It’s propaganda, not news

by | May 22, 2017 | Editor's Blog, Politics | 3 comments

Back in 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama tried to exclude Fox News from White House coverage. At one point, he gave interviews to every major Sunday morning news show except Chris Wallace on Fox. Conservatives, of course, howled. Obama was right.

Today, Trump supporters compare the Obama administration’s response to Fox News to Trump’s treatment of the rest of the mainstream media. The difference, though, couldn’t be greater. Fox News has always been a propaganda outlet, started by a Republican political consultant with the goal of firing up the right-wing base and promoting biased stories that often had no more than a grain of truth.

Roger Ailes, who died last week, had little interest in finding the truth. He had every intention skewing the truth to skewer Democrats. A veteran of the Nixon White House, Ailes created a partisan version of the news that uses innuendo and half-truths to play on people’s fears and biases to stoke the partisan divide. That’s a big part of Nixon’s legacy: Truth is in the eye of the beholder.

For a large part of the Republican base, Fox News’ version of the truth became gospel and conspiracy theories took the place of real news. They questioned Obama’s nationality and insinuated that he is a Muslim. The created the silly War on Christmas, perpetuating the myth that Christianity is under attack in America. They turned tragedy into scandal by fanning the blames of Benghazi.

Now, Fox News commentators are pushing a story that a Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed in a botched robbery was actually killed because he was passing information to Wikileaks. The story has been totally debunked and the family of the young man has asked people to stop. Nevertheless, Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity have no problems spreading lies for political gain. The whole episode exposes the disregard for the truth that’s been driving the Republican base since Roger Ailes started his propaganda machine.

Finally, conservatives are starting to call out Fox. Since the election of Donald Trump, Fox has been his primary defender. While other outlets report on the problems within the administration, Fox focuses on leakers and downplays everything from ties to Russia to using the office of the president to promote the Trump brand. Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post says, “It has become the purveyor of falsehoods and propaganda, not a member of an independent media tasked with holding elected leaders accountable.” I would argue that’s what it has always been.

The Obama administration was right to take on Fox News. Fox was then, and is now, a propaganda instrument. Ailes brilliantly confused commentary with news and argued that because he had a few real reporters, the network should be taken seriously. Hindsight is 20-20, but it should never have been given any legitimacy. It primary purpose was always to spin the news, not report it. It’s been bad for America and will continue to do damage as long as we treat it like a news organization instead of the propaganda organ that it is.

 

3 Comments

  1. Arthur Dent

    That there is such a thing as fake news, that there are so many channels of internet fare, along with the more conventional newspaper, magazine, radio, television (and gossip, for that matter, for surely that was the first form of “fake news”) dedicated to wholly or partially made-up nonsense masquerading as truth, should concern everyone alive much more than it seems to do. While it is very troubling that our methods of consuming information have been subverted by Russian disinformation methods, shouldn’t it concern us ALL way more that there are large percentages of our population that believe various tailor-made stripes of utter bs made to support their prejudices? That much of this bs bears the once-proud imprimatur “Made in the U.S.A.?” That stories about lizard people running our country seem as real to 12 million of our fellow citizens (for an article in The Atlantic on this and other wild beliefs, use “12 Million Americans Believe Lizard People Run Our Country” as a search thread) as stories about the physics behind semiconductor advancements towards quantum computing?

    Dear Fellow Human Beings:

    There are plenty of physical phenomena, in which category I include all of rock solid, mundane, and observable scientific phenomena (i.e., biology, meteorology, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, etc.), to ponder and study to your hearts’ content, most of which marvelous beyond awe. Do NOT become distracted by the nonsense some of us make up about people and the world in which we live. Watch them closely, but understand all the while that a good bit of what you are hearing, seeing, or reading is tripe, claptrap, and funny business meant to distract you from much more important and interesting facts.

    It doesn’t matter who manufactures the crap, it matters that you remain capable of distinguishing facts from nonsense! Now, turn away from whatever it is that you’re about to put into your brain and put some facts in there instead.

    (My apologies for the semi-rant-like nature of this post, yrs truly, A.Dent)

  2. Kicking butt

    I urge everyone to read the new Time Magazine article on Russian hacking. All of us will better understand how some of our news sources may indeed be fake as well as persons responding to blogs such as this and Twitter accounts may not be who they say they are. Liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats – read the following article: http://time.com/4783932/inside-russia-social-media-war-america/

    There is a war going on….we just don’t realize it. The Russians appear to be far ahead of us in media warfare.

    • The Ghost of Elections Past

      As are the Republicans!

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