Friday, August 08, 2008

Yup. That Screen Grab Is From Fox News. Who Would Have Guessed?

Fox News Lies

Notice anything about the caption?

Correct. That guy with his back to the camera is Ted Stevens, the Senate's longest serving Republican.

Al Franken proved right, once again.

(h/t: Earl G., entry 6)

4 comments:

John Evo said...

You would think that as many times as Faux News has been called out on this, they would have passed the word to stop doing it. I'm sure it must have been a common tactic back in 2000-02 before people were hip to it. Now, it's just fun to catch them. Are they THAT stupid, to think they aren't being monitored? Uh... yeah. Or they just figure it doesn't matter. And maybe they are right.

bjkeefe said...

Yeah. To the extent that I think Fox is being purposeful in these little things (and I'm inclined to think it's more the case of a few overly Koolaided employees with indulgent chuckling from above, rather than a structured, top-down policy), the problem is, it works. Fox doesn't really have to worry about getting "caught" for something like this, since their core audience is hardly likely to read the lefty Fox-watch blogs.

Still, though, I think that keeping a close eye on Fox and documenting the dirty tricks and lies pays off in the long run. Certainly it makes the fence-sitters and less politically engaged marginally less inclined to trust Fox. This chips away at the base, and once you lose the edge cases, the next layer becomes the new edge. I imagine centrist Joe saying to slightly right-of-center Bob, "You know, I don't watch Fox that much anymore." Certainly, their viewership seems to be declining.

I also think that an egregious enough stunt, or a pattern of a repeated trick, will provoke coverage from the rest of the MSM. These are major wins.

It does seem to me that there's a larger awareness among the central slice of the population that Fox is not to be trusted. Even people who still watch it regularly now tend to admit the bias a little more readily if I really press them on it.

Long road and a little wheel, but it is rolling.

Anonymous said...

To be fair, this appears to be on a local Fox affiliate, not on Fox News proper. The box in the lower left isn't the usual Fox News logo, and I'm guessing the "29" means channel 29.

bjkeefe said...

Was Jeremiah Wright "just an affiliate?"

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