Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Instapundit + Fox's "24" = ?Instapundit on Iran: (emp add, h/t Greenwald) ... I don't understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists ... "24" creator Joel Surnow: (emp add) Every American wishes we had someone out there quietly taking care of business ... It’s a deep, dark ugly world out there. Maybe this is what Ollie North was trying to do. It would be nice to have a secret government that can get the answers and take care of business — even kill people
posted by Quiddity at 2/13/2007 08:20:00 AM
3 comments
Fox News is obviously (blatantly!) a propaganda tool - and the Fox Channel is too. Does that surprise you? And cute how Fox breaks boundaries and creates shows like "Married With Children" and then their pundits get to rail against the declining morality of our society.
They'll never run out of material.
No not surprised. But it still feels odd when a major media company is so explicitly political. That may have been the case in the early 20th century, but in the middle years, you didn't see it as much. It's no accident that a foregner, Rupert Murcoch, is doing it. Apparently political news organizations are unexceptional in Australia and Great Britain. And I suppose we'll get used to it and learn to discount biased outlets (on the left and right). But overall, I think it's unhealthy for democracy.
You didn't see it in the middle years because those years coincide with the editorial restrictions placed on radio and television news by the FCC.
Prior to the FCC the most powerful news media -- newspapers -- wore their politics on their sleeves to a much greater extent than exists today. Citizen Kane was so effective because it was essentially true.
In order to receive a lucrative radio or television broadcast license however, you must agree to provide regular news broadcasts, and they are supposed to be objective, fair neutral, or at least plausably look that way.
The result was not objective, fair and neutral news. It was biased, agenda-driven news with the biases and agendas concealed and covered up. And there is a gentleman's agreement that MSM players do not criticize the politics of other MSM players, and thus mutually endanger their lucrative broadcast licenses.
Bloggers, not requiring broadcast licenses, are not part of the gentleman's agreement, and spend a great deal of time criticizing the media, pointing out specific examples of media bias, and linking to each other's criticism of media bias, as occurs here and on other blogs that devote energy to media criticism.
You recognize bias now because you have learned and been tought to do so, but it has always been there.
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