Gallatin Gateway, Mont.: I learned a lot about journalism while I was traveling in Montana this month.
In the Bozeman Daily Chronicle one morning, I read an op-ed piece by columnist Tamara Hall, who gushed over a Navy SEAL exercise to secure an Iraqi port."I watched the remarkable maneuver unfolding on Fox News," she wrote. "I was overwhelmed by the heroism of American soldiers and the efficiency of the American military."
Fair enough.
Then she complained that NBC did not cover this particular story. "Instead, the reporter complained that President Bush was not watching the war on television," she wrote. "His arrogance motivated me to push the remote button.
The Fox News view of the world has been adopted by much of the nation.
"CBS did not cover the story," Hall went on. "Instead Dan Rather blathered, ‘The overwhelming majority of American people have now swung around behind the American soldiers.’ Rather was well aware that support for military action had remained above 70 percent for months before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His dishonesty motivated me to push the remote button."
ABC and CNN fared equally poorly in her judgment. "The mainstream press... seize every opportunity to portray military victories in a negative way," she wrote. "They speculate and manipulate..."
This was only the most coherent and outspoken expression of a sentiment I heard and read throughout my travels.
The pervasiveness of Fox "News" as a definer of popular opinion has never been more apparent than during this war. According to a TV Guide poll, Fox News’ Shepard Smith tidily beats other cable anchors, including CNN’s Aaron Brown, in popularity. Young, glib and good-looking, Smith seems to have become the voice of the Bush War for most of America -- and the Fox News view of the world has been adopted by much of the nation.
It comes as no surprise that there are conservatives in the Big Sky Country of Montana -- although the copper miners unionized here more than a century ago, and people still remember Joe Hill. But the fact that, in some of the places I stayed in while driving through the state, I couldn’t find CNN -- and in a few places, couldn’t even find all of the broadcast networks -- was a surprise.
Yet Fox News was always there.
In the opening days of this war, according to The Los Angeles Times, an average of 4.4 million Americans got their news from Fox; 3.7 million get information from CNN; just 1.9 million tuned in to MSNBC.
In his book Harvard and the Unabomber, the Montana author and former philosophy professor Alston Chase documents how a series of myths and misrepresentations about the troubled life of Ted Kazcynski worked their way from one reporter to another, until, after numerous news broadcasts and newspaper stories, fiction started to be accepted as fact. National networks quoted national papers quoting national magazines, until the legend became more interesting than the news. In this war, Fox News has created the legend; woe betide networks that try to report the news.
The Fox News philosophy had permeated, not just the media, but the culture.
Along the Idaho border, I fell into a conversation with two men who were expressing the kind of attitude the polls tell us most Americans feel. They were intelligent, successful local businessmen, mature people who didn’t seem like war-mongers. But when the subject of the war came up, they spoke with an unmoveable conviction.
"We’ve got to get that guy," one of them said.
"He’s a bad guy; we’ve got to wipe him out," said the other.
These were not rednecks, but responsible people, community leaders, the sort of citizens who sponsor highway cleanups and fund-raisers for the local hospital. They had no question about the correctness of the war.
As we talked, in a quite serviceable steak-and-burger place, I couldn’t help but notice what was on the television at the end of the room: Fox News.
The same Fox News that was playing in the lobby of the hotel I stayed in in Belgrade, Montana.
The same Fox News that was playing in the lounge of the hotel I stayed in south of Bozeman.
The Fox News philosophy had permeated, not just the media, but the culture. My heart sank when a young woman, a member of a feminist art collective, commented, "I think we need to do this," when we spoke about the war.
Fox News has become the engine that drives the legend. Heroism, unquestioning patriotism, valor and derring-do are the order of the day. Ask whether the war is justified, if progress has stalled, if civilians are dying and you are, if Ms. Hall is to be believed, arrogant and manipulative.
In Middle America, George Bush may be running the war, but Fox News is writing the script.
Michael Ryan |
