Disturbing, but not surprising.
That's what Fox was designed to do.
Background:
Roger Ailes, the power behind Fox, got his start right in my own back yard. As Executive Producer of The Mike Douglas Show, he took it from locally-produced to nationwide syndication. When it was still in Philly, Ailes had a discussion about television in politics with one of the show's guests - Richard Nixon. In spite of his drubbing in the 1960 televised debate, Nixon still considered the medium a gimmick; Ailes held the opposite opinion. Ailes served as Nixon's media consultant from then on, helping shift him from stiff & distant to more likeable & accessible.
Nixon's victory moved Ailes directly into the big leagues. In 1969, he founded Ailes Communications, Inc., working with business, politicians and - perhaps most importantly - the entertainment industry. A powerhouse threesome.
On the political side, he was a heavy-hitting consultant for many Republican candidates, credited with helping Ronald Reagan after a disastrous first debate. He teamed up with Lee Atwater to guide George H. W. Bush to victory.
By the late 1990s, he'd shifted from highly successful, paid political consultant to behind-the-scenes, even more powerful advisor.
No one knew product placement & consumers better than Roger Ailes.
He recognized that the men & women of his Baby Boomer generation - especially the men - yearned for the country of a distant, rosy-hued yesteryear. He created a home station for them, going with simple & familiar rather than sophisticated & cutting edge. A place where the viewer was assured of always finding outspoken manly men & beautiful blondes.
Fox openly catered to the disenfranchised & disenchanted, the people - especially men - who had lost faith in their once most treasured institutions. Television - and Fox - would be something on which they could still rely to let them know America is #1, that there were people who cared about their best interests, who could be counted on to trash power figures & other elites while it elevated the common man.
Ailes was a natural to take Fox from a glimmer in Rupert Murdoch's eye to full-fledged reality. Both men were out less to report the news as much as to influence & shape its targeted viewers' perception of national & world events.
In that, Roger Ailes has been spectacularly successful. His network is far & away the most watched (more viewers than the two nearest competitors combined). His political pundits & commentators are unabashedly partisan, yet the network gets away with it's assuring "Fair & Balanced" motto. No small accomplishment. This is not a network devoted to informing people, but to making people feel informed. And feeling like they have a balanced view of national & world events.
How fair & balanced is Fox News? A lot of people scoff at that or at anyone seriously thinking The O'Reilly Factor offers a "no spin" zone. I think most of Fox Nation utterly believe get the straightest of straight scoops, that all other media outlets are hopelessly compromised, while Fox remains pure & true to its principles. (In the last, I totally concur that it has.)
Cause to be anxious?
My older friends have good reason to feel anxious. Some came of age & all grew up in a period of unprecedented prosperity. America beat the Nazis, defeated the Japanese, became the world's greatest economic power, landed a man on the Moon.
How was it possible to have experienced all that, dreamed all the fabulous dreams of retirement glory, only to face post-2008 America, with its stock market calamities, dark forces on the march abroad, an increasingly colorful electorate, a love-hate relationship with embattled social net programs, a government that seems incapable of governing?
Small wonder so many feel, "We are Americans - how were we so totally betrayed?" That's the question Fix never dodges & happily explains. You are embattled, you have been betrayed, but we - everyone at Fox - are behind you.
This is the station many older Americans watch. It is the station that many of my older friends watch all day, every day. It makes them feel good about Fox News, but what about their own lives? Not so much.
Just the facts, ma'm...
Here are a few facts I'd love to share with my older friends & their friends:
- Fox News is the polar opposite of Fair & Balanced.
- At the start of the 2012 election season, five Republican presidential hopefuls were paid Fox on-camera commentators, with nary a single Democrat of serious standing on the payroll.
- Its news reports are emotion driven rather than factually based. (A clip is worth a thousand words - Karl Rove's 2012 meltdown; there's a reason Rove assumed Fox would take his gut feeling over scientific methods.)
- Read that one again - its reports are geared toward emotions, rather than accurate information. They are intended to make viewers feel worse about forces outside themselves and better about themselves (and Fox).
- It's structured to be eye & mind candy, especially for people who living by themselves. Six out of its seven hours of morning to early evening programming features pleasant, attractive, clean cut "friends" settled on a couch, batting around the day's topics. Alluring, reassuring, comfy - as it is intended to be.
- Alas, Fox is out of step with the majority of the country. Since its debut, only one Republican - George W. Bush - was elected president, and he lost the popular vote in 2000, when electoral results were decided by the Supreme Court.
- As witnessed in the 2012 election, Fox uses its own stories to support its reporting. When Peggy Noonan assured Megyn Kelly on Nov 6 "all the data that I get” indicates that “something is going on there,” with all “the dynamism” coming from “the Romney side,” it turned out all the data was from Fox News reports.
In (finally!) closing...
If I could get my older friends to do just one thing, it would be to compare how Sean Hannity approached the current story on Cliven Bundy's stand against the federal government with Glenn Beck's. Since it's almost impossible to outline Hannity's devotion to the story & the rancher, just check out The Ballad of Cliven Bundy, on the Colbert Report.
Hannity - and the Pauls, father & son, among other top tier conservatives - embraced Bundy's cause as his own, even when gun-toting supporters advocated putting women on the front line of his defense. Hannity swallowed Bundy's story whole & gave the rancher validity in the eyes of countless disenfranchised Americans.
Glenn Beck (who, in the interest of full disclosure, actually knows something about the pesky back story, since he owns cattle & grazing land & grazing land that he charges other ranchers fees to use) took a different tack, one that would be downright weird for a Fox reporter - he set out to verify the story. He used judgement & decided that while he considered Bundy to be a decent guy, the rancher seemed a bit unhinged on some topics. That, Mr. Ailes, is fair & balanced reporting. And from Glenn Beck, no less.
Dear older friends - Turn off the television. It feels like it's comforting, but there's a reason it's called the boob tube - it lowers energy & increases a sense of lethargy. At least turn off the news channels, any & every news channel. But please do at least realize that Fox News designs its programming to draw you in & keep you from flipping channels.
Hey, you have every reason to feel anxious. Listening to Fox News might make you feel comforted. But you will end up feeling informed instead of being informed, being entertained rather than enlightened. You deserve much better.
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