The More FOX News Lies, the More Their Fans Love Them
For as long as FOX News has been active on cable TV, we’ve been hearing about their dominance of the cable news ratings battle. When anyone has ever criticized the network, the Foxbots are always quick to remind us of that fact. It’s really no great feat, though. The rest of the country gets their news from a variety of sources, so the non-conservative audience is divided into at least seven different pieces, with the 3 major networks all easily outpacing Fox, NBC alone has more than 4 times FOX’s viewership, and the other cable offerings picking up the scraps. As I said, old news, but earlier this week a Quinnipiac poll came out naming them also the most trusted source for news. This is doubly surprising, coming as it does, on the heels of a slew of reports documenting their blatant pattern of lies.
The new year began with Fox fear mongering over the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris claiming Europe was studded by Muslim “No-Go Zones”, a claim that was resoundingly debunked. One of FOX’s so called experts went so far as to claim the entire city of Birmingham England was one, prompting British Prime Minister, David Cameron to call him a “complete idiot”. FOX was repeatedly taken to task for the whole ridiculous “No Go Zone” meme and the city of Paris launched a defamation suit against them over it.
Early in February, NBC News Anchorman Brian Williams came under fire for embellishing a story about his experiences covering the Iraq war in 2003, exaggerating the danger he was under. Williams quickly admitted his error and, for his honesty, received a 6 month suspension. Immediately, calls began for FOX to hold their staff to the same standard. In the weeks since Williams stepped down from the anchor desk, reports have come in from a number of sources exposing FOX News pundit Bill O’Reilly for numerous embellishments of his own. Witnesses have come forward saying O’Reilly repeatedly overstated his role in the Falkland Islands war, El Salvador and even the investigation into the Kennedyassassination. Yet, here we are a month later and O’Reilly is still at his desk every night.
All this comes together to explain another seemingly contradictory aspect of that same poll. Fox news is also the most distrusted news source. On the question how much do you trust ____ News, FOX received the highest percentage in the category, “not at all” with 26%.
How are such contradictory results possible? Simple, FOX viewers trust FOX, even if nobody else does. They have to. The network has spent the last two decades promoting a world view that conservatives buy into 100%. No matter how much evidence is brought forth proving that world view false, they will go on believing what they do and disbelieve the evidence. Not to do so creates cognitive dissonance, that discomfort that arises when what you believe conflicts with what you know to be true.
Republicans have been dealing with cognitive dissonance on a massive scale ever since George W Bush’s execution ofconservative economics produced the worst economic disaster in 80 years. FOX News gives them a safe haven from reality. They will go on believing and trusting it no matter what their lying eyes see. It seems the more FOX News lies, the more their fans love them. |
