Shades of Pravda - Fox outed on White House talking points promptings
27 Jul 2008
OK, I have no idea why more people aren’t more furious about this, though I guess it’s just evidence of what everyone suspected all along.
And, ok… sure, the people who listen to Fox are the ones most likely to believe what the White House says in any case (or that the Dems do the same thing anyway), but this seems beyond that. As the commentator in this segment points out, there is a difference between saying “The White House today sent us a briefing saying… “ and “We think that… “
It’s the difference between propaganda and journalism or acting as a party mouthpiece and agreeing with a position. And while I don’t think anyone in the waning days of the Bush administration will be surprised to see that more cracks are appearing in the wall of an administration that would support torture, arbitrary detention and lying to start a war, but the degree to which the administration seems open to brekaing rule of law whenever it suited their agenda is a little bit frightening and should be a scary morality tale for all those governments (and journalists) who followed their lead on so many things so blindly.
Anyway, I hope it does create some incentive around a return to true journalism in the US. The Fox news model of opinion as journalism has provided a chilling effect on proper news reporting in the US and a “if it bleeds it leads” epidemic which I think ultimately hurts us all and makes it seem like we live in a much more violent and fearful world than is actually true. I’ve completely stopped watching US news programs since they seem so amazingly biased compared to their non-US counterparts (though still read the feeds for the NYTimes and the Washington Post).