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Politics : The Left Wing Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (4881)	6/28/2001 2:28:41 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 6089

I missed the boat when I suggested the other day that Fox News wouldn't cover the Brock story. It was on their news and talk shows. One of the things I'm watching is their use of labels for political positions. In Win's article, Ailes was quoted on his observation that the other networks perceive the opposing camps as moderates vs. extreme right wingers. In the Brock coverage, the reported closed with defining the two sides as liberal extremists, who think that Hill was a martyr and Thomas wasn't qualified, and conservatives, who think Thomas was well qualified and Hill was a slut. So far I haven't seen just plain liberal vs. just plain conservative or ultra liberal vs. ultra conservative. The fulcrum seems to be always off center. Still pondering this. One small conclusion that I have already drawn, though, is that the Fox network has a lot of human interest stories about pets and other animals. They were really exercised about the people who lit the cat and threw it out the car window. They can't be too bad if they're animal lovers. <g> Karen

To: Poet who wrote (4881)	6/28/2001 5:03:25 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6089

Poet, there was an amusing story in the NYT magazine a week earlier that makes a good companion piece to the Fox News Network story. Talk-to-Yourself Radio: With Phil Hendrie Nothing Is as It Seems nytimes.com Talk radio seems an appropriate comparison for the normal tenor and content level of political discussion on SI, all apoplectic all the time and all that. But it is possible to have some fun with it too, it seems. Recycling my favorite bit: Hendrie described his own politics as "socialist." He voted for Gore but never let up on the man during the election. During the recount last November he had a field day, because so many of the events in Florida were nearly Hendrian anyway -- though not as Hendrian as some people believed. In November, the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard published a scornful article about the whacked-out people of Florida. The writer, Matt Labash, questioned the "citizenry's mental state," noting that "cockeyed logic" dominated the "the AM call-in shows" there. He continued: "Legions of callers suggest the election was fixed by Bush's brother. . . . After all, says one, Jeb owed his brother for not ratting him out when he was caught in the top rack of their bunk bed with a black girl. If the election is allowed to stand, many promise, there will be consequences. 'My people will not accept [an Electoral College victory],' says one Hispanic caller. 'We will revolt and go to the mountains."' Should we tell him? . . . Just before Mike is brought on the air, Hendrie has Dannger liken Matthew Perry to Bob Dylan and then ratchets up the comparison one more click: "You don't know what it is to need to do drugs; ask Judy Garland. Look, Matthew Perry is to our generation what the pope is to millions of Catholics around the world." Mike hits the ground running: "You're trying to kill him! This guy you obviously respect is trying to get help!" Mike adds: "I'm a person who's tried stopping drugs. You're saying I can use drugs if I want?" "I didn't say you could," Dannger explains. "I said I could understand if Matthew Perry does." Mike can barely find the words, and when he does, Dannger just turns another rhetorical corner: "Jesus carried the weight of the world just as Matthew carries the weight of a generation. They both- I would even understand if Jesus did drugs." Mike desperately tries to ground the conversation: "Jesus has nothing to do with drugs!" Dannger calmly explains that Mike really can't understand these things. Why? "I don't have the filter on that you straight people have on," Dannger says. "I'm a gay man and a gay journalist, and so I don't have any blinders on." But even as Mike is trying to sort out the claim of gay cultural superiority and its relationship to television, Dannger has other thoughts: "If you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, don't you think a guy's entitled to do a little crack?" Mike begins to sound like Yosemite Sam. With Mike in the eye of this one-man hurricane, the show climbs to a level of hysterical incoherence. The Dannger character has slowly brought together various culturally sensitive strands -- celebrity privilege, religious sacrilege, gay elitism, drug hypocrisy -- and Hendrie has tied them together with Mike's sputtering hysteria to create the perfect talk-radio moment.

To: Poet who wrote (4881)	7/2/2001 10:44:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6089

I have the impression that Karen read it and is doing a little in vivo experiment this week. I'm interested to see what she thinks of their spin on the news. Here are Karen's preliminary conclusions, FWIW. Straight News. I don't think that the straight news on Fox is appreciably different from the straight news anywhere else. I don't think if Bret Hume and Dan Rather exchanged scripts for a day, anyone would notice, including Hume and Rather. Many news readers roll their eyes occasionally. Hume and Rather just roll their eyes over different things. Now, the features, news mags, and commentary shows are another matter. Those are clearly aimed at telling the right what they want to hear. It seems that they get their ideas for news features from World Net Daily and their producers from the tabloids. BTW, the Republican bias is more conspicuous to me than the conservative bias, to the extent that those aren't the same thing. That, though, may reflect my own political perspectives as much as anything tangible. Fair and Balanced. Fox keeps heralding it's slogan. I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what they mean by it. I've inferred that they mean it in an affirmative action sort of way. The network has a decidedly right point of view, which seems to me to be deliberate. It looks to me like they intentionally lean to the right to the extent that they perceive the other networks lean to the left so that the net result is balanced. They sometimes feature a segment that they label as fair and balanced and they've done a good job on those particular bits, I thought. I don't see anything fair and balanced about Fox, overall, though. If the other networks lean to the left, I don't think it's intentional. They're just naturally centrist. They offer a public service so they operate in the middle and avoid offending their viewers. I have a hard time arguing with that approach. Probably they really think that what they're saying is aimed at the middle. They are, after all, educated, cosmopolitan people, who are genuinely accepting of people with accents or non-traditional life styles, for example. They assume, as do we all, that the public is in the same place as are our cronies. I don't mind that Fox consciously aims right of center, but I do find their constant repetition of their slogan a bit grating. So, Poet, I'm still watching. I find the network colorful. I mentioned earlier that I like all the animal stories. I enjoy the Hume, Bill O'Reilly, and Paula Zahn shows. And I think that I'm more conscious of bias elsewhere than I used to be for having conducted this little experiment. I dislike shouting-head shows on Fox just as I dislike them elsewhere. Karen