Agnostic.com

26 6

QUESTION Fox News Is Driving Us Toward A Constitutional Crisis | HuffPost

Looks like we now have President Hannity. Do you think Fox News is in control of America?

SteveB 7 Feb 2
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

26 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

10

I think they've been in control of a segment of America for years.

For a while, a bit more than a decade ago, I was starting to get sucked in by Fox. I completely understand why some people become obsessed with it. It really is like a cult.

@SteveB It wasn't any one specific thing. As a young woman, I didn't pay attention to politics at all. I was pretty politically dumb. And I had a lot of ignorant ideas. I also had some progressive ideas. I didn't know what political party I was affiliated with. By the time I decided to try to figure it out, I was working at a local TV news station - a FOX affiliate. One of the friends I met there was a fan of the Drudge Report, and I checked that out. He also gave me a Rush Limbaugh book. I read the book and connected with a lot of it. I had already been a fan of PJ O'Rourke and it seemed up that alley, but not as funny. So I started watching FOX because I was already a bit inclined to believe it was more trustworthy. And when the hosts got nasty, I found it strangely satisfying. I can't really explain why watching it felt so empowering but it did.

So what changed? This was all happening around the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. I had always liked Clinton, and I was finding myself put-off by the FOX coverage. And little by little I was finding points of disagreement with people like Bill O'Reilly. I had also picked up some other books on politics and was expanding my understanding of the world. I don't really remember what they were, but I was branching out.

Also, at work, behind the assignment desk where was a bank of TV screens that monitored all the other channels. I could stand and watch, in real time, how each one covered the Clinton issue, and what else they were covering. I had really bought into the "fair and balanced" slogan and thought that I had been watching the "most trusted name in news." But little by little I started catching them in hype, and hypocrisy, and I just started weaning myself off it. I remember that I used to like Tucker Carlson's show, and Rachel Maddow would often be a guest. And I was finding common ground with her more than Tucker.

It took a few years of reading magazines, websites, and books from a variety of perspectives, and watching a variety of news programs to finally "find myself" politically. FOX was where I started when I decided to educate myself about politics and national events, and at the beginning, I thought it was making me smarter. But branching out shook that notion.

@carlyhorton I can so relate.

@astardrifter I'd like to hear your story 🙂

@carlyhorton later when I'm sober. 😀

10

I have met the enemy, and it is us.

It's that goddamned constitution. If we would get rid of it, there'd be no constitutional crisis ever again.

@Duke Yeah! Pesky Founders and their high-minded ideals. Bunch of damned radicals. Nothing but trouble.

@KKGator I want my Queen Mum...

@Duke lol

@Duke The Constitution definitely needs an overhaul and it better be us who do it. The Koch Brothers are trying to get a convention off the ground right now.

8

In many rural areas Fox News seems to be everywhere. Fox News + AM talk == brainwashed people.

My grandfather died a few years back. For the last 5 or 6 years of his life he would only talk about things he heard on those outlets. He was truly lost to that world. You had to try mightily to steer him to some other ‘normal’ conversation.

The killing of the fairness doctrine in then 80s contributed mightily to the rise of fox and others.

Ohub Level 7 Feb 3, 2018
8

Hannity is a buffoon. Main stream media needs to start reporting on the lies on FOX. It is the propaganda machine of the Trump administration. Lies and slander should be illegal

Theo Level 2 Feb 3, 2018
8

Trump is clearly owned and manipulated by Putin. trump has basically turned the United States upside down/inside out. The fact that Fox is working hand in hand with Trump only adds to the madness. Speechless.

6

We've been in a constitutional crises ever since the fateful night of 11-9

6

The news media loves to report on itself. That way it can inflate its importance, set up straw men to be subsequently knocked back down by itself. They fill up the pot, stir up the pot and dump file pot out when its time to refill the pot with something else. Sometimes the media screws up and actually informs us of something we needed to know about. The school lunch menu is a good example of just such a mission accomplished. Only the Supreme Court, Congress and/or the Executive branch can create a Constitutional crisis, and only they can resolve it.

@SteveB you know it's entertainment when a news show puts celebrity gossip over world news or one of their top "news" pieces is to interview someone who has written a new book or starred in a movie.

@SteveB that was a legal decision so thet conveniently do not have to report truth

6

Lots of these large one-man companies lose their personality when the founder is out of the picture. Rupert Murdock is 86. He will be out of the picture within a few years. I suspect Fox will become an also-ran within 8 years of that. The damage he has done is immense. I am sure he sees it as a big win for him though, and I guess it is when you look at it through his lens.

Sorry, Sinclair is spinning up. They are to the right of Fox - buying up local stations to make their propaganda seem more believable.

@jeffy You are right about Sinclair. On the other hand, Joe McCarty was a BFD and then overnight he was made into The Black Scourge and was hated everywhere.

5

The 2018 elections can't come soon enough.

5

Yes. Hannity is Trump's brain.

That says alot

5

Fox News' numbers are anemic - as are the numbers for most news channels - they just happen to have the least anemic numbers. Look at their audience demographic as well. Just a bunch of angry white "get off my lawn" seniors that will be leaving the gene pool soon.

But with 49% of people not voting - these nut cases become a major issue.

4

Fox news has tumbled before our eyes.. They are presently the mouth piece for trump. Nixon was so upset with the liberal news media at the time, he called for the formation of a news channel to be created in the basement of the WH and YES it was called or actually coined as "Fair and Balanced"
Created by non other than Roger Ailes. Fox became huge and now has fallen to a level of the basement operation.

EMC2 Level 8 Feb 3, 2018

@SteveB Yes Steve, not many people are aware of this, At that time we hippies were viewed as liberal communist and the radio AM stations had a ton of liberal talk shows. Then came FM and Nixon was not happy he was being unveiled, It indeed was Roger Ailes who created Fair and Balanced news from the WH.

@EMC2 Long live us liberal hippies!

You're absolutely right about the origin of Fox News. It was created to be a propaganda outlet and it certainly is. It's worse now than it ever has been, and I keep thinking that they HAVE to finally jump the shark eventually, but they never seem to. It's stupifying. But I disagree that Fox is Trumps mouthpiece. I think Trump is FOX's mouthpiece. Trump doesn't have an original thought in his head. He has absolutely no idea how anything works, and he relies on Fox to tell him how to feel and how to react.

4

Newspapers are about money like everything else so what do you expect?

No, you're talking about broadcast news. Printed news (NYT, WaPo) are barely staying afloat.

all tv is about money

@astardrifter NYT and Wash post are seeing a huge spike in subscription sales. These are the most loyal investigative journalist newspapers . The Post is the one who broke Pentagon papers and Watergate,

@EMC2 That's why I subscribe to both.

@astardrifter And to think such excellence is news is referred to as fake by the illiterate world.

the news is bias and people are corrupt

3

Fox is not in control of America, but that propaganda organization is badly damaging and threatening our democracy. It is an entirely reprehensible organization which has NO redeeming quality.

3

There is way too much political control of the media these days and sloppy, cheap, non-critical journalism. In fact investigative journalists (who actually break the world-changing stories) seem to be a dying species - what we have is a bunch of reporters who just churn out stories based on what is told to them by their backers or what they think their audience want to read. They also dumb-down stories and are so scared of showing bias that they give credence to opinions that are just plain wrong and which nobody in their right mind supports - e.g. the way they can't report climate change without caveating each report with words and phrases that make it sound that it isn't happening. Climate change is happening and the vast majority of people who study it say that it is man-made ... end of. But just watch the news reports try to fudge the issue and make it sound like it's a 50/50 thing.

As they say “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

Most media is owned by Republicans. They are Republicans because they share the same vision - absolute greed. Even NPR is getting taken over held hostage by the threat of budget cuts there are more and more one sided nonsensical fabrications spread to fertilize the increasing ignorance in this country the Republicans are creating - look what they are doing to the Department of Education. This is bad.

3

Over simplified answer, but, yes.

3

All of this stuff works in pendulum. The conservatives are in charge for now, there is a lot of push back from the atm, let them shine for now until the poles come through. Soon enough the revolution will come.

I wake up every day hoping that's true. I am eagerly anticipating the elections this year. We have got to get this disease under control.

@Condor5 it really is a disease too. I'm assuming you've seen my theory of human consciousness working as an organism evolving?

@MadHadderoll actually, no, I have not seen that, sounds fascinating. Where do I find it?

That has been the pattern for all of American History, the problem I fear is that if the pendulum swings too far to one side, will the chain then break?

I think it's different this time. The Republicans have a corporate memory of their failures and are systematically correcting all their prior mistakes. Get rid of the fairness doctrine, gerrymandering, voter suppression, electronic voting machines, foreign influence and probable vote tampering. Democracy is hanging by a thread right now.

@Davesnothere it's suppose too. Nature doesn't see murder or morals - feast or famine.

@MadHadderoll I don't see what Nature has to do with the structure of our democratic process

@Davesnothere human beings are animals.

@MadHadderoll while that is true, democratic society is not a by product of "natural law", but of social mechanism.

You seem to be putting forward a notion of social sociopathy. Global Thermocuclear War as a simple by product of nature, and not the foolhardieness of human invention and lackof control.

Seems like a cop out to me.

@MadHadderoll Yes and a maple tree is a plant.

@Davesnothere Are animals not social creatures? Do they not communicate in their own hierarchies? Social sentience does not prevent murder, rape, economic disenfranchisement, slavery, bigotry, etcetera. Are you assuming that there is not a social sociopathy? Do you believe humans are inherently good? We're inherently savages, and just because we're intelligent enough to build tools does not mean we are above our station.

@Davesnothere "social mechanisms" as if "free will" is a reality - everything you or I are is just a build up of chemical reactions that sure, we can discover and learn to manipulate - however, these systems that make us up are still primal at this time.

@MadHadderoll While that might be true of your or mine as far as a chemical reaction is concerned, it does not follow that it would be so for the social process, wherein you have multiple people with multiple "programed" reactions, which then interact.

If your premise was correct, then everything would be predictable by an algorythm would it not?
Seems a vast oversimplification based on the neuroscience of our brains.

Why would you assume I make such assumptions about humanity? They also have nothig to do with the issue at hand. You won't find much argumment fromme that the barbaric is thinly clad in humanity, take away electric from the populace and watch what happens.

But I fail to see how your extrapolating those ideas as some agurentee that any social construct is designed, by nature, to fail. That would go against the survival instinct.

@MadHadderoll it is an interesting way to look ath things though, an interesting conversation. Rather pessimistic rather than realist.

If you embrace such an idea, what prevents you from such deep depression you just give up any hop[e for any future other than nuclear winter?

2

We have windbags tell the Man Baby what to do.

2

Manipulation is the name of the game. Lets concentrate on that and forget the big picture, right?
Our planet is on the verge of collapse and here we are playing the blaming game. We are our own worse enemy!

2

I don't think Fox News directly but they're being a tool to control the fans...

I've been reading books about Scientology and watching Leah Remini's show about it, and all of the cult-like tactics and appeal of Scientology are so shockingly similar! In my opinion, Fox News is a cult.

@SteveB You're right. He does. Luckily, that influences an increasingly smaller segment of the populace.

2

Id say no. Conservative power is waxing, and with it the power of conservative news. With the proliferation of "fake news" cries is has dramatically improved the power of Fox among hardline conservative viewers. That being said I doubt anyone can predict Lord Chesters moves, at least his non tantrum moves.

1

Fox News is merely a tool being used by Wealthy Elites to re-make the U.S. and the world into a Plutocratic Totalitarianism.

1

We knew it wasn't the drumpf because he has no policy or ideas of his own. However, he can't control his own emotions, so we cannot expect someone else to do so--not Kelly, not Pence, not Hannity. I suspect Melania would just as soon see him assassinated so she doesn't have to interact with him in public. It's already out that she doesn't deal with him in private. (shudder)

1

I avoid watching Fox like the plague.

1

All empires must come down. And always from within, so...

@SteveB Every empire on earth was created to last a 1000 years. Then reality squatted on top and something else happened.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:20620
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.