2012
was a dismal year for Fox News. The PR arm of the GOP failed to fulfill
its prime directive: advancing the interests of Mitt Romney and the
Republican Party. It spent much of the year constructing an alternative
reality that left millions of its flock in shock when President Obama
won an overwhelming reelection. It refused to accept the facts on the
ground and denigrated polls (even its own) when the results conflicted
with the fictional narrative it was peddling. And perhaps most painful
of all, Fox surrendered its ratings lead to MSNBC.
Two-thirds of its primetime lineup (Hannity and Van Susteren) dropped
to second place behind the competition on MSNBC (Maddow and O’Donnell).
However, Fox’s travails did not occur for lack of effort. It was clearly
operating at the top of its capacity to distort and deceive. In the
process it unleashed some of the most feverishly biased reporting, even
for Fox News. What follows are a few of the worst departures from
ethical journalism by Fox in the last year.
1) Romancing Petraeus: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes tries to recruit for the GOP.
The Washington Post’s
Bob Woodward revealed that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had dispatched a
Fox News defense analyst, to Kabul, Afghanistan to recruit Gen. David
Petraeus as a GOP candidate for president. The notion of a news network
soliciting candidates for political office is a perversion of the role
journalists play in society. In response, Ailes claimed that it was “a
joke” and that he “thought the Republican [primary] field needed to be
shaken up.” Where Ailes got the idea that it was his right and/or duty
to shake up the GOP primaries is unexplained. News people are supposed
to report the news, not make it. Woodward’s story affirms that Fox News
is a rogue operation. Its intrusion into the political process debases
journalism by breaching all standards of ethical conduct. And it debases
democracy as well by exploiting its power and wealth to manipulate
political outcomes.
No comments:
Post a Comment