Generational Dynamics World View

[David Horn]

(02-05-2020, 11:36 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 05-Feb-2020 World View: Fox News vs mainstream media

This discussion gives me an opportunity to repeat and update stuff I've written before about Fox News vs the mainstream media.

I've been following this issue off and on since around 2005.  As I've written in the past:

• Half the country is left of center and half the country is right of center.  If you don't believe this, then consider that this is the definition of the word "center."
  
  
• All the mainstream media -- CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, BBC, Al-Jazeera -- all of them are left of center.  That means they're all competing with each other for 50% of the national audience.
  
  
• Only FNC is right of center.  That means that FNC essentially has no competition whatsoever for 50% of the national audience.
  

That's why Fox News consistently gets around 50% of the audience, while all the other stations compete for the other 50%.

We've had a consistent drift to the right for several decades.  Using your yardstick, Richard Nixon would be left of center and Eisenhower, actually a liberal.  So that begs the question: what qualifies as "the center", when it moves around?  Is it a transitory thing?  If this era proves more progressive, will the center move to the left and make some of "the liberal mainstream media" centrist again?

John Wrote:Furthermore, since Fox has no effective competition, it can afford to be "fair and balanced," while all the others have to compete with one another to be as loony left as possible.

Fair and balanced?  Really?  When the news sources are fact checked, Fox is consistently shown to be extremely biased, to the point that it lies just like Trump.  And note, I'm not pointing to things that are conjecture.  These are verifiable facts they twist to meet their audience.  Regular viewers were rated only slightly better informed than folks who generally ignored the news.

John Wrote:So Fox News channel is definitely right of center, but also has any number of regular moderate left-wing commentators, including Mara
Liasson, Juan Williams, Donna Brazile and Mary Harf.

If all you watch is CNN and MS-NBC, then you're only hearing the loony news, and you owe it to your own intellectual honesty to balance it in some way.

If you do a quick run-through of MS-NBC, you'll find several former GOP staffers and office holders, like Nicole Wallace and Elise Jordan, to say nothing of Michael Steel.  In fact, the list is long.  For that matter Joe Scarborough was originally a conservative GOP House member.  I doubt Fox has anywhere near the concentration of left-of-center commentators, and zero hosting programs there.  In the straight news part of the operation, there actually are.  Chris Wallace, though certainly conservative, is one.  Sheppard Smith had to leave.  He had all he could take.

John Wrote:There are two shows that you might consider.

The best general newscast on tv today is the 6-7pm newscast on FNC, currently called "Special Report With Bret Baier."  Both Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum (who comes on at 7 pm) are right of center, but give a great deal of time to "fair and balanced coverage" of Democrats.

Are you serious?  I've watched Bret Baier, and he's far from balanced … or fair.  I've never watched Martha MacCallum, so I don't know about her.

John Wrote:The best hard news analysis show is Hannity at 9 pm.  No one would ever call Hannity "balanced."  He is definitely right of center.  But he's very much highly analytical and not loony right.  (I would say that Tucker Carlson, at 8 pm ET, is loony right.)

I started watching Hannity regularly around a year or two ago as counterweights to the daily nonsense from Adam Schiff and others who made one "explosive" revelation after another, every day, and every single one turned out to be a lie and a fabrication.  The Mueller report eventually proved that Schiff's "explosive" revelations were all lies, but Hannity showed the same thing every day.

I see you drink your Kool-Aid by the gallon.  Hannity is Donald Trump's Joseph Goebbels.  What you call nonsense from Adam Schiff is now recognized by GOP Senators as fully valid and accurate.  Please, point out any fabrication that can be shown to be one.  Generalities don't cut it.

John Wrote:A good example of Hannity's show is that he frequently had reports from John Solomon at The Hill.  Solomon actually went to Ukraine and got the proof of Schiff's daily lies, reporting on what was really going on with Burisma and Ukraine's politics.  Solomon himself began getting attacked by the left-wing media because he was too effective, and was forcing Schiff to change his story.  It was really an amazing situation.

Citations, please.  and include something that verifies your information as true or false, depending on what you claim of course.

John Wrote:So you have a choice.  If you want to just believe Schiff's crap, then just listen to CNN and MS-NBC and revel in the sewer.  If you'd like to see the counter-analysis, and find out what's really going on, the only place you can get it every day is Hannity.

John, I'm really worried about you.  How can you be that gullible?