Commentary By Ron Beasley
Now I bitch about FOX news with some degree of regularity but deep down inside I know that hardly anyone watches it. Kevin Drum points us to this article by Terry McDermott, Dumb Like a Fox.
No reasonable person would sincerely deny that Fox has a distinct
bias favoring Republicans, and conservative Republicans especially. Even
Fox used to admit as much. When he started the network, Ailes was
straightforward in talking about his desire to redress what he saw as
ideological bias in the mainstream media. He wanted to address the same
�silent majority� his old boss Richard Nixon had sought to serve. This
is nowhere more apparent than in the guests who appear on the network.
On the day in question, other than short video clips of news conferences
or other public appearances, Fox didn�t put a single Democrat on the
air except as a foil for Republican or Fox commentators.This appears to be politically motivated, but that could be just an
artifact�the content seems political but the primary aim is much more
likely commercial. Cable news is not literally a broadcast business, but
a narrowcast. At any given moment, there are a relative handful of
people (in peak hours less than five million and in non-prime hours half
that, out of the U.S. population of 320 million) watching all of these
networks combined. American Idol, in contrast, routinely draws 30
million. Although cable news is a comparatively small market, it is a
small market with a much larger mindshare, mainly because the media are
self-reflective, creating a kind of virtual echo chamber. It is also
lucrative. Advertisers want exactly the sort of educated,
higher-disposable-income audience news programming tends to attract.Ailes has proven an extraordinarily acute businessman who has,
according to an excellent piece by David Carr and Tim Arango in
the January 9 New York Times, turned a fledging news operation
that barely existed a decade ago into the runaway market leader in cable
news and a profit engine that turns out more than $500 million annually
for Rupert Murdoch�s global News Corporation.Ailes�s most valuable insight was that sharp opinions do not
necessarily chase an audience away. In fact, they seem to have created
one. There is no worry of offending a broad audience, because there is
no broad audience to start with anymore.
Just like I said before the cable tabloid networks are not news but entertainment, McDermott:
The problem is that the news portion is very small and the opinion
portion very large. It would indeed be like a traditional newspaper
opinion-news division if the ratios were reversed.
I'm not even sure this is correct - is it really even opinion? Some is but the big names like O'Reily and Hannity know their audiences and say what they want to hear. Their primary concern is not ideology but their multi-million dollar salaries.
If they only have about one percent of the population watching them why is there the perception they have so much power? Kevin Drum:
But the reality is that almost no one is watching. Take away the echo
chamber and Glenn Beck would be about as important as a guy on a soapbox
in Central Park. Which is basically what he is.
But the reason it�s hard for political pros in DC to grasp this is that people
in Washington are constantly watching cable news. It�s really
weird.
That's why they are so out of touch. They think that cable news actually is the pulse of the nation. They think the Teabaggers are a political force because FOX said they were.
I was writing a comment to your post early this morning but found what you had written, and linked to, simply sent me down too many paths in my mind and with access to the web I became quickly lost and used up my free time so, with daily things pressing, I didn't wrote anything.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is better now to write something, as your post his further down the page, as my comment really is only vaguely linked to your post. But my early morning wanderings were triggered by what you put up and in some way have caused me to think for most of the day about the general question of how I get my news now relative to yesterday - 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
One path: I remember getting news from, as kid about to head off to sea (my da signed my under age papers, my mom vehemently against it, lots of tears), was watching TV, as now. But news was different than, I think? Other than the nightly Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC I watched the new program CBS Reports from Erie Pennsylvania, me, in Alice Munro's country, Southwestern Ontario. CBS Reports was Fred Friendly's, news program at CBS after his historic See It Now news show with Ed Murrow. I think CBS Reports started a renaissance in documentary film for TV in the early 60's.
All to say, or point you to this particular YouTube clip, a part of which was the theme for the original CBS Reports - shit we've come a long way, do you think, I can do this even after a long ramble - from Arron Copland's Appalachian Spring. The theme part is, I think, variations on songs from those interesting but now all gone Shakers and is called usually Simple Gifts, very Shaker, eh. Anyway, knowing you are a photographer, thought this version which shows one your country's other great artist's pictures would be a just a bit fitting:
The 60's theme for CBS REPORTS is at 2:28
I've vowed to get up earlier or, and this is really it, not to go down memory lane for awhile.