No Where To Run, No where to Hide From Fox News.
I was relishing the Yankees domination of the Houston Astros last night, in the first game of the American League Championship Series, when it occurred to me that my entertainment fix was being brought to me by Fox Sports.
The awareness brought me a tinge of guilt, since it is my belief that Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Trump’s administration, a sentiment echoed by others earlier this year in a Columbia Journalism Review article titled “What is Fox News?”
The author of the article, Jacob Nelson, noted how President Trump “openly campaigns alongside Fox’s most prominent commentators, hires former Fox employees for top executive branch posts, and depends on Fox to both carry his message to his supporters as well as give him positive reinforcement for a job well done…”
“The notion that Fox is simply another partisan news outlet is increasingly under attack,” Mr. Nelson wrote.
“Fox no longer deserves to be treated as news, some argue, but as something more akin to state propaganda.”
And because I hold this view of Fox, I have avoided the news network like a plague, notwithstanding the presence there of News Anchor Shepard Smith, who recently called it quits.
Some might wonder what took Mr. Smith so long to part ways with the organization, as no matter how much he tried there was simply no way for him to avoid being tainted by the lies and distortions of his morally corrupt “Trump TV” colleagues.
Mr. Smith appeared to have had his own reason for hanging on, one which he shared in a March15, 2018 Time Magazine article.
“I wonder,” he was quoted as saying.
“If I stopped delivering the facts, what would go in its place in this place that is most watched, most listened, most viewed, most trusted? I don’t know.”
Perhaps his abrupt departure meant, Mr. Smith could no longer reconcile his contribution to the growth of this state propaganda news service. He knows leaving the network could potentially embolden its propagandist agenda. He just wont be part of it anymore.
“Even in our currently polarized nation, it’s my hope that the facts will win the day, that the truth will always matter, that journalism and journalists will survive,” he said in announcing his departure from Fox.
Yet his departure highlights the difficulty of upholding our democratic ideals in an era in which money and personal fulfillment often trump’s our moral convictions.
Despite its lies, distortions and at times racist pronouncements, advertisers still flock to Fox because of its large viewership, and despite the distaste I and others might have for the news organization, Fox financial might allows it to co-op us through the acquisition of our local news and entertainment outlets.
And unlike Mr. Smith, it would seem, we don’t really have the choice to stop being implicit supporters of this state propaganda machine.
It would seem we have no other choice than to lie ourselves that Fox Sports is not the same as Fox News, and that Fox News is not the same as our local Fox News affiliates..
Least ways, that is what I am telling myself as I get ready to watch the second game of the ALCS showdown between the Yankees and the Astros.