Your Questions About Fox News

Nagesh answers:

By criticizing Fox News, the White House really meant to criticize the American people. They wanted to remind people that the majority of the programs on Fox News, such as the Glenn Beck Program, and the O’Reilly Show, are opinionated programs and not news programs, as part of the public has been treating them. When it comes to the News on that channel, its not nearly as unbaised as other networks, but it also isn’t anywhere near as bad as the White House claims it to be. It does voice Republican Opinions, but after all, the purpose of news is to tell you the news, and if Fox News wants to add some opinion to that news, then they should go ahead. People will or won’t watch, and the White House can’t control that.

Nagesh answers:

How do I put this politely?

Fox News–a.k.a. NEWSCORP–was bought out entirely in the 1980s by a billionaire Australian named Rupert Murdoch. He still owns a controlling share of that thing.

And he has been hellbent since day one on a) making “tabloid style” biased news (if not fabricated info-tainment) the mainstream, and b) making sure everyone believes that mainstream journalism has too much “liberal bias”, whether it in fact has any or not.

Basically the guy is about as far right politically as Mussolini and wants–nay, Demands–that America become the same. In the early 1980s there may have been a point to it–a need for intelligent, contrarian journalism. But that was _how many_ years ago? Times have changed but their message hasn’t. If anything it’s become more dogmatic, doctrinaire and hard-line than before: right is right, hard-right is “more right”, and everyone else is wrong (and doesn’t deserve any freedom of expression, never mind any say in how the nation is run).

This wouldn’t be so bad, but: most of the Billionaires and One Percenters–your CEO Class in America–actually have it in their greedy, financial “best interests” to follow Murdoch, Fox News, and folks like the idiot Tea Party as far right as possible if only because it means “more tax cuts” that let these “people” hate and hoard money, and hate and hoard money some more.

If people like Murdoch, like the Koch Brothers, like all of the _other_ Tea Party sponsors, had it their way tomorrow, America would be a detuned sort of fascist state. We wouldn’t be at war because we’d be broke–we’d be a puppet dancing on China’s string one day, India’s the next, and Saudi Arabia’s the third. But otherwise, we’d be openly totalitarian. Ordinary citizens would either work on the Wal-mart plantation for prison wages or be tossed into a Meat Grinder for Soylent Green purposes. One Percenters would own 99 percent of everything and everybody, while the Bottom 99 Percent (the rest of us, mere citizens like you and I) would scrap and fight over _one measly percent_, as we live in rot and ruin, begging hand-to-mouth to get by. As it is in Somalia. As it is in Haiti. As it was in New Orleans, post-Katrina. As it’s becoming in Detroit.

That’s not even why it’s controversial though.

It’s controversial because so many, so many, _TOO many_ people, just eat this up. They swallow the Fox News propaganda stream–and yes, Rush Limbaugh himself admits that it’s propaganda–whole and unchewed upon. People aren’t even thinking about this crap–they aren’t even bothering to fact-check a damned thing. All they do is watch, and watch, and watch, and when they have their fill they hit the internet and regurgitate it right back at the rest of us, puking and parroting their “talking points of the day” as if they were automatons, robots with no thoughts of their own in their heads. They mindlessly copy and paste it all, line and verse, the way a religious fundamentalist quotes gospel. Not as a way to inform or enlighten, but as a _weapon_ with which to bully, browbeat, terrorize and silence. These people even get their insults, wholesale, from the same exact source.

It’s a group mind. It’s a really dumb sort of group mind–like lemmings who believe they are Borg, and that resistance is futile.

Among other things. That’s the controversial part–that otherwise intelligent, functional human beings can actually swallow this degrading line of bullsh=t and endlessly mouth it off to all that moves. And for some perverse reason we put up with it: the rest of us tolerate it when the fundies and rednecks and trolls and haters bully, threaten and attack us with this damned fool nonsense.

How anyone believes in this stuff I don’t understand, but the bullying–the relentless attacks and abusive conduct–has got to go. It’s _Going_ to have consequences, and soon.

It’s going to be a harsh, bitter winter if we end up _going back_ to the madness of the last decade of fail, to the policies of one nation, under Bush/Cheney (and their Arab and Big Oil, Big Banking butt-buddies).

Nagesh answers:

“Study finds Fox News viewers more likely to be misinformed on basic political facts”
http://iowaindependent.com/49303/study-finds-fox-news-viewers-more-likely-to-be-misinformed-on-basic-political-facts

The study finds Fox News viewers to be the more likely to be incorrect with each incremental increase of exposure to Fox. The respondents who watched Fox News on a daily basis were at times twice as likely to be wrong as those who never watched Fox.

Furthermore, the study found it was not a partisan divide. The respondents who watched Fox, but voted Democratic were just as likely to be incorrect as those Fox viewers who voted Republican.

Nagesh answers:

Fox News viewers are no more or less brainwashed than other main stream media fans. That Fox appears hold a different view is all for show – to deceive you into thinking that meaningful differences of opinion are presented in the media.

The news media no longer plays the role of “fourth branch of government” (that is, it keeps the government in check by asking the important questions and conducting investigative journalism). There was a time that was somewhat true but it is not so today. The very last round of media merges made possible by the Bush administration was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The main stream media is owned by a very few corporate giants. Those giants and their major shareholders own other companies that profit from the war and the war on terror. There is cross-over between ownership and boards of directors of media corporations with the corporations that profit directly from war and terror, and globalist think-tanks that influence our foreign policy, and the corrupt Federal Reserve. There is also cross-over in ownership and board membership with companies that have a direct impact on our health and the food we eat.

Research General Electric for example. Learn what media outlets it owns, and learn what else it owns that profits as a result of war, the war on terror and unstable oil prices. Learn its role as a Pentagon supplier. Worthy of note is General Electric’s ownership of National Geographic. Knowing that GE is a profiteer of war and the war on terror, can we trust its documentaries about those topics? We would be fools to do so.

The role of today’s main stream media is to promote government propaganda and corporate interests, at the expense of the people. The media feeds us a version of reality that best suits the profit and power motives of its owners. We must become media wise. Start here:-

General Main Stream Media
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media.asp

Focus on US Media
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/USA.asp

For some examples of how the media presents “fake news” to promote corporate interests in a way that makes the reader believe it to be real news, go here and watch the “before and after” clips. These media people are very slick!

Http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/findings/vnrs

It is now public information that the media conspired with the Pentagon to feed us propaganda to induce support for the Iraq war. A couple of main stream media outlets have now acknowledged that but most of them continue to black out the story.

Http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/25/pbs-breaks-media-blackout-of-nyt-story-on-pentagon-propaganda/
http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0421-05.htm

It gets worse. The reason for embedding journalists during the early stages of the Iraq war was not about safety for journalists. It was to allow the Pentagon to control the message. The disregard for the safety of non-embedded journalists should be an embarrassment for every American. The film linked here, created by a member of the MSM, covers it. It is a must-watch film for any American who wants to avoid being “sold” another war (Iran).

Http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4437853756074043715&q=weapons+of+mass+deception&ei=RDceSJyRO6HuqgPs8uDKAQ

We must stop letting the war profiteers spoon fed us the “reality” they require to support their profit and power motives.

How about the recent tomato scare? How many people became sick or died? What is the population of the country relative to the number of people affected? How many people die in car accidents each year? Do we ban cars? If you look at the numbers affected by the tomato “non-crisis”, you can conclude that the story was grossly overblown in the media. Why? Because the chemical companies that stand to profit want to see mandatory food irradiation. More money for them, less nutrition for you. If you don’t believe that food irradiation depletes nutritional value of food, that is your prerogative but I ask you … shouldn’t people able to choose whether they eat irradiated food? If things progress as they are, eventually you won’t have that choice.

The change will have been “voluntary” because the media will have convinced us that food irradiation is necessary to keep us “safe”. In that sense, the food irradiation issue has some elements in common with the war on terror. Your chances of being injured by Arab terrorism are about the same as being struck by lightening, yet the media keeps the war on terror alive daily, both directly and subliminally. Meanwhile, the government continues to introduce more and more legislation restricting civil liberties and privacy, all in the name of keeping you safe from terrorism.

I should add that when I use the term “spreading propaganda”, I also refer to the media practice of failing to disclose important points. What they don’t say is often more important than what they do say.

The corporate media is the greatest threat to democracy this nation has ever seen. Democracy will disappear if we don’t wise up to it. It is also a grave threat to our health because of the way it uses fake news to promote corporate interests at the expense of the health and safety of the people.

Nagesh answers:

Fox news leads all other news channels in ratings. They may be watching because Fox, unlike the lame stream media, presents both sides of issues. It also helps that Fox has the most beautiful women of all the other channels put together, and they are intelligent to boot!