Here's a good article in the NY Times about the battle between the Obama Administration and Fox News. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing new. Republican and Democratic presidents throughout our history have complained and fought with the media.
It's sad that news channels have to have a bias one way or the other but I think the real problem is not really in the news but in the opinions. The difference being with news, you can make up your own mind and with opinion, someone has made it up for you.
When you look at CNN, they are mostly news with very few opinion talk shows thrown in. CNN Headline News is even better because it's almost all news.
Fox is the other way around. They have very little of what appears to be news and mostly opinion talk shows like O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, et. al. After all, that's what sells.
And what sells? Prepackaged opinions. Someone has already gone out and read the news, put their own spin on it, wrapped it up with a bow, and gifted it to someone who isn't capable of or doesn't want to make the effort to form their own opinion.
In Fox News' response to the Whitehouse criticism, they said people should be able to tell the difference between page one news and page 2 opinion. In a newspaper, this is easy because page one really is news and opinion comes later. On TV, there is no page one, unless you would consider that prime time, which at Fox is occupied by opinion.
Fox is no longer a news channel but an opinion channel. They have made this shift because polarizing opinions bring more conflict which brings more ratings which brings more advertising dollars.
All these other news channels are trying to compete for advertising dollars which makes them do the same stupid things. What a sad day in the world of journalism.
On another note, the Washington Post says that hunters and anglers are in favor of curbing greenhouse emissions. Because I like to stereotype... Most hunters and anglers, according to the article and in keeping with the stereotype, should be more conservative, country folk, driving big gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs and claiming to be Republicans.
It seems, however, that climate change could change their sport so of course they want the government to do something.
No comments:
Post a Comment