Language Abuse

            Freedom of speech is one of our most precious and cherished liberties in the US. So when is it exceeded? When is it abused? When is it unacceptable? When is it destructive of our liberties? How do we deal with the paradox of allowing hateful or unacceptable speech while still claiming that we are a Christian nation?

            We think it is critical to separate words themselves from all the forms of communication in the media. It is commonly accepted that 90% of our communication is non-verbal. This means that, in our media, it is not only the words used, but all the non-verbals as well that we should be aware of . . . and be critical of. We think most Americans are numb and ignorant of both the verbals and the non-verbals being broadcast on the Fox News media outlets. We challenge anyone and everyone to listen more actively about this. (Use our tracking sheet, for example.)

            First, let’s step back a minute and focus on some of the language used on the Fox News Channels. Skipping over the slogans which insult our intelligence every hour of the day, we can talk as long as we could keep your attention about how Fox News perverts our media and potential greatness by how they distort and manipulate their use of language. Most Americans, for example, may not even be aware of the “Right Wing conspiracy” that has existed for several years regarding manipulation of language in the media and political discourse. Start with the term Democratic Party. It has a certain ring and history for two centuries. Fox News and the Republican Party buy-in has done all it can to replace that simple term with the term Democrat Party. Note that it has a harsher ring to it. It is stiffer. Until about 10 years ago and prior to Dr. Frank Luntz inputs on conservative talk circles, the word Democrat was a noun. It represented a person. Democratic was an adjective. It represented, when capitalized, the political party designation for an idea, policy etc. For the past 3 or 4 presidential election cycles, however, you see nearly all the Fox News hosts and most conservative politicians trying to eliminate the adjective “Democratic” from anyone’s language. The only rationale to this word replacement here is NOT to encourage the functioning of a healthy democracy and exchange of ideas. It is only to psychologically trigger a stilted or negative tone to any conversation regarding any Democratic idea, whatever its merits may be. It is insidious and evil. It is disrespectful. Happens every day, and even CNN and other hosts slip into using this word replacement.

            If we could suggest a possible remedy, we think several Democrats should formally request in public forums that media people not use “Democrat” as an adjective. Request or insist that any “host” note to any guest that uses this term that they respect the wishes of Democrats everywhere and use the proper term. (We don’t, for example, ever use the term Republic instead of Republican as an adjective.) If any guest abuses this request, they should be asked to leave the show immediately.

There are unlimited examples of language manipulation by Fox News and conservative politicians these past 3 or 4 presidential cycles. Maybe the most frequently used vehicles are the focus group favorability scale devices used during debates and other forums. You may have seen the graphs over time of conservative and liberal audiences word by word during speeches or debate inputs. While these are likely used across the political spectrum, it is an art form and obsessively adhered to by Fox News outlets. Any phrase or language that stirs the passion of the listening audience is captured and becomes the “talking point” language for all conservative candidates, no matter what their former positions or thoughts have been on issues.

Integrity and Honesty

           We should be honest and admit than none of us is perfect. No political party is perfect. No media outlet is perfect. This blog is not being posted in order to promote any entity or any political party over another.

            We should also be honest and admit that this blog is directed at Fox News uniquely . . . and Fox News for its entire existence has unfairly, dishonestly, and perversely promoted the Republican Party and conservative causes, including Tea Party candidates. Fox has provided an uncritical platform for only conservative ideas and candidates.  On the other hand, they have provided a highly distorted, disrespectful, anti-Christian and anti-democratic criticism of nearly all progressive, Democratic ideas and candidates.        

            The fact that this blog is critical of Fox News influences and content, as we encourage all readers of this blog to be as well, does not mean any endorsement of the opposite political persuasion. There are very disturbing and anti-democratic militaristic and economic (Wall Street) influences on both political parties. We encourage all citizens to reject all of this at every turn.

We also however call for an honest debate about policy alternatives. This debate is what makes the USA, in one of its final surviving elements of greatness, the best country on earth. It is when this debate and struggle and compromise and renewal takes place that we are great. When the most listened to cable media outlet, Fox News, has a consistent and pervasive pattern of distorting a high percentage of all its content, we have corruption and deterioration and sinfulness, not greatness. How the Fox News hosts can continue to issue books and media messages containing this trashy content, and have US citizens buy it in both senses of the word, is grossly incriminating to our situation as a country. Citizens around the world, who are demonstrably more educated and involved in global issues than more and more of our citizens can see and read about this anti-democratic and anti-Christian behavior on the news and in our media outlets. It embarrasses us on the world stage more severely with each passing month.

We think we should take that world stage back! Let’s have honest debate about issues. Let’s have leaders who profess virtues and core values and work respectfully and diligently to have healthy, involved but critical citizenry, not trying to influence others from the perspective of power, influence or money. Let’s build our future and influence the global future with democratic values and virtues . . . with honesty and integrity.

Fair & Balanced?

Listeners hear (mostly on the radio Fox News shows) the rationale for the existence of this media outlet repeated dozens if not hundreds of times each day. The rationale is given that the media in general is liberal and needs Fox News to be balanced. It is stated so often and challenged so rarely if ever, that the psychology of listeners is that it presumably is true. . . . but it is NOT! Especially the majority of radio shows on Fox News are the most outrageous, disrespectful and distorted diatribes of anything but news that you can find in the media anywhere, for 12 hours per day. It is absolutely insulting to every listener’s intelligence if they would listen more attentively. For more discussion on this, we refer you in this blog entry to the earlier blog entry whose title notes emphatically that CNN and Fox News are not comparable. We would only add here that the distortions of this “liberal media” characterization on some of the Fox News shows is disgusting. It is called the “drive-by media” and “socialist news outlets” and dozens of other epithets. Many of these outlets, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post of course win national and international acclaim for their news, with Pulitzer prizes for their contributions. Ever hear of any Fox News hosts winning international acclaim?

            The motto Fair and Balanced lists two clear adjectives that should refer to Fox News only and not to any other media outlet. The Fox News presentations and content should themselves be fair and should be balanced. The motto does not communicate to anyone that they should essentially listen to other (presumably liberal) media outlets half the time and Fox News the other half of the time in order to have, on average, a fair and balanced set of inputs. The Fox News management know all too well that probably the majority of their listeners listen only to them as their sole source of “news”. We believe they should be ridden out of town for the horrible and disrespectful job they do of this day after day.  Even if the other media outlets were distorting and slanting news intentionally to promote liberal policies, if Fox News folks had a healthy concern for freedom and democracy, they should be pointing out how all the other outlets are distorting the news. Instead Fox News claims and thus implies that they themselves are the only one Fair and the only one Balanced.  We challenge them to get national and international independent critics to listen to the verbal content, the non-verbals, the stories covered and not covered, essentially all the categories listed on our Fox News Tracking Sheet and see how they stand up. (These tracking sheets of course can be used to track any other media outlet or channel. We are convinced that any level of negative or concerning content from any other outlet will be  tidal waved by the Fox News transgressions.)

            The classic example of Fox News distortion of news and coverage was apparent during the last presidential election campaign with Obama and McCain holding 3 televised debates. It was not officially published as a summary, but scanning all the cable channels that covered the debates, especially those who surveyed their viewers at the end of the debates as to who “won” each one, very discrepant numbers were found. Of all the non-Fox News channels that covered the debates and surveyed viewers (surely attracting both conservative and liberal and independent viewers widely among them), every single channel and survey, at every one of the 3 debates, showed Obama “won” with 55 to 60% of the opinions survey. In contrast, in every one of the debates surveyed by its viewers on Fox News, McCain won every one by 80 to 88% of the surveys cast. That is more than a 40% swing compared to every other media channel doing surveys. Does this suggest anything to you?

These debate surveys were not opinion polls on policy preferences. Does this sound like Fox News is serving any public service to “balance” the media coverage when their results are so distorted from every other channel? We suggest it is a disgrace to them . . . and to our political environment that they are tolerated in the mainstream media.

“Woe betide them.”

We have come to a very sinister place in our United States culture. For many of us, in our busy days either in our own local cities or on the road as we travel  on business or pleasure . . . we turn on the radio to catch the weather or time or the news . . . or we turn on the TV to see what the latest news is locally or nationally. Very seldom is it international news that we care about in the US. Most of us want to jingoistically brag that we may be in a downturn or difficult economic time, but we are still the best in the world.

And what do we find on more and more local stations, either radio or TV?  We see and hear one of the biggest media empires of all time, the Fox News subsidiaries of News Corporation.  And it is becoming the cause of more polarization, disrespect, disdain for science and for honesty and for fairness and for balance . . . of simply more evil in our culture than we have had since the days of the Ku Klux Klan and the McCarthy hearings.  And very few people seem to mind. More and more have joined the “ditto-heads” as the Rush Limbaugh crowd likes to call themselves. More and more of the hosts / self-proclaimed entertainers of the so-called Fox “NEWS” outlets are writing books and seeing them become best sellers. Some of these hosts brag about being good Catholics . . . but allow that the pope is simply too soft on some issues like war and the death penalty. More and more of them are publishing books full of distortions, ridicule of others, lots of outright untruths, made-up history, but a heavy dose of confidence and entertainment . . . and millions flock to buy them.

Can you guess what is now one of the bestselling books in the US?? It is Bill O’Reilly’s Pinheads and Patriots.  It is the same name as one of the popular segments of his most-watched prime time TV show on weekdays in the US.  If even a kindergartner called another a “pinhead”, they would be chastised and taught some civility and proper behavior in a church-attending culture.  Just a few decades back, someone using this kind of epithet would be booed off the stage. But now we use the measuring stick of book sales and TV and radio audience listener numbers. And since no one is protesting, no one is screaming “Boo! Get your distortions and polarizations out of here!”  . . . they keep selling their books. Even more outrageous to people of faith, they flaunt on the air, every day,  that their “News” show is on God’s side. Their time in fact is “on loan from God.”  How blasphemous can one get !!

Are we so busy and confused and deaf to our values and our virtues, that we have let such perverted measures of “success” allow us to tolerate such evil and trash in our media?  You polarize the listening public. You exaggerate and distort and invent a high percentage of the news. You claim that God is on your side, and the New York “Slimes” (NY Times), and the Washington “Compost” (Post), and even everyone who believes in social justice are the evil ones, the communists, who seek to destroy the fabric of society in the US.  And people are buying it?? Best sellers?  You stir up a rabble, and you get people ridiculing others because they simply belong to one of the political parties, and you now ask the public to vote on examples of them daily as one or the other polar opposite, Pinhead or Patriot. This is put now to a vote by a rabble-roused media audience on these shows? . . . by an audience of millions of people who often use this media outlet as their only source of ‘’News”.

Not only for the media management and sponsors and hosts who present this trash on the airwaves, but to the millions of viewers who listen . . . and tacitly support this evil . . .  I wonder what St. Peter will say at the Pearly Gates when they all arrive. I can’t help but wonder . . . if Woe Betides Them.

Bill Hirt

Dayton, OH

December, 2010

Fox News and CNN are not Comparable

            (this was a letter to the editor in 2010)

It has been distressing to hear frequently commentators in many circles making a soft-spoken comparison of Fox News and CNN or MSNBC.  Often the comment made in the comparisons is that each channel has its own political viewpoint . . . as if each one is as legitimate as the other. Problem is . . . they are not.

Fox News is simply trashy and harmful to society. Why so??   First, let’s be honest about the comparison. The style and basis for CNN content is globally respected and award-winning. Their professionals may be of many political persuasions, but they go to great lengths to be news-worthy and not interject opinions or political inclinations in their NEWS. Fox News is almost totally the opposite. They have primarily a political agenda and not a news agenda. They intentionally slant and distort whatever news or content to help persuade its audience to favor conservatives or Republicans and disparage liberals and Democrats. I repeat, they intentionally slant all their content as far as possible to sway public perceptions toward one political viewpoint.

This conduct by Fox News is more trashy and harmful to society than the tabloids. Why? Well, everyone knows that tabloids are sleazy and likely not true, or at least distorted. Fox News however has insulting and obviously incorrect rejoinders in most of their advertisements that they are “fair and balanced.” Even though any reasonable listener would see the disrespect, insults, ridicule, exaggerations and distortions of news and of liberals on Fox News, they subliminally assume that since Fox keeps saying so, that maybe there is news-worthiness in their programming. Maybe since they have such a large audience they must be giving reasonable content to their listeners. Tragically, they are not!! Why they and their sponsors are not railroaded off the airwaves is more and more astounding to me. It is an incrimination of civic groups and religious groups around the country. I am convinced there should be more energy and protests and demonstrations around the country to get Fox News off the air than that expended for the anti-abortion movement and stem cells.

Use the recent example of Bill O’Reilly and his “Pinheads and Patriots” segment. Who was the “pinhead”? Anthony Weiner, Democratic rep from NY. Why a pinhead? Bill O’Reilly showed a hidden camera at one of Weiner’s recent speeches where a supporter of his mentioned his worry about O’Reilly’s distortions on his show. Weiner encouraged his supporter to keep up his concerns and keep being diligent and careful about the truth about issues. Who was the “patriot”? Lou Dobbs, the disgraced CNN anchor, now off the air entirely but thinking about running for president. Why a patriot? Well, because Bill O’Reilly thought of a witty campaign slogan for him to boast “more jobs with Dobbs”. That is all! Dobbs is a patriot because O’Reilly thought of a witty theoretical campaign slogan. This is news??  This is fair? This is balanced?  . . . or is it UN-balanced??  Weiner is a pinhead because he encourages his constituents to be diligent. Dobbs is a patriot because O’Reilly thought up a campaign slogan for him, despite his being a disgraced media person. Gimme a break !!!

But O’Reilly is the most watched show on cable network news. That is our measure of success. If we can dupe enough people to watch a show with catchy conversations, even though it may be disrespectful, inaccurate, distorted, polarizing and un-fair, but it draws an audience, we don’t complain or seek to change it. What about the Fox shows where they will not even use the word “president” for Mr. Obama. He is called “imposter Obama” throughout the whole show (Michael Savage). What about the show that never uses the term New York Times or Washington Post throughout the show, instead using consistently the “New York Slimes” and the “Washington Compost” (Mark Levin). . . or the show that day after day calls everyone who cares about womens issues “feminazis” and those concerned about the environment “wackos” (Rush Limbaugh). Where is “News” or “fair” or “Balanced”?? Not in this universe !! Fox News is not trying to do anything but the opposite. CNN however is.

Fox News tracking example of Michael Savage

FOX NEWS REVIEW TRACKING SHEET

Fox News Host / Guest / Caller :	Michael Savage
Day of week / Time slot of show:	Thurs. evening, 10:30 pm
TV Channel or Radio station letters:	WHIO AM radio
Reviewer Name and city:	Bill Hirt, Dayton
Review day/month/year:	June 3,2011

Violations of “Fair & Balanced”	Violations of “We Report – You Decide”	Violations of Journalism or “News” (un-supported statements)	Mis-representing History	Anti-Christian content (disrespect, insulting, badgering, content)	Exaggerations / distortions / lies (e.g. all the democrats are saying…)	Epithets (morons, pinheads)
Checkmark for each occurence:	25	35	14	10	25	8
Totals:
Examples / Quotes:						Pimple-faced rep of the ACLU, all liberals are mentally deranged, degenerate, liberalism is a mental disorder, a disease

Notes:  (include ego-trips and obvious prejudice or bias examples)   Michael opened the show with glaring egomania bragging that his show was so witty that you could say it contained “intellectual nudity”. He frequently inferred he wanted sympathy for being banned from ever travelling to England (because of his racist and intolerable media statements). It was one long diatribe against President Obama and democrats. No dialog or balanced presentation in the show found.

Fox News tracking example of Glenn Beck

FOX NEWS REVIEW TRACKING SHEET

Fox News Host / Guest / Caller :	Glenn Beck and Friends (2 co-hosts)
Day of week / Time slot of show:	Saturday, 6:20 to 6:30 pm
TV Channel or Radio station letters:	WHIO radio, 1290 AM
Reviewer Name and city:	Bill Hirt, Dayton, OH
Review day/month/year:	Feb 12, 2011

Violations of “Fair & Balanced”	Violations of “We Report – You Decide”	Violations of Journalism or “News” (un-supported statements)	Mis-representing History	Anti-Christian content (disrespect, insulting, badgering, content)	Exaggerations / distortions / lies (e.g. all the democrats are saying…)	Epithets (morons, pinheads)
Checkmark for each occurence:
Totals: 10/10 min	10/10 min	24	14	24	24	3
Examples / Quotes:	No news reported. Nothing but lies piled on one another, insinuating Obama is evil. (Seems the pot was calling the kettle black)		8 different international cities where Obama was maybe born	Laughter, ridicule and insinuating tone for 10 solid minutes. Not one sentence said with respect of any kind.		Communist Crazy pathetic

Notes:  (include ego-trips and obvious prejudice or bias examples)       This was a full 10 minutes of banter among the hosts with nothing but dripping insults, mocking laughter, sarcasm, dis-respect about president Obama, with a theme that he is inept, doesn’t know what he is doing, is illegally in office, wants to bring communism to transform our system of government to his Muslim roots. No factual statement was apparent the entire time. No news. Comments ranged from “.. I think he was born in Saskatchiwan…”  to ..” you know he was abandoned by both his father and mother as a child…” . This is just what we want all Americans to listen to on their way home from Saturday evening church services. 10 minutes of horrible, insidious lies and diatribe . . . against the leader of the free world . . . without any factual basis. This supposedly is offered on Fox News as “news” but represents nothing but malicious trash on the airwaves. It masquerades as justification of conservative and Republican leadership in the US by pointing out the evils of the liberals and Democrats. For anyone who listens to any of the content of the show, however, the exact opposite is true. The evil and trashy content of the show has no place in our public media.

Fox News Tracking Sheet

FOX NEWS REVIEW TRACKING SHEET

Fox News Host / Guest / Caller :
Day of week / Time slot of show:
TV Channel or Radio station letters:
Reviewer Name and city:
Review day/month/year:

Violations of “Fair & Balanced”	Violations of “We Report – You Decide”	Violations of Journalism or “News” (un-supported statements)	Mis-representing History	Anti-Christian content (disrespect, insulting, badgering, content)	Exaggerations / distortions / lies (e.g. all the democrats are saying…)	Epithets (morons, pinheads)
Checkmark for each occurance:
Totals:
Examples / Quotes:

Notes:  (include ego-trips and obvious prejudice or bias examples)

Please e-mail us at billhirt17025@gmail.com to get a tracking sheet or copy and paste from here to create one.

Framework

Fox News Isnt – The Framework

Are we all to be taken for fools??  Is our intelligence being insulted for so long and so deviously that we are like the frog in the lukewarm pot on the stove? You know . . . the one where it is heated up so slowly that the frog likes it more and more as it heats. He doesn’t realize in time that the environment is lethal after a while and he perishes. We at FNI think we are perishing as a great nation and very few people know why. We hear lots of rhetoric from talking heads and politicians about why, but we think there is very little if any wisdom there. It is surely complicated, but we are convinced a great deal of blame is on the Fox News Media outlets . . . AND on most of us for not screaming STOP! This is toxic! This is wrong! This is intolerable in a democratic society!

Here’s why.

Let’s go back to the critical terms NEWS  and DEMOCRACY. Both are being corrupted and perverted hour after hour on the Fox News TV and radio outlets. Just to say it up front . . . right away . . . we believe that the free world stands in the balance here. The US standing in the free world is badly deteriorating. So is our competitive position among other developed nations. We have slipped, for example, from first to 16^th in college graduation rate of our citizens. We rank roughly 20^th in math and other sciences.

News and more specifically broadcast news is the heartbeat of issues for a democratic society. A democracy functions on the political will of a majority of citizens. And there is a presumption that it is an “informed public” that shapes this political will. We presume that news information is the result of good journalistic practices . . . that information is corroborated . . . that it is open to respectful discussion and debate . . . and that Citizens need to be informed with news (as unbiased as possible). . . and history. Educated therefore both in school and in their media. Unfortunately, this is not what we have gotten since the Fox News inception in 1996.

Is there anyone who can deny the total dereliction of duty of Fox News media outlets on many of these counts on most of their shows close to 12 hours every day?  Slightly less on weekends, but on weekends, stations broadcast what they call “The Best of Glenn . .” ( or Rush or Sean or others), suggesting improved content, but it is some of the worst, not the best. Most of the Fox News TV and radio hosts are entertainers and not at all journalists. They are egomaniacs who do commercials and write books and sell paraphernalia to become wealthy, not to “inform” a public. The vast majority of them use language on their show that they would not allow their three-year olds to use . . . or at least shouldn’t! Where do our “News hosts” get off with frequently repeating terms like “feminazi” for anyone interested in women’s rights, “wacko” for anyone promoting care for the environment, “ignoramus”  and “imposter” for the president of the United States, “New York Slimes” for the world-acclaimed newspaper, “pinheads” and “mental degenerates” for anyone not conservative, and on and on?

Our sense is that people have been slowly hearing the disrespect, the insults, the ridicule (of all liberals or progressives), get more and more blatant on these shows . . . and no one or no group vigorously protesting these abominations. They have come to believe that maybe Fox broadcasts are not so bad. Maybe Fox News is Fair. Maybe it is Balanced. Maybe they do just report, and maybe we can Decide. If no church group seems to mind all the insults and epithets, maybe it isn’t as un-Christian as each incident seems.

To all this, however, we say HELL, NO! Most Fox News broadcasts on TV and on radio are full of intolerable trash. People have to actively listen. It is not Fair or Balanced. (There is no demonstrated liberal bias in the media. . . and even if there were, that doesn’t justify the trash in the broadcasts for any 3-year-old or any citizen . . except maybe from a disgraced fringe blog site.) A much more appropriate slogan for Fox News is “We DISTORT, You Decide”.

We encourage you to actively listen and suggest here a form that we created to help take notes. We call it a Fox News Tracking Sheet. You can use whatever helps you listen more attentively, but we think anyone with spiritual or civic values who pays attention will see quickly and very often the unacceptable content of Fox News broadcasts for a healthy society.