from your greedy idiot billionaire masters, hater dupe lol....

The government has no business getting involved.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

When a man goes out every morning and does a job, the wages he earns shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than money made in the stock market.

How much does this poor worker have to make for his rate to be higher?

You really don't understand at all do you?
Read this before you ask any more stupid questions. Pay particular attention to long term capitol gains (1 year or more)
http://apiexchange.com/index_main.php?id=8&idz=238

Capital gains, not capitol. LOL!

If you can't tell me how much this sainted laborer has to make before his wages are taxed more than a "Wall Street capital gains realizing meany", I'm going to keep laughing at your ignorance.

Oh my, you caught me in a typo. How will I ever be able to live with myself? Obviously you didn't read the link. Do that, and then you will have your answer.

Yeah, a typo you made 3 or 4 times already. Idjit.

If you pull your head out long enough to figure out what "marginal tax rate" means, you might still be able to salvage some dignity, but I doubt you will.

You ought to figure out what "effective tax rate" means, brainwashed chump.

It means you're still an idiot.

 

[toxicmedia]

Funny, you wouldn't expect a thread based on something most of us already know to get so many replies, so much traction here on USMB.

I have to guess it's the Fox News viewers--their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is connected to their "news" source. If they admit that it's not trustworthy or really even news , think of what they admit.

If they concede that their "News" source is bogus and nothing but a daily narrative of fear-mongering and thinly veiled racism to gin up the GOP/Conservative base, then they must admit to being foolish. And old people don't like to think of themselves as foolish or easily fooled by con-men and the like. Because it's partially an admission of losing one's faculties, one's wits, or ability to think critically discerning right from wrong.

A Fox News viewer realizing that he's been duped all these years must feel like an elderly person conned out of their life savings. Think of everything the typical Fox News viewers surrender to the network. More than just their time, their mind, their god-given ability to think and review data objectively, to have one's own opinion.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but the typical Fox News viewer willingly gives up that right. They turn their will, their vote, their voice and sometimes their pocketbooks over to a well-oiled propaganda machine. They believe they have their own opinion when the recite a talking point at the dinner table, office water cooler, or local bar... but that's not their opinion, as they didn't come to it on their own after carefully reviewing all the facts.

Let's face it, economics, public policy, foreign affairs are way too complicated for the average person to understand on anything more than a basic level. That's why news media boils things down to 7 minute segments, putting the sexy topics at the top of the show to hold the viewers.

There is real, in depth news reporting out there. But it takes a commitment to watch and digest. The News Hour can feel like more than an hour if you know what I mean. I'm betting most Fox Newsies think because it's on PBS that means The News Hour is liberal -- no it's just news with little editorial or commentary. And to be an expert on The News Hour, you really have to be an expert, not just part of a "Think Tank." Hell, I bet because the Economist takes an editorial stance of classical and economic liberalism, Fox Newsies think they're a leftist paper.

Imagine going through life thinking words only have one meaning and that meaning is associated with good or evil. E.g. progressive, liberal, University, higher-learning...

Oh, the irony!

Irony doesn't mean what you think it means.


You got a point to make, make it.


Show us some responsible, objective reporting on Fox News.

Shep Smith I'll give you. Even Brett Baier sometimes. But the rest of the day.... it's called Editorial. That's NOT news.

Alanis Morrisette did the greatest injustice to the definition of irony. That song just goes on about bad luck.

I think it's kind of pathetic how most of the posters on this site claim no connection to Fox News, but parrot what Fox says, the very day Fox says it.

It's kind of like some people parrot Rush Limbaugh, but they're even less likely to use him as a source.

Admitting that Fox or Rush is your source goes hand in hand with admitting the narrow sourcing you use in arguments on this site, it's not that they're ashamed of Rush or Fox

I don't think Fox News viewers are brainwashed.

Newscorp has focus groups in the budget for it's "news" holdings. They find out what keeps their target demographic tuned in, and then say that.

What Fox News found out is there was a huge demographic that was on the social losing end of the 60's revolution. In 1993-1996, that was white men over 60, without college degrees, who attended a Christian church once a week. Basically socially conservative baby boomers. Now those people continue to be Fox's strongest demographic, only the original 1996 demographic is dying off, they are getting replaced with socially conservative Gen X'ers. These people grew up at the tail end of the hippy generation, and into the Reagan revolution. Fox News has been transitioning it's message towards them since 2008.

They're not being brainwashed, they're being told what they want to hear, and only the things they want to hear that help the GOP's electioneering efforts.

At the end of the day, they're still filling a niche that the mainstream media never has.

The old days of "Journalism", as a means of informing the public about current events, has become mostly obsolete before our eyes...over the last 15 years of course.

The profitable Fox News business model has the industry changing in ways that require heightened critical reasoning skills from viewers to dig down to reality.

By reality, in this instance, I'm referring to the conditions in your life affected by how you vote

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

Revealing response, since the whole purpose of the FD was to ensure diversity of viewpoints.

Makes ya wonder, if somebody doesn't like diversity of viewpoint -- what the hell are they doing on a message board?

IMO, the Fairness Doctrine might have made sense back in the day before the establishment of the big three networks, and even less now with public access to information available in ways unimaginable in 1949.

Now people just want to use the FD to make certain hopelessly biased "so called" news networks air a legitimately balanced argument, as opposed to say...how NPR and Fox News do a terrible job of having competent holders of the opposing viewpoints appear.

No...fairness doctrine bad.

Old, outdated, and nothing new or better to replace it.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Not all conservatives are as fucked in the head as you are, please refrain from speaking for them.

Then they don't meet the qualifications to be called a Conservative.

Ergo, unless one is "fucked up in the head" they don't qualify as a conservative? Wow, that's some insight Anathema, best pull a Jeb and claim the antithesis or you might find yourself under the bus with a kick the CINO (conservative in name only) label tattooed on your ass.

 

[francoHFW]

I don't think Fox News viewers are brainwashed.

Newscorp has focus groups in the budget for it's "news" holdings. They find out what keeps their target demographic tuned in, and then say that.

What Fox News found out is there was a huge demographic that was on the social losing end of the 60's revolution. In 1993-1996, that was white men over 60, without college degrees, who attended a Christian church once a week. Basically socially conservative baby boomers. Now those people continue to be Fox's strongest demographic, only the original 1996 demographic is dying off, they are getting replaced with socially conservative Gen X'ers. These people grew up at the tail end of the hippy generation, and into the Reagan revolution. Fox News has been transitioning it's message towards them since 2008.

They're not being brainwashed, they're being told what they want to hear, and only the things they want to hear that help the GOP's electioneering efforts.

At the end of the day, they're still filling a niche that the mainstream media never has.

The old days of "Journalism", as a means of informing the public about current events, has become mostly obsolete before our eyes...over the last 15 years of course.

The profitable Fox News business model has the industry changing in ways that require heightened critical reasoning skills from viewers to dig down to reality.

By reality, in this instance, I'm referring to the conditions in your life affected by how you vote

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

And there ends your logic. Of course the reasons you're against it are RW brainwashing bullshytte from your greedy idiot billionaire masters, hater dupe lol....

The government has no business getting involved.

The courts said it does, and journalism ignorance, and partisanshiphas gone to hell since it was deleted....

 

[francoHFW]

Funny, you wouldn't expect a thread based on something most of us already know to get so many replies, so much traction here on USMB.

I have to guess it's the Fox News viewers--their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is connected to their "news" source. If they admit that it's not trustworthy or really even news , think of what they admit.

If they concede that their "News" source is bogus and nothing but a daily narrative of fear-mongering and thinly veiled racism to gin up the GOP/Conservative base, then they must admit to being foolish. And old people don't like to think of themselves as foolish or easily fooled by con-men and the like. Because it's partially an admission of losing one's faculties, one's wits, or ability to think critically discerning right from wrong.

A Fox News viewer realizing that he's been duped all these years must feel like an elderly person conned out of their life savings. Think of everything the typical Fox News viewers surrender to the network. More than just their time, their mind, their god-given ability to think and review data objectively, to have one's own opinion.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but the typical Fox News viewer willingly gives up that right. They turn their will, their vote, their voice and sometimes their pocketbooks over to a well-oiled propaganda machine. They believe they have their own opinion when the recite a talking point at the dinner table, office water cooler, or local bar... but that's not their opinion, as they didn't come to it on their own after carefully reviewing all the facts.

Let's face it, economics, public policy, foreign affairs are way too complicated for the average person to understand on anything more than a basic level. That's why news media boils things down to 7 minute segments, putting the sexy topics at the top of the show to hold the viewers.

There is real, in depth news reporting out there. But it takes a commitment to watch and digest. The News Hour can feel like more than an hour if you know what I mean. I'm betting most Fox Newsies think because it's on PBS that means The News Hour is liberal -- no it's just news with little editorial or commentary. And to be an expert on The News Hour, you really have to be an expert, not just part of a "Think Tank." Hell, I bet because the Economist takes an editorial stance of classical and economic liberalism, Fox Newsies think they're a leftist paper.

Imagine going through life thinking words only have one meaning and that meaning is associated with good or evil. E.g. progressive, liberal, University, higher-learning...

Oh, the irony!

Irony doesn't mean what you think it means.


You got a point to make, make it.


Show us some responsible, objective reporting on Fox News.

Shep Smith I'll give you. Even Brett Baier sometimes. But the rest of the day.... it's called Editorial. That's NOT news.

Alanis Morrisette did the greatest injustice to the definition of irony. That song just goes on about bad luck.

I think it's kind of pathetic how most of the posters on this site claim no connection to Fox News, but parrot what Fox says, the very day Fox says it.

It's kind of like some people parrot Rush Limbaugh, but they're even less likely to use him as a source.

Admitting that Fox or Rush is your source goes hand in hand with admitting the narrow sourcing you use in arguments on this site, it's not that they're ashamed of Rush or Fox

I don't think Fox News viewers are brainwashed.

Newscorp has focus groups in the budget for it's "news" holdings. They find out what keeps their target demographic tuned in, and then say that.

What Fox News found out is there was a huge demographic that was on the social losing end of the 60's revolution. In 1993-1996, that was white men over 60, without college degrees, who attended a Christian church once a week. Basically socially conservative baby boomers. Now those people continue to be Fox's strongest demographic, only the original 1996 demographic is dying off, they are getting replaced with socially conservative Gen X'ers. These people grew up at the tail end of the hippy generation, and into the Reagan revolution. Fox News has been transitioning it's message towards them since 2008.

They're not being brainwashed, they're being told what they want to hear, and only the things they want to hear that help the GOP's electioneering efforts.

At the end of the day, they're still filling a niche that the mainstream media never has.

The old days of "Journalism", as a means of informing the public about current events, has become mostly obsolete before our eyes...over the last 15 years of course.

The profitable Fox News business model has the industry changing in ways that require heightened critical reasoning skills from viewers to dig down to reality.

By reality, in this instance, I'm referring to the conditions in your life affected by how you vote

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

Revealing response, since the whole purpose of the FD was to ensure diversity of viewpoints.

Makes ya wonder, if somebody doesn't like diversity of viewpoint -- what the hell are they doing on a message board?

IMO, the Fairness Doctrine might have made sense back in the day before the establishment of the big three networks, and even less now with public access to information available in ways unimaginable in 1949.

Now people just want to use the FD to make certain hopelessly biased "so called" news networks air a legitimately balanced argument, as opposed to say...how NPR and Fox News do a terrible job of having competent holders of the opposing viewpoints appear.

No...fairness doctrine bad.

Old, outdated, and nothing new or better to replace it.

Fox, Rush, Savage, Breitbart, Heritage etc etc are all the same Pubcrappe- it's a giant RW circle jerk and all paid for by the same greedy idiot billionaires...and I watch NPR a lot and BS!

The fairness doctrine worked great and the greatest generation and greatest period in history produced it...

 

[toxicmedia]

Funny, you wouldn't expect a thread based on something most of us already know to get so many replies, so much traction here on USMB.

I have to guess it's the Fox News viewers--their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is connected to their "news" source. If they admit that it's not trustworthy or really even news , think of what they admit.

If they concede that their "News" source is bogus and nothing but a daily narrative of fear-mongering and thinly veiled racism to gin up the GOP/Conservative base, then they must admit to being foolish. And old people don't like to think of themselves as foolish or easily fooled by con-men and the like. Because it's partially an admission of losing one's faculties, one's wits, or ability to think critically discerning right from wrong.

A Fox News viewer realizing that he's been duped all these years must feel like an elderly person conned out of their life savings. Think of everything the typical Fox News viewers surrender to the network. More than just their time, their mind, their god-given ability to think and review data objectively, to have one's own opinion.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but the typical Fox News viewer willingly gives up that right. They turn their will, their vote, their voice and sometimes their pocketbooks over to a well-oiled propaganda machine. They believe they have their own opinion when the recite a talking point at the dinner table, office water cooler, or local bar... but that's not their opinion, as they didn't come to it on their own after carefully reviewing all the facts.

Let's face it, economics, public policy, foreign affairs are way too complicated for the average person to understand on anything more than a basic level. That's why news media boils things down to 7 minute segments, putting the sexy topics at the top of the show to hold the viewers.

There is real, in depth news reporting out there. But it takes a commitment to watch and digest. The News Hour can feel like more than an hour if you know what I mean. I'm betting most Fox Newsies think because it's on PBS that means The News Hour is liberal -- no it's just news with little editorial or commentary. And to be an expert on The News Hour, you really have to be an expert, not just part of a "Think Tank." Hell, I bet because the Economist takes an editorial stance of classical and economic liberalism, Fox Newsies think they're a leftist paper.

Imagine going through life thinking words only have one meaning and that meaning is associated with good or evil. E.g. progressive, liberal, University, higher-learning...

Oh, the irony!

Irony doesn't mean what you think it means.


You got a point to make, make it.


Show us some responsible, objective reporting on Fox News.

Shep Smith I'll give you. Even Brett Baier sometimes. But the rest of the day.... it's called Editorial. That's NOT news.

Alanis Morrisette did the greatest injustice to the definition of irony. That song just goes on about bad luck.

I think it's kind of pathetic how most of the posters on this site claim no connection to Fox News, but parrot what Fox says, the very day Fox says it.

It's kind of like some people parrot Rush Limbaugh, but they're even less likely to use him as a source.

Admitting that Fox or Rush is your source goes hand in hand with admitting the narrow sourcing you use in arguments on this site, it's not that they're ashamed of Rush or Fox

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

Revealing response, since the whole purpose of the FD was to ensure diversity of viewpoints.

Makes ya wonder, if somebody doesn't like diversity of viewpoint -- what the hell are they doing on a message board?

IMO, the Fairness Doctrine might have made sense back in the day before the establishment of the big three networks, and even less now with public access to information available in ways unimaginable in 1949.

Now people just want to use the FD to make certain hopelessly biased "so called" news networks air a legitimately balanced argument, as opposed to say...how NPR and Fox News do a terrible job of having competent holders of the opposing viewpoints appear.

No...fairness doctrine bad.

Old, outdated, and nothing new or better to replace it.

Fox, Rush, Savage, Breitbart, Heritage etc etc are all the same Pubcrappe- it's a giant RW circle jerk and all paid for by the same greedy idiot billionaires...and I watch NPR a lot and BS!

The fairness doctrine worked great and the greatest generation and greatest period in history produced it...

Are you just trolling?

I seem to remember you from a ways back, and you seemed pretty mainstream right wing.

What happened?....or am I just mistaken?

 

[francoHFW]

Funny, you wouldn't expect a thread based on something most of us already know to get so many replies, so much traction here on USMB.

I have to guess it's the Fox News viewers--their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is connected to their "news" source. If they admit that it's not trustworthy or really even news , think of what they admit.

If they concede that their "News" source is bogus and nothing but a daily narrative of fear-mongering and thinly veiled racism to gin up the GOP/Conservative base, then they must admit to being foolish. And old people don't like to think of themselves as foolish or easily fooled by con-men and the like. Because it's partially an admission of losing one's faculties, one's wits, or ability to think critically discerning right from wrong.

A Fox News viewer realizing that he's been duped all these years must feel like an elderly person conned out of their life savings. Think of everything the typical Fox News viewers surrender to the network. More than just their time, their mind, their god-given ability to think and review data objectively, to have one's own opinion.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but the typical Fox News viewer willingly gives up that right. They turn their will, their vote, their voice and sometimes their pocketbooks over to a well-oiled propaganda machine. They believe they have their own opinion when the recite a talking point at the dinner table, office water cooler, or local bar... but that's not their opinion, as they didn't come to it on their own after carefully reviewing all the facts.

Let's face it, economics, public policy, foreign affairs are way too complicated for the average person to understand on anything more than a basic level. That's why news media boils things down to 7 minute segments, putting the sexy topics at the top of the show to hold the viewers.

There is real, in depth news reporting out there. But it takes a commitment to watch and digest. The News Hour can feel like more than an hour if you know what I mean. I'm betting most Fox Newsies think because it's on PBS that means The News Hour is liberal -- no it's just news with little editorial or commentary. And to be an expert on The News Hour, you really have to be an expert, not just part of a "Think Tank." Hell, I bet because the Economist takes an editorial stance of classical and economic liberalism, Fox Newsies think they're a leftist paper.

Imagine going through life thinking words only have one meaning and that meaning is associated with good or evil. E.g. progressive, liberal, University, higher-learning...

Oh, the irony!

Irony doesn't mean what you think it means.


You got a point to make, make it.


Show us some responsible, objective reporting on Fox News.

Shep Smith I'll give you. Even Brett Baier sometimes. But the rest of the day.... it's called Editorial. That's NOT news.

Alanis Morrisette did the greatest injustice to the definition of irony. That song just goes on about bad luck.

I think it's kind of pathetic how most of the posters on this site claim no connection to Fox News, but parrot what Fox says, the very day Fox says it.

It's kind of like some people parrot Rush Limbaugh, but they're even less likely to use him as a source.

Admitting that Fox or Rush is your source goes hand in hand with admitting the narrow sourcing you use in arguments on this site, it's not that they're ashamed of Rush or Fox

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

Revealing response, since the whole purpose of the FD was to ensure diversity of viewpoints.

Makes ya wonder, if somebody doesn't like diversity of viewpoint -- what the hell are they doing on a message board?

IMO, the Fairness Doctrine might have made sense back in the day before the establishment of the big three networks, and even less now with public access to information available in ways unimaginable in 1949.

Now people just want to use the FD to make certain hopelessly biased "so called" news networks air a legitimately balanced argument, as opposed to say...how NPR and Fox News do a terrible job of having competent holders of the opposing viewpoints appear.

No...fairness doctrine bad.

Old, outdated, and nothing new or better to replace it.

Fox, Rush, Savage, Breitbart, Heritage etc etc are all the same Pubcrappe- it's a giant RW circle jerk and all paid for by the same greedy idiot billionaires...and I watch NPR a lot and BS!

The fairness doctrine worked great and the greatest generation and greatest period in history produced it...

Are you just trolling?

I seem to remember you from a ways back, and you seemed pretty mainstream right wing.

What happened?....or am I just mistaken?

You are mistaken. Maybe a RWer was right on something momentarily- hard to believe but it happens...

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Well-assembled analysis there.

TV News (legitimate news) is expensive to do; you need trucks and satellites and bureaus and airline tickets and lots of editors. The old alphabet networks' evening newscasts never paid their own way; they were heavily subsidized by the prime time sitcom drivel that would follow them. When Fox started up 20 years ago next year, the last innovation in TV news media had been CNN's idea of 24/7 news, a source that would be an automatic go-to for the news junkie who didn't want to wait for the standard evening dinner broadcast, and thus snare more viewers throughout the day and try to become the default channel.

Then onto the scene came Rupert Murdoch, fresh from a "successful " (read: profitable) career hawking sleazy tabloid rags around the world like the Sun, figuring he could do the same thing with TV, and voilà -- a gossip channel that gossips not about movie celebrities but about political ones. Instead of spending all that cash on bureaus and plane tickets to find out what the news IS, he plunks talking heads into a single studio to talk about what the news is (selectively of course to feed the emotional psychology) and more to the point, to talk about who the newsmakers are. Everything gets personalized. And that's done so it can be framed in terms of conflict and drama and "good vs. evil". News as Morality Play.

It's framed that way of course because that's what draws audience -- emotion. There's no emotion in actual news, but News Theater, well as the saying goes -- that's entertainment. Afternoon soap operas, inexplicably, keep loyal audiences coming back day after day to see what Doctor Todd thinks of Jenifer's breaking up with Biff. Whatever the psychological draw for that might be, it did not go unnoticed by Murdoch, who made Fox Noise into a Theater about emotion; all about politicians rather than about policy, always the personal rather than the abstract. About people, rather than issues. Because when your focus is people you can easily work in their motivations, what's in their dastardly heart and how they're all out to kill you or save the world, depending on what works in the narrative emotionally. After all when you're writing fiction it's important to set up your heroes and villain characters, that the audience might follow along and, more importantly -- keep coming back for what only your story can supply. Not unlike a drug.

Sure enough this approach of news as soap opera sells like hotcakes since there are more potential viewers open to being entertained emotionally than there are viewers interested in real information intellectually. FNC makes a token attempt to serve the latter master in its off-peak times (albeit with the same garish hypersplash and suggestive chyrons continually undermining the validity of the message), but as soon as prime time hits the clock, it's News Theater wall-to-wall, starring the Legion of Angry White Guys Pounding on Tables.

Sadly, the CNNs and HLNs and MSNBCs have slavishly tried to mirror the same News Theater psycho techniques, since all of the so-called "mainstream media" -- the alphabets, the Murdochs, the CNNs, all together -- are corporate enterprises and therefore exist above all to make a profit, certainly not to serve a public interest. Thus the bandwagon effect, all of them trying to out-profit the next, on the backs of We the Viewers, who get to play a small part in the grand Theater production -- i.e. the pawns.

But lest we take our eye off the big ball, Fox really isn't different from its competitors; they all like to toss out shiny object distractions like "liberal meda"/"conservatvie media" but in reality none of them could care less which message you buy; all they care about is that you buy, preferably from "us".

What happenedv to journalism, fact checking, and investigative reporting... Bring back the fairness doctrine, which means HONEST debate to fill the 24/7 maw...

Bring back the fairness doctrine,

No.

And there ends your logic. Of course the reasons you're against it are RW brainwashing bullshytte from your greedy idiot billionaire masters, hater dupe lol....

The government has no business getting involved.

The courts said it does, and journalism ignorance, and partisanshiphas gone to hell since it was deleted....

Not anymore, assclown.

 

[francoHFW]

Wrong again, hater dupe. Glad you enjoy the country going to hell under the rule of greedy idiot megarich bs propagandists...keep whistling past the graveyard...

 

[S.J.]

Wrong again, hater dupe. Glad you enjoy the country going to hell under the rule of greedy idiot megarich bs propagandists...keep whistling past the graveyard...

What happened to Frankt? Did you give up on that one?