Fox News watched its rating plunge to a 12-year low last month. When ratings drop so do advertising revenues. The anything-but-fair and unbalanced news network is fighting back. It is purging some of the most extreme crazies from its lineup in order to look a little less extreme. Nothing comes between friends as quickly as money.
Fox purges radical commentators to help its ratings and poll numbers
Fox began their “cleanse” by not renewing Sarah Palin’s contract. The obsessive newspaper-reading half-term governor said it was her idea to give up the million dollar a year gig on Fox. Yeah right. (See slideshow.)
Last Tuesday Fox announced it no longer requires the services of pollster and commentator Dick Morris, who wrongly predicted every race in last November’s election. Gone also are Karl Rove and the un-skewed polls guy, Dean Chambers who predicted a Romney landslide. Michelle Bachmann is no longer a regular. Donald Trump’s comb-over has not horrified the viewers as often as it used to either. They join Glenn Beck as too crazy for Fox.
The “cleanse” was not absolute. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee, and the Fox and Friends gang are still there and still extreme. However, Fox CEO Roger Ailes may have asked Hannity to tone it down a few hundred degrees.
New polls show that Fox is not trusted by viewers like it once was. A new poll by Public Policy Polling found that just 41% expressed trust in the network — down from 49% four years ago. More people distrust Fox than trust it. A whopping 46% said they distrust Fox.
Fox CEO Roger Ailes is a shrewd political tactician. He, unlike Morris and Chambers, can actually understand a poll and public opinion. He has sensed that the country was not in line with the Right Wing Nut Jobs (RWNJs) that have taken over the one-time party of Lincoln. Ailes was ok with that until he sensed it would hurt his advertising revenues. When the ratings fell, he decided it was time to polish the image. Money trumps everything.
Fox News is propaganda posing as news
Fox fools those who are susceptible to being fooled, into believing it is a legitimate news network. They have as their moniker “Fair and Balanced.” Fox is not fair in its coverage, and it is not balanced.
Fox was always intended to be a propaganda tool for the right who felt, without real reason, that the mainstream media was biased towards the left and Democrats. Fox was set up to pick and dice the stories it wanted viewers to think were important, while not covering stories that would hurt the cause of the right. Their coverage is tilted to fit their agenda. That means telling lies on occasion if required.
The creators of Fox employed propaganda techniques not unlike those of Hitler and the Communist countries. News at Fox is like news in Cuba or North Korea. It glorifies things that make the regime, in this case Republicans, look good, and it doesn’t cover things that make them look bad. For example, when Todd Akin made his legitimate rape remark it occupied network and other cable news networks for days, but was hardly covered on Fox.
Fox invents facts
Fox as a general rule seldom finds a fact it likes unless the fact hurts Democrats and glorifies the Right. It’s reporting is often sloppy and inaccurate. Here are just a few recent examples of false news coverage.
- Fox repeatedly reported the unemployment rate as 8.9% citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when in fact the BLS reported unemployment was 8.6%.
- Fox aired and repeated outright lies saying that the attack on Benghazi was caught on camera in real time. They accused Secretary Clinton and the president of hiding the real time video. The truth is there was no real time video.
- Fox also lied about massive lay offs in the coal industry which they blamed on Obama, and they regularly misrepresent facts about climate change to suit the science deniers that permeate the Republican Party.
The big problem with this is that 41% of the population and 99% of Republicans believe this garbage and that does more to cause the polarization in our country and dysfunction in Washington than anything.
If Republicans want to stop being the stupid party they need to quit watching Fox News.
See slideshow for a small collection of humorous anti-Fox News political memes.
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