Fox News Rant

Is the Fox News Channel not the dumbest news channel on cable? I admit I watch and usually choose it over better news but probably for the same reason people stare at disfigured people and car crashes. It's not news at all, it's entertainment masquerading as news. And they have the gall to call it "fair and balanced."

Take for example the Hannity and Colmes show. For starters, they take two guys, one playing the conservative and the other the liberal. Of course the conservative Shawn Hannity is dashing and handsome (No, really he is! I'm comfortable with my manhood.) while the liberal is a gooberish looking guy with a nasally voice. They also seem to give Hannity more face time although this could be my anger and bias showing.

So the other day, Hannity is talking about the Muslim doctors in England and Scotland who tried to detonate three car bombs there. He is shocked that these guys are doctors, sworn to the Hippocratic Oath, and so on. To discuss this issue further, they bring on a guest. The guest is a very attractive young woman who is, they say, a doctor at a local hospital. Hannity then leads her through several questions to validate his point about the doctor's oath and its incompatibility with taking lives as a terrorist.

All the while, Hannity completely misses the fact that al-Qaida's own deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, was a respected surgeon in Egypt and there are many other doctor terrorists like him.

The guest was nearly clueless. She could not definitively answer any questions about the oath, such as are doctors in other countries sworn to the oath, etc. She even answered one question with "positively likely." It can be very likely or either positively or likely, but it can't be both.

But Fox News frequently does this, bringing fluff guests on just to show off the main presenter and get their point across. They also love to interview each other. How is that news? At least bring someone on who has some public credibility in their field. This does nothing to add to the news value of the information and even hints at questionable journalistic ethics.

And speaking of ethics, I believe it was Hannity or Bill O'Reilly who railed NBC for weak ethics for hiring a company to set up sting operations targeted at Internet perverts looking for young girls. Talk about a double standard.

The other show that really irks me is the Fox & Friends morning show. The three hosts of that show are completely stupid. Because the show is not totally scripted, to give it a fresh and live feeling, the hosts are constantly caught looking dumb. Either they don't get or misinterpret each others jokes or something will come up in conversation that none of them really know anything about. You can always tell when this happens -- there is some confusion and then everyone looks like someone is screaming into their ear piece "drop it and move to the next topic!"

They should just admit that they are not really a "news" channel but instead an "entertainment news" channel. That would make me a lot happier and of course I'd still watch.