Now it seems the fledgling FOX News Channel (FNC) has adopted a similar strategy. Each
day FNC boasts But unlike Pat Robertson’s CBN, which rakes in money from gullible home-bound Christians in the form of direct donations and bequests (yes, by some estimates, people have willed him over one billion dollars), FOX’s news shows are bonafide loss leaders, gathering a piddling audience of only 13,000 households daily, even though it has a potential daily audience (via Cable subscriptions) of over 22 million people.
Rupert Murdoch, who owns numerous local television stations and newspapers in this country and abroad, is a fitting heir to the Moonie-Method. Murdoch has used his media soapbox to political advantage. Last year he received a huge windfall in the digital-TV spectrum giveaway to the nation’s television broadcasters (valued at up to $70 billion.) Murdoch’s henchman at FOX, News President Roger Ailes, admits in one of the stories we link to below that making money just isn’t that important to Murdoch ("Viewership is not the only calculation that has meaning," he said.) Ailes, strangely absent in the FOX News barrage of self-promotion (and completely invisible on their web site), cut his "Fairness" teeth as the media adviser for George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, now best remembered for the odious and fear mongering use of the Willie Horton TV spots. Ailes cobbled together a "news team" from the wreckage of the Bush Administration propaganda machine. When it came time to hire a host for FOX’s inevitable entry into the Sunday Morning Talk Fest (FOX News Sunday), Ailes reached into the second string and picked up Rush Limbaugh substitute host Tony Snow, a cross between his mentor Rush and the velvet-fisted Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Snow was also part of the Bush administration, first working as the president’s chief speechwriter, and later as a media assistant. Rounding out the Fox News Republican Employment Team is managing editor and chief correspondent for FOX's Washington, D.C. bureau Britt Hume. You might remember him as the former tennis partner of George Bush (while he was the White House Correspondent for ABC News.) Some may argue that this is, in the end, a good thing—that there is no such thing as objectivity, and that news organizations are better when they act as open advocates, when they don't lie about who they are. You might not like them, but at least they don’t try to hide their real bias in order to accumulate a larger audience. That argument, however, is undermined in this case by FOX's bogus claims of impartiality. When right-wing political operatives control news networks, they are not only subject to the unusual pressures (and enmities) created by a lifetime of hardball politics, but seem to easily crumble when forced to choose between making money and making news. When a FOX News station in Tampa generated a forceful and damning story about a Monsanto artificial cow hormone (known as BGH or rBST, which is banned in several countries), a couple of sharp letters from Monsanto’s lawyers to Roger Ailes got the story killed, despite suspected links between the hormone and human cancer. This is perhaps the most pernicious and evil form of synergy, that over-used euphemism for news whoring. I’m not sure if the notion of FOX’s Big Lie or the fact they are so uniformly unfair bothers me more. On the other hand, I may be fretting about this FOX News business too much, given their miniscule audience. But as a teacher at the University of Minnesota told me when the school’s administration was dividing up "merit pay" and the faculty were at each other’s throat over what was really a small amount of money, "We wouldn’t fight so hard about this except there’s so little at stake."
THE NATION For another take on this story: US NEWS So much TV news, so few viewers It's lonely at CNN, MSNBC, and FNC When Andrew Cunanan was found dead on a Miami Beach houseboat last month, there was relief--and disappointment. A suspected mass murderer had been stopped, but no one would ever know for sure what motivated him. Although they wouldn't admit it publicly, news executives were among those who were let down. Cunanan's suicide ended any prospects of following a long and tawdry trial of a gay serial killer. Hearsay rules WITH MATT DRUDGE DEBUTING ON FOX NEWS, NO-STANDARDS JOURNALISM TAKES ANOTHER GIANT LEAP FORWARD. CJR How Rupert uses his vast media power to help himself and hammer his foes CJR Fox News Channel, harnessing the vast, worldwide resources of the News Corporation. Three international partnerships, broadcast sites and news rooms around the globe. Access to more reporters and news professionals than any other network. Full, fair and balanced coverage . . . The Fox News Channel; we report, you decide. Promotional announcement aired throughout the day on the Fox News Channel FAIR Behind the Times: Who Pulls The Strings at Washington's No. 2 Daily? The Washington Times, the right-wing daily that bills itself as an alternative to the Washington Post, is owned and influenced by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. But most journalists seem unable or unwilling to consider the political implications of this fact -- despite the role of Washington Times executives in the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s and the Iran-contra scandal today. Read about how Ailes & Murdoch used New York Mayor
Rudolph Giouliani to force Warner Cable to carry the FNC in New York City: |
about
its "fairness", with slogans like "We report, you decide" — and a
breath later becomes a veritable bullhorn for the Bob Dornan/Steve Forbes continuum of the
Republican Party. That FNC has so brazenly adopted this right-wing slant while at the same
time shouting loudly about their even-handedness seems like just another nail in the
coffin for the credibility of mainstream broadcast news. Indeed, FOX’s
high-production values and inclusion of East and West Coast media-cum-celebrities follows
the well-worn path blazed by other equally insipid "news" shows from NBC's
Dateline and ABC’s 20-20 to the religion-as-news shows like the Christian
Broadcasting Network’s (CBN) 700 Club. 