Being Faux News Was Always The Goal

3 thoughts on “Being Faux News Was Always The Goal”

1. It also speaks to my point that there are some major advantages to “news reporting” getting dispersed among a million bloggers.  

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   1. Yes, the article is worth a read from top to bottom.

      But I find these paragraphs the most interesting:
      

      For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.

      Under the pretense of correcting a Democratic bias in news reporting, Fox has accomplished something that seemed impossible before Ailes imported to the news studio the tricks he learned in Richard Nixon’s campaign think tank: He and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions — whether on health-care reform or other issues — they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting. I try not to believe that this kid-gloves handling amounts to self-censorship, but it’s hard to ignore the evidence. News Corp., with 64,000 employees worldwide, receives the tender treatment accorded a future employer.

      Hard news has given way to celebrity coverage.  Only a handful of traditional news gathering organizations will survive this harsh economic battering.

      While the online subcription model may find success in a much-shrunken market, I think that the economics of news gathering will bifurcate into a low revenue model of citizen bloggers with their personal agendas selectively addressing topics they are passionate about, with AP and the few remaining large newspapers eaking out a livable profit but at the expense of their ability to stand up to the financial giants they must answer to.  

      So I believe we also need a source of hard news independently funded (by foundations, public interest organizations, CPB-like pseudo-government entities with no editorial input) to sustain the true balance of power by supporting the practice of objective, professional reporting.

      Otherwise, many could confuse this with reality:

      http://andrewsullivan.theatlan…

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      1. Because we’re headed to what we had during the founding of our country, and we turned out ok. I think the next important step is everyone else calling out Fox (and MSNBC) for what they are. Constantly & clearly.

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