Highbrow Magazine - Roger Ailes https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/roger-ailes en ‘Bombshell’ Is a Hit-and-Miss Attempt at Depicting Corrupt Newsroom Culture https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10347-bombshell-hit-and-miss-attempt-depicting-corrupt-newsroom-culture <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 01/06/2020 - 20:40</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bombshellfilm.jpg?itok=YX0oNn3T"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bombshellfilm.jpg?itok=YX0oNn3T" width="480" height="242" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>There might be an interesting story lurking beneath the slick surface of Jay Roach’s new film, <em>Bombshell.</em> It never quite takes off, but it never completely dips into a state of stagnancy or total dullness. It’s a glorified TV movie with a terrific cast, subpar writing, and hackneyed direction.</p> <p> </p> <p>The marketing campaign for <em>Bombshell</em> suggests a movie that aims to address the injustices encapsulated by the #MeToo movement. Moreover, given the fact that the corporation in the center of the story is Fox News, the teaser, trailer, and ads broadcast a sense of female empowerment in the midst of systematic objectification, sexual harassment, and outright ugly, misogynistic behavior.</p> <p> </p> <p>Or at least that’s the impression that I got after a few viewings of that hip, tough-minded trailer featuring Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.”</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2bombshellfilm.jpg" style="height:375px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>But what does it say about <em>Bombshell</em> that arguably one of the best scenes involves a questionable (albeit tasteful) instance where two women (Margot Robbie and Kate McKinnon) share a playful post-coital scene? The sensibility of the film is too sanitized to show the sex that happened off-camera, and no wonder: As Robbie’s character explains, she’s not a lesbian; rather, it’s implied that she’s simply a heterosexual free spirit with conservative beliefs and the penchant for a random good time.</p> <p> </p> <p>The second most noteworthy scene exemplifies the contradiction of the movie at length: Robbie (who’s playing a composite character, not a verifiable real-life person) lifts her skirt over her hips at the command of a leering, fat-suited John Lithgow playing Roger Ailes. In recent years, a great deal of fuss has been made about the subjective male gaze in filmmaking, and I hadn’t fully understood the thesis of that concern until I saw a scene like this, which is split down the middle by its own muddled intentions.</p> <p> </p> <p>The content of the scene is meant to illustrate the grotesque behavior of Ailes, and yet the scene is shot in a way that teases out whatever sadomasochistic eroticism that can arguably be found in that moment. The dead giveaway is Roach’s somewhat reprehensible use of close-ups. True, <em>Bombshell</em> is overstuffed with close-ups and medium shots, but for this scene, perhaps a more impartial wide angle would have appropriately conveyed the helplessness of the character being exploited. The composition and editing panders to the perversion of the antagonist, thereby undermining any effort to expose the inherent <em>ickiness</em> the scene might explore.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3bombshellfilm.jpg" style="height:338px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>The film never settles on a protagonist, and the storytelling mimics <em>The Big Short</em>, which was itself a poor aesthetic rip-off of the seminal movie of the decade, <em>The Wolf of Wall Street</em>. The screenplay relies heavily on telling instead of showing; the info-dumps pile up into a mountainous heap of superfluous details.</p> <p> </p> <p>Charlize Theron’s impressive transformation into Megyn Kelly notwithstanding, <em>Bombshell</em> ultimately doesn’t live up to its title because of Roach’s lack of style, perspective, and insight. In a misguided attempt to tell a story about unthinkable corruption in a particular corporate culture, the filmmakers essentially cobbled together one long advertisement for Fox News. Perhaps <em>Backfire</em> would be a more fitting title.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Christopher Karr is a contributing writer at</em></strong><strong> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fox-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fox News</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bombshell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bombshell</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/margot-robbie" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">margot robbie</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/charlize-theron" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlize Theron</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/nicole-kidman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nicole kidman</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bombshell-film" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bombshell film</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/jay-roach" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">jay roach</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/megyn-kelly" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">megyn kelly</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gretchen-carlson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gretchen carlson</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/roger-ailes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Roger Ailes</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/rupert-murdoch" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">rupert murdoch</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fox-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fox tv</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/conservatives" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">conservatives</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/me-too-movement" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">me too movement</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Christopher Karr</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Tue, 07 Jan 2020 01:40:10 +0000 tara 9272 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10347-bombshell-hit-and-miss-attempt-depicting-corrupt-newsroom-culture#comments Fox News and the Lurking Specter of Censorship https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/9089-fox-news-and-lurking-specter-censorship <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Media</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 06/03/2018 - 12:34</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/4foxnews.jpg?itok=75kuSZn9"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/4foxnews.jpg?itok=75kuSZn9" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>Opinion:<a name="_GoBack" id="_GoBack"></a></strong></p> <p> </p> <p>For more than 15 years, Fox News has become the posterchild when it comes to hush-money payouts to former employees and other litigants. Almost all of the “button-your-lip” settlements involve sexual misconduct and harassment by men in power positions at the cable network.</p> <p>If we can believe the figures released to the public, enough cash was put in play to float a small third-world country for years.</p> <p>Last March, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, the network’s National Security Analyst, added to the turmoil when he emailed colleagues he was quitting after 10 years because he was “ashamed” of what his employer had become. Implicit but not stated in Peters’s diatribe, is the lurking specter of censorship.</p> <p>He accused the network’s primetime hosts of “dismissing facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults” against the network’s targeted enemies.</p> <p>“Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law,” Peters wrote, “while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers.” </p> <p>Fox News dismissed Peters’s charges stating they were happy with their on-air people.</p> <p>Peters was the most recent to jump ship at Fox News. Earlier, news anchor Megyn Kelly abandoned the network for marquee billing at NBC. Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes had resigned amid charges of sexual improprieties, and days later Greta Van Susteren jumped to MSNBC.</p> <p>A comparison with Katherine Ann Porter’s “Ship of Fools” would not be a stretch. The novel throws together a gaggle of desperate characters for whom a second-rate ocean liner provided a steel cocoon that protected them against an increasingly hostile world. An easy comparison would be Fox News. It offered an ultra-conservative bulwark for millions of Americans who believed the three major networks had been bombarding them with liberal screeds for decades. </p> <p>Peters opined they were getting more than they hoped for. “In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine.”  </p> <p>Implicit was his fear that his former bosses doctored the news to meet the real or imagined needs of their viewers, in short, censorship. In a world where social media has crowned minutiae king, is this possible? </p> <p>Early in my career, I discovered that censorship in the hands of the powerful is insidious, and can be accomplished with relative ease.</p> <p>Turn the clock back to the late evening of July 25, 1967 in Phoenix, where racial tension had been festering for years amid allegations of police brutality. The city schools were segregated, poverty and joblessness were endemic. I was working the late-night shift at the AP Bureau, when violence erupted in the heart of the city’s black neighborhood, the start of a three-day rampage. Our six-man bureau would be put to an unexpected and unwanted test as a result of a decision by media mogul, Eugene C. Pulliam.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/5foxnews.jpg" style="height:352px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>His empire included the city’s newspapers, a local television station, and news outlets in nine states, enough muscle to earn him a seat on the AP board of directors. That night he decided the fire-bombing of a police paddy wagon, sniper shots and isolated looting was a disturbance that could be handled with a minimum of force, and his news outlets would handle it as such.</p> <p>In a few months, overwhelmingly white snowbirds, a major source of tourist income for Arizona, would begin their early migration from the north. Even a whisper that a race riot had occurred would be suppressed.</p> <p>First inkling that something was awry came when Bureau Chief Tom Aden, ashen and obviously distraught, brushed past me into our cramped bureau and grabbed the telephone. He had been given the word at home by a Pulliam minion that the AP was on its own. We were denied use of the newspapers’ darkroom and photo transmission wires, off-duty photographers were out of bounds, as was access to their news stories. This flew in the face of what made the AP work, a cooperative effort between local bureaus and news outlets. Aden was forced to import from Los Angeles a photographer and everything necessary to set-up a darkroom and photo transmission facility in a nearby motel. Our news copy continued to flow, and after a day’s delay, so did our photos.</p> <p>During the next three days a curfew was imposed, several police cars, homes and a pickle factory were torched. Looting was widespread. A 17-square block area was sealed off as Mayor Milton Graham circled the area and in an open car bull horned residents that the senseless destruction would be contained. Backing him up was a cordon of 376 policemen, joined by sheriff’s deputies, state highway patrolmen, firefighters and police cadets wearing white steel helmets because of snipers.</p> <p>Graham followed Pulliam’s lead that this was not a riot or even a disturbance but was only a “civil disobedience.” When the curfew was lifted, 280 “disobedient” residents were arrested, including 38 juveniles. A riot that really wasn’t a riot was over. Despite Pulliam’s efforts, it didn’t escape the attention of President Johnson’s Kerner Commission, which labeled it “a major disturbance,” and summoned Graham to Washington to describe what really happened.</p> <p>In 1967, one young reporter learned an enduring lesson that censorship can originate anywhere, and when hidden amid today’s insatiable, often inane social media babble it’s easy to be disguised.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><strong><em>Born and raised in Newark's crime-ridden Third Ward, although far removed during a career as a multiple award-winning journalist, Steve Bassett has always been the proud sobriquet Jersey Guy. He has been legally blind for almost a decade, but this hasn't slowed him down. </em></strong></p> <p><strong><em>Bassett has written two nonfiction books,</em> The Battered Rich and Golden Ghetto: How the Americans and French Fell In and Out of Love During the Cold War. <em>Continuing with his newest fiction release,</em> Father Divine’s Bikes, <em>readers share in his insights that earned him three Emmys for investigative documentaries, and the California Bar Association's Medallion Award for Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice. He now resides in Placitas, New Mexico with his wife, Darlene. For more information, please visit</em> stevebassettworld.com.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fox-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fox News</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/roger-ailes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Roger Ailes</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/sean-hannity" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sean hannity</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gretchen-carlson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gretchen carlson</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/right-wing-media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">right wing media</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/censorship" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">censorship</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bill-oreilly" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bill O&#039;Reilly</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Steve Bassett</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 03 Jun 2018 16:34:53 +0000 tara 8076 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/9089-fox-news-and-lurking-specter-censorship#comments Path to a Diminishing Democracy: The Threat of Fox News https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/path-diminishing-democracy-threat-fox-news <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Media</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 11/11/2011 - 13:18</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumFoxNews_0.jpg?itok=Uj0DZCNk"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/mediumFoxNews_0.jpg?itok=Uj0DZCNk" width="400" height="391" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>  </p> <p> It is by no means a novel endeavor to denounce conservative media outlets for their often sinister operating practices and wanton dissemination of agenda-driven, sensationalist propaganda, which they distribute rather brazenly under the guise of “factual news.” The rather less-than-ideal qualities of institutions such as Fox News Channel, the cable news channel owned by the Murdoch media leviathan, News Corporation, seem almost so obvious as to make writing about them largely redundant. Yet Fox News Channel has managed to eclipse other cable news networks in popularity for the better part of a decade. The picture cannot be so clear for the millions who made Fox the most viewed cable news network for the 39<sup>th</sup> consecutive business quarter this September (according to <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-most-watched-cable-news-channel-for-39-consecutive-quarters/">Nielsen data</a>).</p> <p>  </p> <p>  The tactics of conservative media sources quite transparently echo the conventions of traditional propaganda efforts and inculcation campaigns. These include the promotion of paranoid and derogatory attitudes towards those who disagree with the network's designated set of acceptable views, the relentless partitioning of the country into warring segments: those who constitute “real Americans,” and those who are so-called “enemies of freedom” and “enemies of America.” The channels also engage in the incessant repetition of familiar, pre-packaged slogans designed to rouse patriotic sentiments and shallowly evoke the foundational principles that viewers believe themselves to uphold.</p> <p>  </p> <p> Fox News Channel is also host to one of the world's most impressive collections of token slogans and Orwellian misnomers, the flagship of this collection being their infamous trademark, “Fair and Balanced.” Not even Fox's hosts manage to defend their catchphrase with any kind of consistency; they market their product as fair and balanced, but simultaneously boast of their programming's partisan qualities, exalting themselves as “the counterweight,” to an otherwise relentlessly liberal media.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3mediumfoxnews.jpg" style="width: 600px; height: 368px; " /></p> <p>  But there are more such crystallized ironies peculiar to the Fox News Channel, including Bill O'Reilly's “No Spin Zone,” and “You Decide,” the channel's election coverage slogan. This latter obfuscation strongly embodies the essence of the problem. Fox News, and the mass media in general, want its viewers to see themselves as free agents, deciding for themselves what to think. Understanding the methods of Fox's news broadcasting is essential to understanding the recent, rapid rise of a neoconservative syndrome characterized by thinly veiled tendencies towards bigotry, ignorance, complacency, nationalistic fervor, and uncritical conformity with conservative orthodoxy.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  The role that the mass media plays in our democracy is defined by the vast scope of its size and concentration. A shrinking number of companies control the operations of nearly all of the media outlets that the public can readily access. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman outlined the destructive forces wrought by the so-called industrialization of the media in their seminal book <em>Manufacturing Consent. </em>According to their model, the profit-orientation of media companies serves to promote cross-ownership of media sources by single companies, encourage the merger of smaller companies into massive conglomerates, and determine the angle and scope of the broadcasts and reports according to the motivations of the wealthy business elite, who are increasingly placed at the helm of the major media companies. Individuals engaging in a national conversation and exchange of ideas will internalize the perceptions and perspectives to which they are exposed, and the diversity of views suggested to them will be highly limited by the concentration of media ownership. </p> <p>  </p> <p> Increasingly, the directors and owners of media companies come from the big-business community, and possess a vested interest in confining the national conversation in order to serve their own needs. A telling report from Pew Research Center on the <a href="http://stateofthemedia.org/">State of the News Media for 2011</a> found that “Seven of the top 25 newspapers in America are now owned by hedge funds, which had virtually no role a few years ago”  Outside business management, for example by  operators of hedge funds, often involves consideration of non-media industry investments Some companies owning major media outlets are involved in highly politicized industries such as arms-manufacturing, the primary example being General Electric.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  Additionally, the media business depends upon the security of the company's relationship with the government and other regular sources of information. Yet this model of the media business manages to maintain the semblance of providing a forum for free and open discussion. Moreover, the sheer size of these companies and the prohibitive cost of running a media outlet that is not corporately structured renders smaller media outlets attempting to provide a public voice incapable of competing on the same level as the larger conglomerates.</p> <p> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mediumfoxnews.jpg" style="width: 550px; height: 253px; " /></p> <p>  The influence of these companies and the views of their executives on the national conversation is clear. Fox News Channel routinely issues companywide memos that instruct hosts and pundits on how to portray news stories. Recent emails leaked to the watchdog group, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201012090003">Media Matters for America</a>, have exposed Bill Sammon, Fox News' Vice President and managing editor in Washington, issuing directives to the channel's employees to start referring to the “government-option” or “government-run option” in lieu of  the “public option” during the national healthcare debate, in order to stymie the proposal's rising popularity. In <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201012150004">another email</a> from December 2009, Sammon instructed pundits and anchors to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without immediately pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question,” despite the fact that inquiries by many major groups of scientists and members of the press  had all uniformly concluded that there was no evidence that the data on climate change and the major impact of human activities on this phenomenon should be called into question.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  In light of the business orientation of media companies, it is no surprise that Fox News Channel promotes ideological agendas. CEO Roger Ailes' extensive background as a political consultant for Republican campaigns and administrations suggests even broader political motivations for the channel's broadcasting. A <em><a href="http://nymag.com/news/media/roger-ailes-fox-news-2011-5/">New York Magazine article</a></em> by Gabriel Sherman profiling Roger Ailes and the recent managerial machinations within the channel depicted Ailes as the <em>de facto </em>arbiter of Republican presidential campaigning. The article reveals that consultation with Fox News' CEO is a requisite for any candidate seeking the Republican nomination, according to sources quoted in the May 2011 article.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  The striking influence of major media's executives on the journalistic integrity of reported news has wide-ranging effects. The content influences the outcomes of congressional legislation and political campaigns. But it is also reasonable to presume that even the more liberal-oriented media companies likely engage in a limited, biased debate aimed at safeguarding the interests of their owners and maintaining friendly relations with their principal sources of information. It is sheer hypocrisy, then, for conservative media outlets to become enraged at what they perceive to be “liberal bias,” since they operate by the same business model as their rivals. The channel is a primary example of a company that engages in top-down control of agenda-driven content. The existence of bias is in general a direct result of the fact that the majority of available news content comes only from a small set of companies, managed and owned by a small set of individuals.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  While it may be granted that news companies exhibit bias, sometimes even a so-called “liberal” bias, the political agenda of Fox News Channel poses a more disturbing threat to the national public interest simply because it preys more readily on the basest human instincts. It appeals, in times of national turmoil and economic distress, to individuals' tendencies towards fear of minorities and members of communities that are perceived to be “alien.” Simultaneously, it encourages unquestioned nationalistic fervor, soliciting people to gather behind rallying cries that “America is the greatest country in the world.” The implicit notion underlying this practice is that criticism of America, its policies, and its institutions, is a kind of treason (or at least the conservative policies and institutions they construe as “American”). More importantly, the ideas promoted by the network are dangerous; enacted, they would have devastating impacts on income inequality, public health, safe access to natural resources, and the ability of Americans to coexist peacefully in their community and maintain a reasonable standard of living.</p> <p>  </p> <p>  Fox News Channel has managed to sequester and polarize its audience so effectively that, increasingly, these audiences receive less and less information from other sources. They turn toward the network to reaffirm the views nurtured and exploited by the media outlets to which they have previously turned.  According to a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2010/09/12/americans-spending-more-time-following-the-news/">2010 Pew Research poll</a>, “Four-in-ten Republicans (40 percent) now say they regularly watch Fox News, up from 36 percent two years ago and just 18 percent a decade ago. Just 12 percent of Republicans regularly watch CNN, and just 6 percent regularly watch MSNBC,” whereas “as recently as 2002, Republicans were as likely to watch CNN (28 percent) as Fox News (25 percent).”</p> <p>  </p> <p> Nationalism, bigotry, and paranoia with respect to perceived “enemies” are the hallmark of public outreach efforts employed by tyrannical regimes throughout history.  Such human tendencies have always existed,  but galvanizing the public to implicitly espouse these kinds of beliefs places a democratic society in jeopardy.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fox-news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fox News</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/conservative-mass-media" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">conservative mass media</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/republicans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Republicans</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bill-oreilly" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bill O&#039;Reilly</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/roger-ailes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Roger Ailes</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Laura O’Brian</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:18:01 +0000 tara 217 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/path-diminishing-democracy-threat-fox-news#comments