Like Crispin I am exceedingly skeptical of "this gleefully publicized notion" that watching FOX News makes you more ill-informed than spending 365 days a year locked in a tanning bed, and since the whole thing smells desperately of the received opinions of competing cable news, we can take it with all the grains of salt at the bottom of all the bags of pretzels in the world. The most prominent example in the press release abstract?
Among other topics, New Jerseyans were asked about the outcome of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East this past year. While 53% of New Jerseyans know that Egyptians were successful in overthrowing the government of Hosni Mubarak, 21% say that the uprisings were unsuccessful, and 26% admit they don’t know. Also, 48% know that the Syrian uprising has thus far been unsuccessful, while 36% say they don’t know,and 16% say the Syrians have already toppled their government.Those FOX dummies! But before all you Jon Steward fans set to congratulating yourselves over your incisive insight into Egypt, you may consider that there was no "government of Hosni Mubarak"; that Hosni Mubarak was merely the head of a military government; that he was ultimately deposed by the military; and that the military is still the government. Now that is not nitpicking. What "New Jerseyans know", except of course for those who watch FOX, is fundamentally incorrect, not simply a bit off on the details; it reflects the banal, uncritical, deeply parochial, spectacle-obsessed hack journalism of USA Today and MSNBC and the Sulzberger Picayune . . . in other words, this poll reflects that routine FOX viewers are not necessarily familiar with the same canned bullshit as CNN viewers. Well, okay. Sure.
But the real finding is that the results depend on what media sources people turn to for their news. For example, people who watch Fox News , the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all[.]
I find FOX grotesquely polychromatic, more garish even than my beloved NFL, which is saying something, but have never understood this idea that it represents some sort of vanguard of media degeneracy; what FOX resembles more than anything else is not some Brave New World, but a thoroughly retrograde aesthetic; it is local news, circa the mid-eighties, from the ambush interviews to the Satanic Daycares (or whatever, their missing-girl equivalents) to the breathless consumer reviews to the--and believe me, a Pittsburgh boy recognizes it well--charming, campy provincialism of the whole proceedings. FOX is the bad old days of broadcast, and the characters it pimps in national elections are the glorious blowhards of local politics writ large; what is Rick Perry if not a school-board president; what is Gingrich but the minority-party city-council smartypants who'll never be mayor?
49 comments:
Of course FOX is aesthetically contemptible. But if it resembles the bad old 80s, well, it's because that's when the FOX aesthetic got off the ground. The news really has been the same for thirty years.
Man, I don't know. I think the NFL is more garish. Shep Smith may have run a woman over, but even FOX would've canceled his show if he'd been thrice accused of rape.
does monsieur believe the rumors about rick perry being in the closet?
"Sulzberger Picayune" LULZ!!
Fox news is a channel for the proles. Of course the elites love to look down their noses at the proles -- it is the sport of rulers from time immemorial. If you cannot create social distinction and use it to get women, what's the point of power?
I also doubt strongly that the correlation that study found shows causation. Rather, it is a selection effect. Watching Fox doesn't make you ignorant or stupid. Being ignorant and stupid makes you likelier to watch Fox.
Proles are, generally, stupider and less well informed than our educated elites. That's why they are proles. If they loved learning or were good at it, they'd have been sucked into the university-industrial Establishment, and molded into good little elite ringwraiths, totally up on Rachel Maddow's latest maunderings.
Yeah but hating on Focks Gnus lets PowerNoggin "leftists" trot out their favorite supposed put-down:
REACTIONARY!
It's a great come-back to make up for those dweeby schoolkid years when stuffed into lockers and made to wear KICK ME signs.
"the glorious blowhards of local politics writ large"
Hmm ... why does that sound so familiar?
's OK, though - I'm takin' the unconscious lift as a compliment ...
fox & friends story line-up from this a.m.:
war on xmas: no caroling in the post office
war on the pledge of allegiance: dicer in espanol? si o no? oh hell no.
war on Vets: "hawaii 5-0" set at pearl harbor disturbs some vets
war on america's greatest hero: donald trump drops out of...something.
but no, it's not "worse" than cnn, msnbc, abc, etc.
standards have changed in adult...
Re: Newt never becoming mayor.
From your mouth to God's ears.
Was ever a politician so well named? It's almost a shame the other GOP candidates don't have first names describing their major features. I'd love to watch a debate between Rabid Perry, Space-chameleon Romney, Cuckoo Bachmann, Halfsane Paul, and slimy old Newt.
It's not like yellow journalism was invented by the guy for whom the greatest prize in "journalism" is named, or something.
News is entertainment, and it’s about profit like any other business. Television also shapes American culture. The great NYT isn’t any better and the “It rained last Thursday” News Hour is overrated. How many times did they have that Schmuck who writes glowing books about American presidents on where he was regaling us with tales about that wonderful mass murderer Truman? The best place for television is the bottom of the bay and the NYT is great as a liner for your cat box. Oh yeah, and movies suck too. So do most books. What are you going to do?
Wasn't the Arab Spring supposedly fueled by social media like Facebook and Twitter and IM? Why the fuck are we discussing cable fucking news?
Also this just in: the Egyptian revolutionaries will star in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie about coping with the loss of a loved one.
"Wasn't the Arab Spring supposedly fueled by social media like Facebook and Twitter and IM? Why the fuck are we discussing cable fucking news?"
lol
foxnews is funnier than cnn or msnbc and definitely funnier than the newzzz hours ...
foxnewzzz reminds one ofthe newscasts and commercials in robocop (one of the only movies that doesnt suck)
Every time I read the phrase "Arab Spring", I think of those old Irish Spring soap-ads.
In this case, the screenplay would show a bunch of towelheads assiduously abrading their left-hands with sand ...
On a more serious note, I wonder what ol' Paul Bowles would think of the "Arab Spring".
I'm not thinking of "The Sheltering Sky" here .. but rather of this short story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Episode
In this story, PB shows more understanding of international relations than Hillary, Zbigniew, and Henry have collectively amassed.
"To the best of your knowledge, are [the OWS] protestors mostly Republicans or Democrats?"
Oddly enough, 14% of Fox/MSNBC viewers went with "Republican".
The same percentage of Daily Show viewers believe that the protesters are "mostly" "both". Innumeracy, or a sly commentary on the fungibility of American political entities? Who cares.
"Reactionary." People use it to mean "counter reactionary" these days. Poor and kwa?
"Was the Syrian uprising successful?" No but NATO, MI6,CIA and their mercenaries are working on it. I can't do the funny.
@demizel
Well, the job in Lybia is finished, and those guys gotta put bread on the table each day, no?
Capt'n Obvious
ex-nomination
the term coined by Roland Barthes to refer to the way in which the bourgeoisie remains 'anonymous' by succeeding in presenting its ideology to us as 'common sense'. folk devils and moral panics According to Cohen, certain groups periodically become the focus of moral panics. They are labelled as being outside the central core values of our consensual society and as posing a particular threat to them. The groups investigated by Cohen were the Mods and Rockers - today, New Age Travellers or those who attend raves could be seen as their modern equivalent. The 'central core values' which such groups transgress against are argued to be the norms and values which primarily serve the interests of the dominant classes. The media, in particular the press, whip up a moral panic which is coupled with calls for strengthening the forces of law and order. According to this view the Criminal Justice Act 1994, with its legislation specifically targetting travellers and raves, is the response to the moral panic in the media.
Silly contrarianism as well as ignorant about Egypt. To begin with Fox News can maintain an 80s aesthetic (I defer to your superior intuition for these things) and yet be a mouthpiece for propaganda. Second, just because CNN has disseminated what you believe to be an error of classification does not mean that Fox viewers who disagree are ipso facto correct. Obviously they can make a completely different ignorant mistake (and are almost certainly doing so). Your formulation is an elementary logical error. Finally, Mubarak was not the head of a military regime. His NDP was a real power center with huge numbers of cops to prove it, and cannot be described either historically or functionalistically as military rule. Ergo, his fall was meaningful, and it seems beyond question that it was the crowds who toppled him. The army just slid into place behind him is all.
Dear Alert Readers,
I have had recently added to my vocabulary the useful term "newsblonde".
Spy Magazine died too young.
In service to Eye and Peacock,
Rocky Rococo
Archvillain
Aeolus -
You made me nostalgic for the Egypt of Justine and Nessim ...
... and dear old Pursewarden, of course ...
At least Fox occasionally puts on KRS-One
Damn. I thought I won the thread for the first time evah, and no one even responded to the post.
sadness.
lucid, please accept the Putzer Prize of Commenting. We apologize for the oversight.
Sorry, lucid. Yours was funny and clever, indeed, but I'd have to give the prize to Aeolus with "...it seems beyond question..."
Now that's good stuff.
It's good to see that Karl continues to relive the 8th grade.
Have to admit that his kind of smug, reactionary "Humungus" style small group power gaming is one reason "anarchism" is distrusted by many. If I saw a gang of (as self defined) Karls running towards me down the alley, I might be glad that 911 is not a joke for a white boy like me. Even iof that makes me less "manly" to the likes of Karl.
Of course, Karl was probably the swirlee, not the swirler, but that's the value of the intertubes for TOUGH GUYS like Karl.
What Aeolus said.
Oh poor Brian... did I hurt your Feminist Ego?
I do really admire how you project your childhood bad experiences onto me, and blame me for those experiences, and assume that I'm the guy who stuffed kids into lockers.
You've got a real gift for erroneous e-shrink gambits, you know that, Briney-O'-the-Sea? Keep it salty, Bro!
Well, at the most I'm Finland to Karl's nasty Fight Club Hitler, but I will say this--if bashing Fox News makes you a liberal elitist, then Orwell was such an elitist. True, he had a lot of sympathy for his porn-hungry proles, but he also blamed them in part for the way of the world. Of course, he pointed a hell of a lot of fingers back at the lettered class, which means we can either feel superior to him or see him in us far-less-talented moody bloggers for whom no amount of aced spelling tests and reading comprehension scores could bring us cheer.
Fight Club Hitler! I dig that. Probably makes Briney feel all validated too! Win for everyone!
I would think it might be a little bit wise for Briney to expand his imagination and think about how far wrong he goes in reading my comments. Maybe he ain't got the noggin horsepower though, or maybe it's busied in service of ideological warfare rather than wondering whether he might be mistaken in his interpretations of others' comments.
"Fight Club Hitler," had I chosen a more entertainingly inapplicable program or, God forbid, got so drunk I re-entered grad school, would have to be the subject of my thesis. Not only does it incorporate real anarchist hx of thuggishness but it entertains the parallels between anarcho-fashion and fasco-fashion, such as liking to lead from the front and wearing black, and taps into the fear of the institutionalist liberal, minarchist, and power socialist alike--the fear of the undifferentiated mob of the unfit, unwelcome, and impolite.
Easily my favorite coinage of the day. That one's going in my "bring up while drinking with interesting people" pile.
So, Y’all is sayin’ that the reason the Egyptian military didn’t slaughter the protesters is that the military decided to let the protesters do their dirty work for them and then they just slipped in behind them? LOL. Yeah, that sure is meaningful.
Haha! Lulz! 'cuz the establishment never co-opts popular resentment in order to maintain power under a diff'rent facade! ;)
@cuneyt
Nu, niciodata.
Capt'n Obvious
By that standard there has possibly never been a meaningful transition of power since the advent of settled society and could be no meaningful transition except by moving from state organization to anarchy.
Fox Headline: "Seal Team 6 finds and kills Santa in North Pole compound"
Subheadline: "Obama calls in drone strike just to be certain"
"13 feared dead in Wichita Santa Claus suicide bomb (War on Xmas)"
"Sniper kills 13 in Kansas XMas day parade massacre (War on XMas)"
"Gen Jon Lipstein of ACLU's 5th Brigade Detained! (War on XMas)"
"Hannity Kidnapped by rebel ACLU forces in brutal War on XMas"
"ACLU plants IED in Turkey, killing 35 carollers (War on Xmas)"
Sources say blast exploded during second verse of "Oh Holy Night"
War on XMas spokesperson Diane Riehm found in DC spiderhole
End of DADT allows gays in military to openly fight War on Xmas
747 Full of Santas destroyed by hipster fired SAM in War on XMas
Aeolus,
It’s not a standard it just seems likely that that’s what happened in Egypt. After all, the Egyptian army is now the government and the Egyptians don’t seem very happy about it. But I would tend to think that considering what governments actually are and do that moving to anarchy wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. Not that I think moving to a state of anarchy is going to occur any time soon if ever. Cap’n Oblarma recently tried to use OWS to his own advantage even though he is the president of Wall Street in a more subtle move than that of the Egyptian army, it’s just what leaders do and one reason why I think anarchy wouldn’t be so bad.
@aeolus
French Revolution of 1789:American Revolution
Russian Revolution of October 1917:
A) French Revolution of 1830
B) French Revolution of 1848
C) Russian Revolution of February 1917.
Capt'n Obvious
Hey!
Thank you so much for posting this. Honestly, I've been an avid reader of your blog and it just amaze me how you manage your blog. Anyway, I think FOX news is much better, I dont know I think I just like how they deliver the news.
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