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| Opinions in Politics | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 27 2009, 10:55 PM (362 Views) | |
| +Reaver | Oct 27 2009, 10:55 PM Post #1 |
Troll
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This may belong in the debate section, but I'm not sure. ======================================= In light of the ongoing faggotry between Fox News and the White House, many people have taken many different stances about the issue. The White House claims that Fox News isn't a legitimate news source, Fox claims the White House simply doesn't like what they report as news, and many onlookers see this as out of line (Source). One of the arguments used by many to defend Fox News is that the government is violating freedom of speech by challenging Fox's legitimacy. Many claim that the government's ability to decide which sources are legitimate and which sources are fraudulent simply represents the government's desire to shut down the opinion of other parties. Bill O'Reilly personally takes the stance that the White House doesn't want to take on Fox News with the specific claim that they don't like how Fox "sets the agenda" for the stories other networks cover (Source). The White House and other critics of Fox, I sincerely hope, have no issue about different opinions. I personally supported the decision of other news networks to stand by Fox when the White House attempted to exclude them from the press pool - as that was legitimate silencing of opinion (Source). Fox's media slant - their opinion, that is - shouldn't be an issue in allowing them to report; after all, other news networks (CNN especially) have their own respective slants. Nobody's perfect, after all. The big issue, however, is when opinion begins to blend with fact. Although many see the issue in terms of freedom of speech and media, the true argument should focus on the standard of journalism. I'm not talking about opinion figures such as Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh when I say skewing the facts, mind you: those programs exist explicitly for interpreting the news through a certain lens. The real concerns are: The strong overlap between Fox's opinion shows and news segments. Allowing incorrect factual statements to go uncorrected. Ignoring factual evidence. Inviting figures with questionable viewpoints based on faulty evidence to speak on shows as "experts" Purposely skewing the facts (As a note: I understand I cite Media Matters frequently here. I would also mention they also criticize news anchors such as Lou Dobbs for their questionable reporting practices) The right to hold your own opinions is a legitimate right, but this comes with the burden of differentiating opinion from fact. Should news organizations cross that line, they stop being news organizations and start being opinion spin-machines. I would also argue that this moves onto the larger issue of the validity of opinion as policy. An opinion may be right or wrong, just or unjust, well-defended or poorly supported. In public policy, however, the "right to have your own opinion" should not be used as a reason to vote a certain way: as this leads to forcing individual opinions onto others. In the end, voters must look beyond the ties of empathy to decide which choice best coincides with the laws/ideals of the United States. The strongest example which comes to mind is the issue of slavery, but I'm certain other people here can come up with modern day equivalents. tl;dr, we have to keep opinions in check |
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| Crysta | Oct 27 2009, 11:51 PM Post #2 |
yay for conformity!
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I don't take Fox seriously. Ever. I guess in that faucet I don't consider it a legitimate news source, either, but I'd rather ignore it's whiny existence than banish it. I think the problem is that many people equate their opinions = fact. They may very well not see the difference, or they could be cleverly disguising it as simply a different style of reporting the news when they purposely get their facts wrong. And they do it get wrong. A lot. And I don't see them getting the same embarrassment the "liberal media" does when they shove their heads up their asses (which also happens a lot). You get plenty of YouTube vids of it, though. Is it wrong? Yeah. Will they get in trouble for it? No. Can the White House stop it? Probably not, and it's a slippery slope if they try.  Edited by Crysta, Oct 27 2009, 11:53 PM.
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~ Crysta, Zombie Queen
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| Sentenal | Oct 28 2009, 12:11 AM Post #3 |
When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.
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It isn't the Government's role to determine if Fox News is reporting false stories, or blending opinion with fact. Freedom of Press dies the day the Government is able to say "News source X is legit, News source Y is illegitimate." Regardless of how they present news, or what they do to it, the Government shouldn't attack it. If people see Fox News as a spin-machine, or whatever you want to call, they should just get their news elsewhere. Like Crysta said, it is a very slippery slope if they start going around cracking down on media outlets. |
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| Soja | Oct 28 2009, 12:38 AM Post #4 |
Gentle Water, Crashing Waves
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The White House is overstepping its authority with attempting to censor and discredit Fox News. Accurate or not, sensationalist or not, the factual degree of its journalism is something that's best left to the audience. The fact that it looks like the administration is attempting to regulate through information warfare is not lost on many people, nor is it appreciated. It's hurting the White House more than it's helping, IMO. |
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| +Ema Skye | Oct 28 2009, 02:57 AM Post #5 |
Snackoos = <3. It's science!
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Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are conservative. They say it themselves. Their shows are clearly for entertainment and have lots of opinions. However, saying Fox News as a whole is really bias...is really dumb. Sheppard Smith, Greta van Susteren, Brett Baier, Megan Kelly,etc. are all impartial and just report the news. I also see very little bias out of the field reporters. |
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| +Reaver | Oct 28 2009, 08:22 AM Post #6 |
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Troll
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Brett Baier Source 1 Source 2 Source 3 Megan Kelly Source 1 Source 2 Greta van Susteren: Source 1 Source 2 Of the four, Sheppard was pretty clean and Greta wasn't too bad. |
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| Sentenal | Oct 28 2009, 06:24 PM Post #7 |
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When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.
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Reaver, do you think you could cite a different source other than Media Matters? I mean, an organization who says their goal is "monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media", doesn't seem like it would be a very fair and impartial source. |
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| +Reaver | Oct 28 2009, 08:19 PM Post #8 |
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Troll
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They're also out to get Lou Dobbs too and he's MSNBC/populist/independent, but it's a fair criticism to say that I need a more varied palette of sources. Think Progress has some interesting information which demonstrates the amount of "spin" put out by Fox comparatively. So does the Carpetbagger Report, which cites a study from the University of Maryland Columbia Journalism Review. Although, granted, I find Media Matters to do a very clean job of explaining themselves. They have meticulous transcripts to demonstrate misinformation spread by certain news networks, even if their express purpose is extremely critical of Fox News and conservative news in general. Edited by Reaver, Oct 28 2009, 08:19 PM.
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| Crysta | Oct 28 2009, 10:38 PM Post #9 |
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yay for conformity!
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Just read the wiki article. More the sources linked to it than the article itself. Studies and reports more than the obviously-biased organizations. Obvious opinion shows aside, to imply that Fox is just being bashed by rabid liberals and they're the only "fair and balanced" news network is full of lulz. Edited by Crysta, Oct 28 2009, 10:39 PM.
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~ Crysta, Zombie Queen
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| Soja | Oct 29 2009, 03:03 AM Post #10 |
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Gentle Water, Crashing Waves
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I don't know. I never watched Fox News often even when we had satellite television (CNN was my cable network news channel of choice). But after the cut and while watching more of CBS (clearest basic channel we had at the time), I started to notice the left-wing bias more and more. It was subtle, but it was all in the way things were worded. Whereas in their most opinionated moments the Fox anchors just blow of a smug remark or chuckle like college brats at a frat party, CBS anchors were more sneering and condescending. Bill Schiefer is the most guilty of this; I didn't have much issue with Dan Rather, really. Katie Couric... LOL. She soapboxed so much in the first year that she even had a segment of the evening news titled "Free Speech," (quotation marks included) which was usually an anecdote followed by a definition of what you SHOULD think of it. Being who I am, I found THAT pretty offensive to my intelligence. CNN itself has gone down the tubes since I last watched; it had its correspondents out on April 15th, playing active pass defense for Obama by aggressively interviewing protesters and even shouting them down at one point. They have reached the zenith of unprofessionalism, imo. CBS has attempted to tone down their bias lately, probably due to their dismal ratings. That doesn't matter much to me at this point because I just watch the NBC Nightly News now. I don't know how much better that is, but it's not exactly MSNBC (which is as far left as you could think), so it's cool. However, the first point illustrates what I'm about to say quite succinctly: news networks will do what they have to to keep ratings up. Unless they are capable of sustaining themselves (at this point, the cable news networks can afford a slight losing streak), they will say what people want to hear. What I've seen of Fox lately has been limited by trips to restaurants with TVs in the dining rooms. Knowing what is said and posted rabidly on Youtube on a daily basis, I watched every time I went in an attempt to get some of this "right wing falsehood" being perpetrated through the outlet. Maybe I was distracted by my food or it depends on the hour of the day, because I didn't see much of it. The reason why I don't trust all the Youtube videos that get shat out, displaying Fox's misrepresentation is that the video host usually has to point it out, highlight it, dim everything else, and chain your eyes to get you to notice it. Like that one during the campaign that tried to accuse Fox of subliminally brainwashing its audience into voting for John McCain by including a faint picture of him and his wife in the collage that set the background of the title card as the letters forming the logo spiral in? Really, if he hadn't slowed the video down and pointed out the picture, I wouldn't have noticed it. Most of those videos strike me as desperate reaching. Then there are the obvious, stupid attempts, though they're more usually made by the technical crew rather than the anchors. That guy who got mixed up with the House pages, Mark Foley, that got labeled with a (D) instead of an (R) "erroneously," for example. This seems more a case of incompetence than actual malice, though, after reading the Wikipedia article, which is in some ways worse. That said, it all comes down to their audience. Rupert Murdoch probably saw that there was a large, untapped constituency for right-leaning news and decided to cater to it. Having been formerly a bastion exclusively held by the liberal elite of the United States, the competition came as unwelcome for a variety of reasons. Now it's all just a giant cockfight and the only ones losing are those who want accuracy in their news. Even if Fox News is telling the truth now, how many of you trust that that is actually the case? Trust has been lost, which is why, with the advent of the Internet, people are turning more and more to doing their own research. Bottom line: each outlet has its audience and they will do their best to please that audience. Fox News is no more guilty of it than the older networks. They just gave the older networks a reason to do it more severely. We can hope that this is the apex of a tide that will subside in time, but there's no way to tell for sure. For now, the McLachlan Group (PBS) will do it for me. 
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| Sentenal | Oct 29 2009, 03:18 AM Post #11 |
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When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.
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Radio News (and I don't mean talk shows) are my primary source of Information now, and I find them to be much superior, or at least in my area. I haven't watched Cable News of any sort in forever. |
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| Jake Marshall | Oct 29 2009, 08:44 PM Post #12 |
姚明
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Most media sources contain a ton of bias. It annoys me when people attack Fox specifically though.. as if no other source contains bias. Some are less biased than others, but the thing is who reports the news? People. All of these people have some sort of bias whether you like it or not. Furthermore, who is usually claiming one source is biased? Some other biased person. It's not really worth debating, imo. If you're intelligent, you should be able to handle any source and be able to tell the difference between facts and opinion. |
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| Conan O'Brien | Oct 30 2009, 10:24 AM Post #13 |
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SKILLNADEN ÄR DRINKABILITY
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I've always considered Fox "fair and balanced" in a completely different sense, that is they are pretty much the only conservative outlet on television right now. And the fact remains that Fox News is by far the most popular cable news network, and has been for years now. My guess is that the majority of people who tune in do so looking for a conservative opinion. And it can't be denied that this tilt has led Fox to break several stories other outlets were ignoring, like ACORN and Van Jones. If Obama was really concerned with bias, he would have addressed the hero-worship he received during the presidential race. But Obama's concern with bias extends only so far as it hinders his ability to sell his health care plan. |
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| Crysta | Oct 30 2009, 08:24 PM Post #14 |
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yay for conformity!
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In other words, in no way "fair and balanced" and more like "HELL YEAH WE FINALLY GOT SPIN DOCTORS ON OUR SIDE!" I don't like the Obama fapping either, but I figure if you support bias on one side but not the other, I think you probably lose your credibility when you say the president should do differently. 
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~ Crysta, Zombie Queen
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| +Reaver | Oct 30 2009, 08:36 PM Post #15 |
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Troll
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I suppose. But the problem is that people consider fox biased. If the only conservative outlet is batshit insane, we have problems. |
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