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

[Anathema]

And I totally support your purge. Please, purge more!

Careful what you wish for. If the Republicans get rid of the Bush, Boehner, McConnel, McCain crowd, you might actually see a Conservative nominated for POTUS, and you could see a return of many of the fringe groups to the Republican nest. Meanwhile those new additions to the Democratic party are going to further water down your party's base.

 

[BULLDOG]

Actually, the last 30 years have been dominated by pander to the greedy idiot rich Reaganist tax rates and chickenhawk idiocy, ridiculous propaganda and obstruction. see sig.

Actually, the last 30 years have been dominated by pander to the greedy idiot rich Reaganist tax rates

Reaganist tax rates were a 28% top rate.
Current rates are over 40% higher.

I'd take anyone over those so called, "enlightened progressive filled with nothing but hate and are SNOBS." an example of what I mean. THREADS posted like this one from garbage sites like, Rawassnonsenestory

it's what the far left does.

Intellectually they are bankrupt, so they revert to name calling, character assassination, and delusions of superiority. Then if it all fails, they simply curse and yell so you can't talk or be heard, usually on college campuses which is kind of ironic.

"The far left" is usually on the winning side of ballot measures lately, so I wouldn't call that intellectually bankrupt.

And the people you're describing remind me a lot of the people on Fox News, especially Bill O'reilly.

So let me get this straight, winning elections means you are intellectually superior?

That just means they have control of elections. Does power make them intellectually superior?

Is Obama really intellectually superior since he runs the country by edict now? In all 57 states, is there no one his equal?

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

Really?

Ted Cruz can move his mouth without a teleprompter. I don't know any Dims who can do this.


I'm not sure when or why a teleprompter became a bad thing, but I'm always amused when right wingers read their complaints about Obama's teleprompter use off of a teleprompter, or there hand.
In fact, Ted Cruz graduated top of his class at Harvard.

 

[BULLDOG]

Actually, the last 30 years have been dominated by pander to the greedy idiot rich Reaganist tax rates and chickenhawk idiocy, ridiculous propaganda and obstruction. see sig.

Actually, the last 30 years have been dominated by pander to the greedy idiot rich Reaganist tax rates

Reaganist tax rates were a 28% top rate.
Current rates are over 40% higher.

I'd take anyone over those so called, "enlightened progressive filled with nothing but hate and are SNOBS." an example of what I mean. THREADS posted like this one from garbage sites like, Rawassnonsenestory

it's what the far left does.

Intellectually they are bankrupt, so they revert to name calling, character assassination, and delusions of superiority. Then if it all fails, they simply curse and yell so you can't talk or be heard, usually on college campuses which is kind of ironic.

"The far left" is usually on the winning side of ballot measures lately, so I wouldn't call that intellectually bankrupt.

And the people you're describing remind me a lot of the people on Fox News, especially Bill O'reilly.

So let me get this straight, winning elections means you are intellectually superior?

That just means they have control of elections. Does power make them intellectually superior?

Is Obama really intellectually superior since he runs the country by edict now? In all 57 states, is there no one his equal?

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

You're right, I haven't heard any Republicans say we should raise the capital gains tax rate,even if it reduced revenues, just to be fair.
I mean that's just world class stupid.

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago. Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

 

[BULLDOG]

And I totally support your purge. Please, purge more!

Careful what you wish for. If the Republicans get rid of the Bush, Boehner, McConnel, McCain crowd, you might actually see a Conservative nominated for POTUS, and you could see a return of many of the fringe groups to the Republican nest. Meanwhile those new additions to the Democratic party are going to further water down your party's base.

The fringe groups are already snuggled deep in the repube nest. They might whine and complain, but there is no doubt who they will vote for. The GOP is controlled by the fringe because the sane ones already left.

 

[Pogo]

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

In his paper “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics” published earlier this month, Bartlett theorized that watching the network was essentially “self-brainwashing” for viewers, making them believe that the United States was a more conservative nation than it actually was. And so the Republican Party had responded by running radical conservatives that representative Fox News viewers, but not the true state of the electorate.

“Many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people,” Bartlett told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. “When they go onto the Internet, they look at conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily.”

Great line from the Simpsons - Fox News, Not Racist, but #1 with racists.

Really, Pogo?

Gimme a friggin' break...

Puh-leeeeez...

Was that cartoon originally jinned-up as a smack-down on HuffPo or MSNBC, then plagiarized?

As to 'One Furhrer', well, we can always point to the Messiah Complex Rock-Star status of his Imperial Majesty, Barack I, and the vast quantities of ridiculing imagery directed at him for his autocracy and unilateralism, as well, can't we?

Cuts both ways.

But, as to media outlets, and bias...

Both sides have their toxic-caliber Partisan Bias Channels...

Both sides...

I actually don't know where it came from originally; it's been around a long time.

It's been there for the obvious reason: whereas some TV channels broadcast in stereo, Fox broadcasts in monologue single-stream continuous propaganda. That's what's being mocked. Whatever imaginary ascriptions to Barack Obama's personal ego you might entertain --- really has no relation to that.

And as a subscript the fawning deeply emotional relationship its sheep viewers have with it, which is what I find most interesting. Take that lot of alphabet media in your cartoon above: nobody walks around murmuring the script they heard from a CBS talking head last night; nobody runs to the interets to post what ABC's ratings are this week. Nor should they -- they're abstract inanimate entities.

Fox Noise however is more like a religious cult. In this cartoon the imagery was a political cult, but the pied piper mentality really is the same thing.. So you get followers -- meaning 'followers' in the religious sense -- quoting Hannitys and O'Reillys as if they're some sort of scripture, whereas with a genuine news channel we wouldn't even know the talking head's name. It's a personality cult. And cults deserve mockery.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Actually, the last 30 years have been dominated by pander to the greedy idiot rich Reaganist tax rates

Reaganist tax rates were a 28% top rate.
Current rates are over 40% higher.

it's what the far left does.

Intellectually they are bankrupt, so they revert to name calling, character assassination, and delusions of superiority. Then if it all fails, they simply curse and yell so you can't talk or be heard, usually on college campuses which is kind of ironic.

"The far left" is usually on the winning side of ballot measures lately, so I wouldn't call that intellectually bankrupt.

And the people you're describing remind me a lot of the people on Fox News, especially Bill O'reilly.

So let me get this straight, winning elections means you are intellectually superior?

That just means they have control of elections. Does power make them intellectually superior?

Is Obama really intellectually superior since he runs the country by edict now? In all 57 states, is there no one his equal?

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

You're right, I haven't heard any Republicans say we should raise the capital gains tax rate,even if it reduced revenues, just to be fair.
I mean that's just world class stupid.

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago. Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago.

Even if the hike in capital gains rates gives the government less revenue?

Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

One reason is that a higher rate can stifle business creation.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Conservatives did not used to be like this, they were never open minded but I do not remember them recoiling so violently from alternative views.

Eee-gads, it is the Democrats who have become radicalized and fringe, not the Republicans. From reckless spending to trampling on religious liberty to dangerous racial agitation to taking over the Internet, the Democrats are falling off the left edge of the Earth.

The Republicans, in the meantime, now control 31 state governments and both chambers of Congress.

And this is typical of most on the right, rather than addressing the issue they instead attempt to deflect, they attack, and they lie.

 

[BULLDOG]

"The far left" is usually on the winning side of ballot measures lately, so I wouldn't call that intellectually bankrupt.

And the people you're describing remind me a lot of the people on Fox News, especially Bill O'reilly.

So let me get this straight, winning elections means you are intellectually superior?

That just means they have control of elections. Does power make them intellectually superior?

Is Obama really intellectually superior since he runs the country by edict now? In all 57 states, is there no one his equal?

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

You're right, I haven't heard any Republicans say we should raise the capital gains tax rate,even if it reduced revenues, just to be fair.
I mean that's just world class stupid.

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago. Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago.

Even if the hike in capital gains rates gives the government less revenue?

Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

One reason is that a higher rate can stifle business creation.

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

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

So let me get this straight, winning elections means you are intellectually superior?

That just means they have control of elections. Does power make them intellectually superior?

Is Obama really intellectually superior since he runs the country by edict now? In all 57 states, is there no one his equal?

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

You're right, I haven't heard any Republicans say we should raise the capital gains tax rate,even if it reduced revenues, just to be fair.
I mean that's just world class stupid.

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago. Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago.

Even if the hike in capital gains rates gives the government less revenue?

Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

One reason is that a higher rate can stifle business creation.

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.

 

[BULLDOG]

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

You're right, I haven't heard any Republicans say we should raise the capital gains tax rate,even if it reduced revenues, just to be fair.
I mean that's just world class stupid.

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago. Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago.

Even if the hike in capital gains rates gives the government less revenue?

Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

One reason is that a higher rate can stifle business creation.

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?

 

[Pogo]

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".

 

[Stephanie]

What gets me. Is how the left HATES hates hates Reagan, until they CAN USE him by digging up some old coot to put down their fellow country men and women while using Fox news in the same hateful article

And then calls Republican/Conservatives, fringe and extremist.

AND ALL FOR WHAT reason? over their politics. this is where they have taken our country. into being a nasty and uncivilized sewer of hate

 

[Claudette]

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

In his paper “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics” published earlier this month, Bartlett theorized that watching the network was essentially “self-brainwashing” for viewers, making them believe that the United States was a more conservative nation than it actually was. And so the Republican Party had responded by running radical conservatives that representative Fox News viewers, but not the true state of the electorate.

“Many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people,” Bartlett told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. “When they go onto the Internet, they look at conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily.”

Great line from the Simpsons - Fox News, Not Racist, but #1 with racists.

Well hell. If Fox news is brainwashing all Republicans and conservatives the rest of the media, being left leaning, mus be brainwashing all Dems, liberals and idiots.

Seems fair to me.

 

[BULLDOG]

What gets me. Is how the left HATES hates hates Reagan, until they CAN USE him by digging up some old coot to put down their fellow country men and women while using Fox news in the same hateful article

And then calls Republican/Conservatives, fringe and extremist.

AND ALL FOR WHAT reason? over their politics. this is where they have taken our country. into being a nasty and uncivilized sewer of hate

A nasty uncivilized sewer of hate? That's right there in your trailer park, isn't it? I guess it is really convenient for you.

 

[BULLDOG]

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

In his paper “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics” published earlier this month, Bartlett theorized that watching the network was essentially “self-brainwashing” for viewers, making them believe that the United States was a more conservative nation than it actually was. And so the Republican Party had responded by running radical conservatives that representative Fox News viewers, but not the true state of the electorate.

“Many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people,” Bartlett told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. “When they go onto the Internet, they look at conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily.”

Great line from the Simpsons - Fox News, Not Racist, but #1 with racists.

Well hell. If Fox news is brainwashing all Republicans and conservatives the rest of the media, being left leaning, mus be brainwashing all Dems, liberals and idiots.

Seems fair to me.

That's not how it works. Trying to claim others are doing what you re doing doesn't make your shit right. In the first place, the others aren't doing the same thing, and in the second place, you're an idiot.

 

[Stephanie]

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

In his paper “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics” published earlier this month, Bartlett theorized that watching the network was essentially “self-brainwashing” for viewers, making them believe that the United States was a more conservative nation than it actually was. And so the Republican Party had responded by running radical conservatives that representative Fox News viewers, but not the true state of the electorate.

“Many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people,” Bartlett told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. “When they go onto the Internet, they look at conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily.”

Great line from the Simpsons - Fox News, Not Racist, but #1 with racists.

Well hell. If Fox news is brainwashing all Republicans and conservatives the rest of the media, being left leaning, mus be brainwashing all Dems, liberals and idiots.

Seems fair to me.

that and their elected asses in their party does a fine job too. Just look at how nasty and hateful they are. Obama up there ranting and raving over Fox news, calling us flat earthers, teabaggers, AND the hate just goes on and on and on... and then has the nerve to call Republicans the, fringe and extremist. if these people weren't so dangerous to us we could just laugh in their faces. they are the ones Tearing our country apart and make me sick

 

[BULLDOG]

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

In his paper “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics” published earlier this month, Bartlett theorized that watching the network was essentially “self-brainwashing” for viewers, making them believe that the United States was a more conservative nation than it actually was. And so the Republican Party had responded by running radical conservatives that representative Fox News viewers, but not the true state of the electorate.

“Many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people,” Bartlett told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. “When they go onto the Internet, they look at conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily.”

Great line from the Simpsons - Fox News, Not Racist, but #1 with racists.

Well hell. If Fox news is brainwashing all Republicans and conservatives the rest of the media, being left leaning, mus be brainwashing all Dems, liberals and idiots.

Seems fair to me.

that and their elected asses in their party does a fine job too. Just look at how nasty and hateful they are. Obama up there ranting and raving over Fox news, calling us flat earthers, teabaggers, AND the hate just goes on and on and on... and then has the nerve to call Republicans the, fringe and extremist. if these people weren't so dangerous to us we could just laugh in their faces. they are the ones Tearing our country apart and make me sick

Poor little mistreated thing. And you have been so kind and sweet to everybody. I can't imagine why anybody would be less than polite to you. .

 

[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...

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Certainly nobody on the republican side is his equal.

You're right, I haven't heard any Republicans say we should raise the capital gains tax rate,even if it reduced revenues, just to be fair.
I mean that's just world class stupid.

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago. Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

Raising capitol gains taxes should have been done long ago.

Even if the hike in capital gains rates gives the government less revenue?

Why should stock market profits be taxed at a lower rate than money worked for?

One reason is that a higher rate can stifle business creation.

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?

 

[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.