Highly skilled professional trained to sniff out any Fox foible.
While the Fox News Network deserves tremendous credit for refusing to hop on the radical left bandwagon that every other news outlet blindly follows, they have some negative tendencies that severely compromise their product.
No news outlet exceeds Fox for gawkish tabloid trash especially when troubled celebrities are the focus. When the Anna Nicole Smith saga played out a couple years ago, the coverage was almost nonstop except for the 6:00 hard news hour. Since yesterday afternoon, it’s been saturation coverage of Michael Jackson’s death giving him the kind of attention that usually only befits fallen ex-Presidents.
One other sign of sure trouble when watching Fox is when Geraldo Rivera surfaces beyond his two hours of bullshit commentary masquerading as news each weekend. Hurricanes and celebrity scandals draw Geraldo to the cameras like flies to crapola and the news hungry viewer is left looking for the pooper scooper.
This is a particularly bad day to be wrapped up in saturation coverage for the fallen freak. Congress is preparing to vote on “cap and trade.” President Obama just staged his massive infomercial publicity onslaught to push socialized medicine on ABC Wednesday night. The popular revolution in Iran is facing barbaric murderous oppression by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s death and torture goon squads while a prominent cleric noted some unrest was worthy of execution. Congressman, John Conyer’s wife has been charged with accepting bribes.
Fox is the best source we have for news since they are the only source that gives the full spectrum of opinion on news events and doesn’t automatically trivialize Republicans and conservatives. Still, those responsible for determining content who can’t resist the gossipy, sensationalistic largely inconsequential stories at the cost of hard news must be called out for their cheapening of the journalistic product. Geraldo Rivera is one of the media’s most self-serving egocentric performers whose program is presented as news reporting but is truly driven by the anchor’s opinions, agendas, and biases. His blatant subjectivity and crusading for pet causes would be an entirely different matter if his show were pitched as opinion and analysis as O’Reilly, Beck, and Hannity present. Did anyone question for a passing nanosecond Geraldo would be shouting with joy promoting the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor? If that’s not convincing enough, consider the G-man’s conduct debating immigration versus enforcement hardliner Michelle Malkin. For that “spit” episode alone, Geraldo should have been severely disciplined. His credibility after years of twisting the truth and overstating the issues is zero. If he’s the kind of ratings draw Fox seems to think he is, then let his weekend programs be clearly identified as the Geraldo gossip hours.
Today marks one of the real low points in the history of the Fox news operation. If there was ever a week they had a golden opportunity to excel this was the week to counter ABC’s blatant grandstanding for the Obama medicine show.
This underscores that all journalistic product must be under constant scrutiny by the interested public. Every network has its biases, preferences, and weaknesses. Sadly, when Fox had a week it could have enhanced its reputation tremendously events surfaced that saw the network leap for the gutter instead.
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