Sorry
Fox, But You Are Still A Propaganda Mill
There was a time, two decades ago, when this commentator was just
starting his column, and an upstart cable news service came into being just six
months into his own column. This upstart
cable news service was called Fox News.
And while their commentary programs were deplorable even back then, they
still provided news with a supposedly neutral outlook to them. There were some stories that the other news
services didn’t touch because they didn’t involve the antics of Washington D.C.
that this upstart news service would provide.
But then a few years into it, I noticed a different slant coming
out. A subtle and manipulative undertone
started to emerge, one that set off warning flags for me as a never-ending student
of history, especially when it came to Orwellian warning signs.
I saw Fox News becoming a propaganda mill for conservatives, and, by extension,
the GOP.
While the network claims to be focused on news, you can’t help but notice
that their biggest selling point was not news, but on opinion-based
personalities. Instead of touting news
anchors, Fox would tout commentators, who would give their carefully-guided
view of the world to the masses. They
would each spread the same message... that liberals – and, by extension, the
Democratic Party – are evil, that only conservatives – and, by extension, the
GOP – know how to govern, that Iraq under Saddam Hussein is the source of all
evil in the world, that Islam in any stripe is inherently evil, that 9/11
justifies everything the US can do, that Christianity itself is under attack, that
capitalists are always right, and that we are all going to die unless we
surrender ourselves to the conservative “saviors”. These messages, given in small doses, would
keep the masses afraid and glued to their channel, and it would also convince
them to vote blindly for the GOP.
This is not speculation, folks. I’ve
seen, with my own eyes, old people going into voting booths and, when told the candidates,
utter either “conservative” or “liberal”, with the latter in a disgusting tone
like a dog defecated in front of them.
That is how extensive the propaganda has become, people. It is downright scary to see how George Orwell’s
deepest fears of society have manifested themselves here in the United States of
America.
Anyway, fast-forward to today, with an orange-skinned narcissist in the
White House, with a bible-thumper as Vice-President, with sociopaths controlling
both houses of Congress, and with a judicial system that is slowly becoming the
enablers of all these aforementioned groups.
This is the dream of Fox News made real.
They have everything they wanted in place.
And yet all is not well with the Ministry of Manipulation owned by an Australian
billionaire and originally founded by a sexual predator. There is discord among the masters of
message.
Shepherd Smith, one of the few actual news anchors in Fox News, recently
told Time Magazine that he’s not particularly happy with the commentary part of
the network and how they conduct themselves.
You know, the big-name personalities that provide most of the
propaganda. Smith said that the “opinion
people”, as he calls them, don’t
have any rules to follow and can say pretty much whatever they want.
That apparently didn’t fly so well with said “opinion people”,
specifically Sean Hannity, a well-known colon parasite and loyal propagandist for
conservatives going all the way back to his days with Atlanta’s talk radio. Newly-hired Laura Ingram then joined in on
Hannity’s side saying that she “liked” Smith but didn’t care for his criticism
of the network that employs them. Both
of them are claiming that they are “reporters” just like Smith and they
supposedly “deserve” the same respect as “reporters”.
It should be pointed out that both Hannity and Smith are the few remaining
media personalities from the original days under the late sexual predator Roger
Ailes. And unfortunately for Hannity,
their mutual employer just extended Smith’s contract, so Shep is not going away
anytime soon.
As you can probably tell from the tone of this article, I’m siding with
Shep on this. He has always been known
as someone who tells it like it is, not as some political script demands it to
be, and he’s not afraid to call “BS” on anyone, no matter what political party
or faction they adhere to. I may not
agree with everything he says, but he earned my respect as a news anchor, and
that is not something given blindly.
Let’s get brutally honest here... Sean Hannity is many things, and none
of them kind, but one of the things he is clearly not is a journalist. To regard him as such is an outright insult
to those legitimate reporters that bust their butts to provide news and not be
slurred by Hannity’s fans, especially from the orange-skinned narcissist in the
White House.
Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram are media personalities and commentators,
the same field that I’ve been in for almost twenty-two years as of this column’s
posting. I’ve been a reporter for small
publications and Internet radio, and I know the difference between being a
journalist and being a commentator. I’ve
walked that line. Those two have not. It’s more than just surrounding yourselves
with the trappings of a news program and giving interviews, because anyone can
do that. Stephen Colbert got famous for
doing that and nobody in their right mind would ever consider him to be a journalist. Hell, Kermit the Frog did that and he’s a Muppet!
Hannity himself has said clearly in the past that he
is not a journalist and even boasted about that when it came to his
discussions about his “best friend” who is the said orange-skinned narcissist
in the White House. So now that a sour
eye is glancing at the profession he has enjoyed for decades, he expects to be
treated like he’s Edward
R. Murrow?
No. Hell no!
To do so would be the true embodiment of “fake news”, from a fake “reporter”
in a fake setting for a fake news service.
It would be an outright insult to legitimate news services large and
small that are struggling to not only stay in business in the age of online
information, but also to weather the slur of “fake news” coming from Hannity’s “best
friend” in the White House and their red-hat-wearing MAGA cultists.
Sean Hannity is the Joseph Goebbels and “Baghdad Bob” of the modern age,
in a cable news service that has picked up where Pravda left off. This is not something that has happened
overnight. Hannity has spent decades
getting to where he is now. He needs to
be recognized for what he really is, not for what he wants us to pretend he is. I salute Shepard Smith for having the courage
for calling Hannity out on that truth.
We need more people like Shepard Smith and far fewer people like Sean Hannity
and Laura Ingram.
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