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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMy personal Fox News nightmare: Inside a month of self-induced torture.
I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Here's what happened when I watched 3 hours of Fox every day for a month. By John Haggerty-snip-
Thus, on Oct. 1, 2013, I sat down on my couch and, armed with nothing but a remote, vowed to consume three hours of Fox News programming a day for an entire month, while strictly abstaining from any other sources of information about current events. I couldnt sample all of Foxs wares, of course, but after looking at its lineup, I chose three shows to concentrate onFox & Friends, because it seemed like it might be representative of the networks populist, aw-shucks conservatism; Shep Smiths News Hour, because Smith has a reputation as being the straightest shooter of the Fox anchors; and, of course, the networks browbeater-in-chief, Bill OReilly.
-snip-
That morning, one of the Fox & Friends headlinesquick stories that merit only a few seconds mentionwas that that salmonella outbreak had become so severe that furloughed CDC workers were being recalled to help deal with it. My eyes widened in surprise. What? A salmonella outbreak? I had been watching Fox News for an average of three hours a day for eight days, and this was the very first I had heard of it. I was even more disturbed by the casual tone of it all, as if they had been discussing it for weeks, and I had just missed it. My firstand perhaps slightly feveredthought was that the network had soft-pedaled the story because they didnt want to give the impression that furloughing a bunch of agricultural inspectors might have been a bad idea.
It was at that moment that I realized that Fox was simply not telling me thingsthings that, arguably, might be good for me to know. Such as, just to pick an example, that eating a certain brand of chicken might cause me illness or death, and that the problem was sufficiently dire that government employees were being recalled to work without pay to deal with it. It was a very disturbing moment, and I immediately began to wonder what other matters Fox had chosen to keep me in the dark about.
Perhaps its time to discuss ignorance. One of the interesting things about Fox News, one of the things I hadnt anticipated upon entering into this venture, was how little actual news the network disseminates. There is a lot of national political coverage, most of this devoted to the damage that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are inflicting on our country. Beyond that, however, Fox stays true to its Rupert Murdochian tabloid roots. There is plenty of coverage of police chases and freak accidents, but very little else in the way of substantive stories.
The rest, good read, and funny at times: http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/my_personal_fox_news_nightmare_inside_a_month_of_self_induced_torture/
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My personal Fox News nightmare: Inside a month of self-induced torture. (Original Post)
JaneyVee
Feb 2014
OP
shenmue
(38,506 posts)1. My condolences
Yipes! What courage!
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)2. Seriously! 3hrs of FOX is one thing, not watching or reading any other news is another.