Who’s making up your mind? If Fox News is your primary source of information, it’s a geriatric Australian billionaire who became an American in order to legally purchase our news media. Rupert Murdoch, union buster extraordinaire, then hired a devotedly reactionary staff for his primary American broadcast outlet. If you prefer tabloids featuring multi-headed Martians for your news source, then there’s a high probability that Murdoch, a prolific marketer of rag-style publications, is doing your information gathering for you. If you choose sober publications like The Wall Street Journal, then you too are a devotee of Murdoch thought. If you’ve little time for reading but are of a business bent, then Fox Business News may well be your information provider. And even if you’re traveling to New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Australia, England, China or almost anywhere else, you won’t have to forego your favorite source of media input. Mr. Murdoch’s reach is extended by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who owns a 7% stake in News Corp - the parent company of Fox News - making Alwaleed the largest shareholder outside the family of CEO Murdoch himself.
Journalism, while not always objective, reaches its highest potential when it strives to reveal facts and truths that we might otherwise miss. Broadcast journalists like Edward R. Morrow, Eric Severeid, and Walter Cronkite set industry standards of professionalism around the notion that the only useful news is objective news. During the second half of the 20th century, most aspiring reporters followed their example. But today that principle is subsumed by a commercial one: What should a station broadcast to gain the widest possible market share in order to maximize advertising revenue?
Fox answers this business approach to the news by pandering to America’s unwashed. By asserting that the baseless blather Fox broadcasts is information available only to the chosen, Fox wins the hearts and minds of those who long for educated people to tell them they’re not as wacky as they fear they might be. By featuring reporters from the P.T. Barnum school of journalism, Fox deceives the ignorant into believing that their gut feelings are equal in validity to facts others derive from research. In so doing Fox drives a wedge between those of us who think everyone is entitled to his opinion and those who feel deeply that only their own gut feelings, confirmed and often suggested by Fox, have merit.
By virtue of his hold on the minds of an important segment of the American electorate, Murdoch induces greater fear among Republican Congressmen than even Limbaugh or Palin. Not one, regardless how moderate or courageous, dares to point out the manipulation and mendacity of Fox News.
The great irony of all this is that the man cultivating our mutual suspicions for his personal enrichment is not, essentially, an ideologue. Yes, he has strong opinions, but what he cherishes is not hearts and minds, but his next $6 billion. Yet the power he wields is more intimidating than that of Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was one man. Murdoch is an international conglomerate with no roots in the society he has turned into a pressure cooker with explosive potential. If you lack the confidence to form your own opinions, that’s not a problem. Murdoch’s minions are paid to relieve you of the burden..
No comments:
Post a Comment