The Truth about... Fox News

Hi, I'm Samuel C Spitalli, author of how to  win the war on truth in this video we'll look at the truth about Fox News the idea for Fox News originated in the Nixon White House in a memo entitled, “A plan for putting the GOP on TV news” it was a scheme to film Pro Nixon PR segments disguises news segments and then distribute them to local TV stations to be broadcast to an unsuspecting American audience Roger Ailes, Nixon's image consultant had his fingerprints all over the memo.

Fair and Balanced

He thought that if they could manipulate the national conversation and offer a counternarrative to the fact-f finding ethic of Journalism they could thwart another Republican president from being impeached when Roger ALS had the  opportunity to create such a network with Rupert Murdoch he employed the tools he'd honed as an imag maker alses had no experience in broadcast journalism but he was Adept at crafting paid political programming that could be mistaken for a newscast this was fine with Murdoch who wanted to do for cable TV what rush limbo had done for radio this collaboration became Fox News to hide the Network's overt bias als's coined the slogan fair and balanced appropriating the very language of professional journalism the conservative dream of establishing a counter media hinged in large part on convincing the viewers that what they were getting was news and not propaganda fair and balanced was a commercial necessity as Z's explained to the Harford current in 1998 if you come out and you try to do right-wing news you're going to die you can't get away with it thus als's had to hide the propaganda Outlet under the guise of balanced 

reporting Former Fox News anchor Tobin Smith confirms the deception, "We made Republican party propaganda infomercials disguised as talk show segments. The masquerade worked. The older, 95% white audience thought they were watching the news (and still do)."

The Masquerade

Fox however is anything but news. When Ailes ran the network, editorial direction was delivered in Daily memos instructing staff how to slant the Day stories to adhere to their political agenda when Fox reporters attacked Hillary Clinton they were praised by ALS himself but when reporters attacked George W bush they had their loyalty and objectivity questioned and if a guest commentator failed to tow the party line like former Bush speech writer David from they would not be invited back even the user agreement on the fox website clearly states their services are for personal enjoyment and entertainment whereas CNN's user agreement states they offer information design for education and informational purposes the words educational and informational are missing entirely from the fox agreement when Fox host Tucker Carlson was sued for slander in 2020 Fox's own attorneys argued successfully in court that no reasonable viewer could possibly take him seriously as his statements were not statements of fact because the network

No Original Reporting

does almost no original reporting it has a smaller staff than most news networks and spends less money on news Gathering it has only three international bureaus compared to CNN's 27 nor does it receive or even nominate itself for journalism Awards which recognize outstanding achievements in the field it's no wonder studies show that people who watch Fox News actually know less about current events than those who watch no news at all pundit fact found only 10% of Fox News statements to be 100% factual another report found that 68% of Fox's news stories contain personal opinions compared to CNN's mere four % and one Media Matters investigation found that in 2019 Fox spread misinformation every single day in a four-month period 

Fox lacks the usual broadcast standards and practices Department that other networks have to monitor an Outlets content for ethical and legal considerations in essence self-regulating which may explain some of the Network's shoddy record such as doctoring photos of journalists they didn't like giving New York Times Reporter jacqu Steinberg a bigger nose and Dumbo ears and editor Steven redcliffe yellow teeth dark eye circles and a receding hairline or claiming that Trump cut Aid to three Mexican countries or misrepresenting a black lives matter protest in Seattle by showing an image of a burning city in Minnesota from a George Floyd protest or a San Diego affiliate once running a story about a rape charge while showing a photo of President Obama instead of the suspect in 2020 even Wikipedia decided Fox News was no longer a reliable source for political and scientific ific information Real News tells viewers what

Propaganda to think about not what to think like Fox does but Fox News is key propaganda giveaway is not its erroneous coverage or opinion journalism minus the journalism but its Reliance on negative emotions to manipulate the audience traditional newscasters were once trained not to show emotion when delivering the news but to be objective and detached from their subject matter think Dan Rather Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, hell even Caron journalists like The Simpsons Kent Brockman or Family Guys Trisha Takanawa or monotone and stoic just like professional journalists are trained to be Fox News however is a form of tabloid entertainment in the guise of news the anchors are not paid to be detached from their subject matter they're paid to convey emotion with each segment most of the talking heads are not credible journalists but shock jocks playing journalists on TV their emotion is always negative and always related to outrage which is the Fox News brand business model just watch any given program on the network past or present and you can identify the negative emotions underpinning their delivery as Adolf Hitler said I use

Conclusion 

emotion for the many and reason for the few that's because emotions override reason and nothing overrides reason more than negative emotions a Hallmark of successful propaganda manipulating emotions is vital for a partisan news Outlet since bias thinking is illogical the outlet can't appeal to intellect or Reason since the glaring lies and faults will be quickly uncovered in order to conceal the shoddy reporting emotions have to be used as misdirection and distraction that way the news consumer will be too busy feeling enraged or frightened to notice that they are being fed suspect information through emotional manipulation fox has become the most successful propaganda Outlet in the US according to historian Kurt Anderson it has effectively trained two generations of Americans to disbelieve facts at odds with their opinions Holocaust historian Christopher R Browning calls Fox America's own Ministry of propaganda because it routinely employs three of Adolf Hitler's key propaganda directives appeal to negative emotions repeat falsehoods and direct anger at an adversary Fox's emotional manipulation may be damaging to democracy but it's been pretty good for business the network earns around $3 billion a year and is valued at over 20 billion however in 2023 Fox agreed toay pay $787.5 million to Dominion voting systems for spreading false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election as court documents revealed the network knowingly lied to Their audience because after years of feeding them lies they discovered that telling the truth now would alienate their loyal viewers thereby compromising their business model the influence of Fox on news is undeniable TV news has become more Sensational more emotional more opinionated more partisan more tribal and more divisive it's helped transform politics into entertainment and Sport and created an alternate reality where lies go unchallenged and inconvenient facts get ignored in the name of corporate profits to read more check out my book how to win the war on truth and be sure to like And subscribe special thanks to Alan winup for the illustrations and thank you for watching