|
joether -> RE: FOX News Biased? Worse Than CNN? (4/14/2012 1:55:23 AM)
|
Fox News did one thing ahead of most news organizations back in the 90s: They made it entertaining. In the 80's and on into the 90's, people's attention span was dimishing while their minds became ever more bored of the stale, typical news that was aired on every network. Back then, journalists were fairly respected by Americans. Networks were losing advertising largely due to people getting their news information from other sources (as the internet started to grow). These stations had to change their attitude from 'pure journalistic quality' to 'junk journalism'. This junk journalism started to incorporate 'facts' with 'opinion' to the point that most people couldnt tell the difference between the two. This mentality did not start over night. It slowly crept into American living rooms over time.
Just like each fast food companies needed their own flavors; news networks needed their messages to be understood and watched by specific groups of people. Fox News, did this by appealing to conservatives back in the first administration of Clinton. By the time the name 'Monica' was known, FOX News had position itself as a 'politically conservative' news source. As time has past, FOX News has refined its product and distribution towards its target markets. They have in the last few years, developed and understood the psychological profile of their viewers. What they're customers like, dont like, fear, dread, crave, and so on. Unlike many other news stations, FOX News viewers are typically found to only watch FOX and be mistrustful of all other news sources.
As each news entity developed the same as FOX, so did their viewership. Even by today's standards, the viewership of each news group battles for a bigger chunk of viewers. But rather than produce good, useful information that shows the workings of a journalistic machine; we are subjected to entities whom strive to change our view points by subtle means. Its the metaphorical "How to Steam a Maine Lobster" for news. Back in the 'old days' of the press, holding a bias when reporting the news was 'the kiss of death'. Each news organizations went to lengths to seperate 'news' from 'opinion of the news source'. Today, a news bias has unfortunately become an asset to the companies and a liability to us as citizens of the nation.
We can battle it out with the range of 'smoke and mirror' related questions (i.e. "FOX is Bias" "No, CNN is bias"). Or should our press be an entity in our form of goverment that reports verifiable, legitimate, and good information to the citizens of the nation?
|
|
|
|
