[Vision2020] Fox New is the Republican Party

[Nicholas Gier]

Fox News is the Republican Party

Larry Ferro, column, Idaho State Journal, Feb. 17


I heard the announcement on the way to work. The official unemployment
numbers would be released later in the morning. Not earth shattering news
but my interest was piqued. Later that day, I glanced at the bold headline
atop the Wall Street Journal’s website: “Jobs Data Show Sustained Growth”
it read along with, “Dow closes at 4 year high; Nasdaq hits 11 year high.”


The U.S. economy, to everyone’s surprise, added 243,000 jobs dropping the
unemployment rate to 8.3 percent. Good news, big news, solid evidence of a
turnaround. CNN’s website displayed a nearly identical headline calling it
a “touchdown” for the economy. The Washington Post, the New York Times and
the Los Angeles Times all gave the story top billing.


Fox News, however, did not. The story of a Pakistani doctor detained for
cooperating with the U.S. military’s capture of Osama bin Laden (a story
I’d heard on NPR days earlier) showed front and center. Much lower on Fox’s
web page and in a much smaller font the jobs story appeared followed by an
editorial headlined in capital letters, “THE BAD NEWS BEHIND THE JOBLESS
NUMBERS.”


I couldn’t help but grin. One month ago, when the jobs numbers showed
equally positive momentum, Fox gave the news similar weight. Call me naïve
but I had to see the bias for myself. To state the obvious, an upturn in
the economy makes presidential change in the fall a little more difficult,
something Fox understands all too well.


Still, I should not have been surprised. The network’s roots began in the
Nixon White House where founder Roger Ailes worked as a paid consultant. In
a 1970 memo entitled, “A Plan for Putting the GOP on Television News,”
Ailes detailed a method of putting pro-administrative ideas on television.
The administration would create their own stories and deliver them directly
to local news stations, bypassing national networks.


Ailes wrote, “People are lazy. With television you just sit, watch
and listen. The thinking is done for you.”


I find these words particularly revealing. Ailes understood, even back
then, that people really do want someone to think for them and that almost
any political talking point can be swallowed if spun the right way. He
knows the formula well. The message must be simple, free of nuance and set
in terms of good versus evil. In Fox’s world there is plenty of evil.
Muslims, welfare recipients, illegal aliens, unions, high taxes, the U.S.
government, Democrats and Democratic presidents are just a few of the cast
of villains.


Stories with these subjects seem to provoke emotional responses in those
who do not like change and fear the world is one election away from
catastrophe. Subsequently, a solution is presented in the form white
knights: conservative policies and conservative politicians mixed with an
ample supply of righteous anger.


The nuances of social issues, the nebulous and complex dealings that must
be sorted out on often grand, government-size scales needn’t be considered.
Everything is as simple as “Little House on the Prairie” and one needn’t
think at all, just sit back, enjoy the eye candy reporters, get angry at
the incompetence in the world and vote Republican.


And therein is the rub. Fox News is the Republican Party. If you want to
know how Republicans will spin something, watch Fox. If you want to know
how Democrats will spin something, read the Huffington Post or watch MSNBC
but why do either? Why cheat yourself when there are so many actual news
sources out there? News, in and of itself, is neutral gray.


No, you say, there’s Fox and there’s the “lame stream media”.

Here, Roger Ailes should put flowers on P.T. Barnum’s grave. Like the
leader of a cult, the more he can convince you that you alone are privy to
exclusive, secret knowledge and that you’ve been downright oppressed
through the ages, the more your head nods in agreement and anything to the
contrary is immediately written off.


Are we to believe that from the time Gutenberg invented the printing press
in 1440 until Fox’s inception in 1996, all media was biased and that the
millions who ever worked in the industry secretly had it in for Republicans?


Who’s duping who and who benefits, financially speaking, if a big viewing
audience believes there is only one fair-and-balanced news source?


Still, the power of Fox is not lost on me. I know someone well who, from
the time she wakes in the morning till the time she goes to bed, is
supported by government handouts and will be for the rest of her life. And
yet, without skipping a beat, she can spout all of Fox’s diatribes, hates
the government hand that feeds her and knows without a doubt that Fox is
the only source worth listening to. Roger Ailes must, indeed, be smiling.

Larry Ferro is a chemical engineer living in Pocatello.
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