Fair_and_Balanced

Fair and Balanced If mass media is not already the biggest influence on the American people today, it is quickly becoming so. Americans are drowning in it, which shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Mass media is how we as members of our society get the information or entertainment we either want or need, and it's also how we get what we don't want or need. With today's technology, it's hard for some of us to imagine our lives without our favorite media outlets such as film, radio, and television. News that a couple of centuries ago had to be passed through long distances by way of messengers, taking months to get somewhere, can now be downloaded to a person's cell phone in a matter of seconds. We are surrounded by information everyday that we have almost unimaginable access to. And that only starts to be a bad thing when the quality of the information we receive descends, when propaganda replaces objective reporting and our minds give way to the strings controlled by the puppet masters of media. As I watched Outfoxed, Robert Greenwall's attempt to expose Rupert Murdoch as one of these puppet masters and his media outlet Fox News as his set of strings, I noticed blatant examples of closed-mindedness and propaganda that are not advertised in Fox News' ironic slogan: “Fair and balanced.” What is disturbing to me is Fox News’ claim of objectivity, of being “fair and balanced,” when a look at their schedule of programming on foxnews.com (Breaking) reveals that only nine hours per day are devoted to news casting. The remaining majority of a typical day consists of editorial shows that are headed by conservative hosts. So when viewers tune in to Fox to get news, they are more likely to be bombarded with one side of an issue. And when a viewer happens to turn the television channel to Fox during the minority of the day, news is manipulated to shape opinions of those watching. As seen in Outfoxed, correspondents are asked to refer to certain subjects in a way that evokes certain emotions in those listening, a tactic known as framing (Farrelly 25). US snipers suddenly become “sharpshooters,” a word that apparently carries a more positive connotation; a Fox News contributor is asked to refer to suicide bombings in Israel as “homicide bombings” (Outfoxed). It is very troubling to think that instead of striving for honest and objective reporting, the creative minds at Fox News are thinking of how to shape our minds, how to change the words they use in order to make us look at our brave military in a positive light, or look at suicide bombings that kill innocent people in a negative light, as if the average viewer was not already admiring US Marines and appalled by the thought of a suicide bombing. It is apparent that we can’t be trusted by Fox News to have these obvious emotions on our own, so they need to use manipulation in order to force us into them. Admittedly, I went into this video with a pretty negative view of Fox News, which I already thought to be a network full of opinions and propaganda. I’m a regular viewer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, shows that routinely poke fun at the way Fox reports news, so I was familiar with the segments of Outfoxed that played the same words and phrases used repeatedly by different correspondents from the network. What I wasn’t familiar with was how these correspondents treat guests that don’t agree with their opinions. I heard things on the movie’s segment about Fox’s closed-mindedness such as “cut his mic,” “shut up,” – that one a multitude of times – and “my religion didn’t teach me that.” All of these came after the guest had or was in the process of saying something that the host did not agree with. This string of clips made me think of the mantra from our sociology textbook about closed-mindedness: “I’ve already made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts” (24). Of course, I’m not sure if everything these guests were trying to say was factual, mainly because they were barely given a chance to complete a thought. The clips suggest a mindset of Fox News that is best put by former Fox correspondent Joseph Cafosso in the same movie: “I’m right; you’re wrong – no matter what.” A closed-minded news network is almost oxymoronic to me. We expect the news that we get to be factual and objective; we expect newscasters to keep their personal feelings to themselves so that we can form opinions of our own; we expect interviewees and members of a panel to be given their time to talk and express their thoughts or state their findings; what we don’t expect is a situation where the people responsible for bringing us the facts, the “fair and balanced” facts, refuse to accept facts themselves. Before watching Outfoxed, I was already very wary about any information that I got from Fox News. After the film, my wariness is even stronger. My distrust of this network lies not with my disagreement with its pundits, but only with its blatant efforts to keep its viewers on its strings. It is very hard to trust a news network whose apparent mission is not to bring you the facts and let you decide where you stand on an issue, but to get you to stand with them. Even when a guest is brought on to speak against Fox’s arguments, they are cut off before their thought escapes their mouth. Their goal seems to be manipulation rather than information. The slogan “Fair and Balanced” represents what everybody deserves when watching the news, when they access the vast amount of information available to them. But Fox’s deviation from its own advertisement contributes to making a bad thing out of mass media. Works Cited "Breaking News | Latest News | Current News - FOXNews.com." FOXNews.com - Breaking News | Latest News | Current News. Fox News Network, LLC, 2010. Web. 18 Sept. 2010. . Fox News weekday TV schedule Farrelly, Joe. "Sociological Research and Critical Thinking." Understanding Society. 3rd ed. 19-30. Print. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. Dir. Robert Greenwald. Ryko Distribution, 2004. Online Video.