Masquerading as News
A story buzzing around the Internet the last few days should be enough to burst the bubble of anyone who still, for some reason, considers Fox a newsgathering organization rather than an outright propaganda organ. Former Fox editor and producer Charlie Reina sent a letter to blogger Jim Romanesko describing how a daily memo from the office of Fox President Roger Ailes sets the political agenda for the day's newscast in explicit terms, and how the on-air news operation toes the line throughout the day. The Memo, unsurprisingly, generally takes its cue from the RNC.
For all the allegations about left-wing media bias, I don't think anyone has ever suggested the Democrats were actually giving Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw a script, or orchestrating the coverage of the day's events to communicate a single, politically-motivated partisan message. That's Pravda stuff right there, showing the desperation of a party with a radically unpopular message using sophisticated techniques to rally supporters and mislead others.
The underlying problem is deeper than Fox's manipulation of news, however. Their approach is succeeding because increasing numbers of Americans prefer the simplicity of the "us vs. them" RNC storyline to the ugly complexity of the real world. Even news organizations that aren't directly manipulated by political parties are starting to understand that, leading to the radical dumbing-down of broadcast news across the cable and broadcast spectrum. Fox's approach is a shameful betrayal of journalistic ethics to be sure, but at least they're genuinely in the bag. People like Wolf Blitzer, Judy Woodruffe and Dan Abrams still think they're doing "news," even as they're passing off the most shallow, dishonest and misleading spin in grave tones of authority. The result corrupts and pollutes our public discourse in insidious and perhaps irreversible ways.
Happy halloween, yo.
9:53:52 AM 
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