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.