Fox "News" Channel Is Journalism Like I'm The Rodeo Queen Of Multnomah County
Now where did I put those ass-less chaps??
Actually it was the mark of the stupid, which is what you get for sitting under a tree during a thunderstorm.
Carl Hiaasen, Chomp
Sometimes I’ll watch my dog when he’s around other dogs, and it seems as if the first thing he does is sniff the asses of the other dogs. And it occurs to me that in the time it takes Magnus to sniff another dog’s ass, he’s taken in more accurate and factual information than a Fox News viewer does during virtually any broadcast.
You're not looking for facts if you willingly expose yourself to intellectual and moral nonentities like Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, etc., ad nauseam. You’re not searching for truth. No, you’re there because they validate what you already believe. It’s about confirmation bias. It’s not about learning something new; it has never been. No, you want the talking heads to confirm what you’ve already convinced yourself is the truth. The veracity of your “truth” hardly matters.
Fox News viewers don’t care about racism, sexism, AAPI hate, transgender hate, or the LGBTQ community. They never have and almost certainly never will. What they’re concerned about is their comfort and self-interest. They’re primarily White, Conservative, Christian, and heterosexual- and they have little time, interest, or energy for those who aren’t.
Because Fox News viewers believe what they believe, and no amount of facts or logic will change their minds.
They know what America is and what it should be.
Except that they’re wrong about most of it.
Seriously? Americans believe that 21%- one in five people- are transgender? And that 30% are Jewish? And that 26% have a household income over $500,000/year? What are these people smoking? Then again, this is what happens when one allows their fears and prejudices to be manipulated by those inclined to do so.
Of course, this list encompasses all Americans, not just Fox News viewers. But, if you were to filter out Fox News viewers, imagine what these numbers might reflect.
And if you think Americans are vacant and intellectually bereft, wait ‘til you get a load of Fox News addicts, eh?
this metric fuckload of ignorance is brought to you by a generation of schools that fail to teach critical thinking and a generation of right-wing media that lies directly into the faces of their credulous audience.
the wingnut outrage ecosystem has done such a good job of stoking paranoia and hatred for their audience’s perceived enemies — the blacks, the muslims, the gays, the immigrants, the jews — that your average goofball thinks America is a fucking hellhole overrun with swarthy crossdressing hordes.
Fox News viewers know less than if they watched no news at all.
How is that even possible? I don’t know, but MSNBC’s Ari Melber does.
As bad as things sound, it’s not uniformly and irredeemably terrible. A study published in April 2022 showed that Fox News viewers “measurably changed their political beliefs and understanding of contemporary issues” after one month of watching CNN (which has its own issues).
The study’s authors incentivized Fox News viewers to switch to watching CNN for a month.
We recruited a sample of regular Fox News viewers using data on actual TV viewership from a media company, and incentivized them to watch CNN instead for a month using real-time viewership quizzes. Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views. We show that these effects stem in part from a bias we call partisan coverage filtering, wherein partisan outlets selectively report information, leading viewers to learn a biased set of facts. Consistent with this, treated participants concluded that Fox concealed negative information about President Trump. Partisan media does not only present its side an electoral advantage—it may present a challenge for democratic accountability.
There were two quick conclusions to emerge from the study:
The Fox News echo chamber is surprisingly effective as a political tool in affecting the behavior of viewers.
The partisan media ecosystem may threaten American democracy itself.
There were also measurable changes in the beliefs of the Fox News viewers who participated in the study, though they did remain very Right-wing politically.
[Viewers who switched from Fox to CNN] were five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long Covid, for example, and six points more likely to believe that many foreign countries did a better job than the U.S. of controlling the virus. They were seven points more likely to support voting by mail. And they were 10 points less likely to believe that supporters of then-candidate Joe Biden were happy when police officers get shot, 11 points less likely to say it’s more important for the president to focus on containing violent protesters than on the coronavirus, and 13 points less likely to agree that if Biden were elected, “we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”
These are meaningful differences, even if the group that switched to CNN remained very right-wing in their view of the American political landscape.
Unfortunately, this effect was temporary. Once viewers returned to their familiar Fox News bubble, they regressed to their prior views and habits. In other words, viewers tended to moderate their opinions when they were given a glimpse of the reality outside the Fox News bubble. But, once released back to their “natural” habitat, they returned to their old opinions and way of seeing the world.
So, yes, generally speaking, Americans are uncomfortable with critical thinking and would much rather react than think. And they'd much rather be told what to think if they have to use their brains.
[P]ublic opinion surveys have repeatedly demonstrated Fox’s viewers are exposed to so much misinformation that they are less informed than people who don’t consume any news at all, and they are more likely to believe lies about important topics such as COVID-19 and vaccines than are other viewers who rely on mainstream news outlets. The study’s authors attribute this phenomenon “in part from a bias we call partisan coverage filtering, wherein partisan outlets selectively report information, leading viewers to learn a biased set of facts.” They explained (emphasis in original):
In particular, we argue that partisan media engages in both traditionally-emphasized forms of media influence (agenda setting and framing) as well as a form of influence we call partisan coverage filtering. Agenda setting refers to how higher volumes of media coverage on a topic “change the problems the viewing public regards as. . . important” (Iyengar and Kinder 1987, p. 16) and primes viewers’ pre-existing attitudes on that topic when evaluating politicians (Krosnick and Kinder 1990). … We argue partisan media also engage in an underappreciated practice we call partisan coverage filtering: selectively reporting information about selectively chosen topics, causing its viewers to learn more information favorable to the network’s partisan side and potentially changing viewers’ attitudes and political evaluations as a result.
In a sense, all news media serves as confirmation bias. All of us who consume news tend to gravitate toward outlets that feel comfortable and dispense news and information we agree with. That’s human nature, but there’s a difference between the sort of rock-hard confirmation bias that afflicts most Fox News viewers and what happens with MSNBC and CNN viewers.
Fox News is a “news” channel that knowingly deals in misinformation and disinformation. It selectively covers news events and pushes a hard-right ideology as it has since Day One in 1996. Fox News was birthed by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to provide a Far-Right editorial voice in the cable news ecosystem. It’s been incredibly influential in shaping public opinion, even if it hasn’t always relied on facts and truth.
Roger Ailes always stood more for shaping the truth than reporting it. He knew he could create the perception of reality through reporting the news. And Fox News, even though one of its taglines was “Fair and Balanced,” was never intended to provide fair OR balanced coverage of new or current events. Its mission has always been to nudge viewers to the right, support Republican candidates, and undermine Democrats whenever possible.
Though the chyron below was only visible for 27 seconds, it’s not the first time Fox News has displayed or voiced decidedly anti-Biden messages:
This is not behavior a network wanting to be known for serious, objective journalism engages in. Of course, Fox News is neither serious nor objective, though it remains America’s #1 cable “news” network.
The 1st Amendment being what it is, Fox News can’t be shut down. Neither the federal government nor anyone has the authority. As I’ve said often in this space, offensive speech is still protected speech. While it’s appalling that Fox News spews far more Right-wing propaganda than actual news, the 1st Amendment guarantees their right to do so. It’s left to the viewer to sort truth from crap.
Sadly, so many otherwise well-meaning Americans have opened their minds to being filled with pure, unadulterated bullshit on a daily basis. We all likely know someone who gets their news and information only from Fox News and believes that ONLY Fox News is telling it like it is. It’s like watching a heroin addict claiming not to be addicted- “I can quit whenever I choose….” even as you know they’re choosing not to quit because they’re hopelessly hooked.
Can our democracy survive the country’s most popular “news” and “information” network spewing lies and propaganda 24/7? Can America remain healthy and functional when disinformation remains the order of the day? And when one of our two major political parties depends on Fox News for their support and propaganda generation?
Time will tell, of course, and we cannot predict the future. I hope that America will be strong and connected enough to truth to survive those who’d undermine our democracy for their own nefarious ends. America has survived many external threats over almost a quarter-millennia of history; I wonder if we will be strong enough to survive the internal threats we currently face.
Ultimately, the threats we’ve spent trillions to defend ourselves against may not be what takes America down. The danger that defeats America may well come from within, and it’s a threat we’re severely underprepared to face.
We report, you comply.