I consider Fox News to be a neurotoxin. Watching the network actually damages your brain and makes it harder to think clearly. This is mainly because it is designed to trigger emotional responses and to force you to make logical connections that don’t exist. It actively misinforms, but that’s not what does the brain damage. The damage is done by essentially un-teaching you how to think. However, it may be going too far to say that Fox News is killing the Republican Party. In some ways, the network is necessary to make the modern GOP possible. What would the Tea Party eruption have been without Fox News? And the 2010 midterms were the best election cycle for the Republicans in history.
More than anything else, Fox News acts as a gathering place for people of like mind. And those people are older, whiter, and more exurban and rural than the population as a whole. Fox helps them feel solidarity and gives them the sense that they are part of a movement. It gives them sources of outrage to organize around. And it has more legitimacy than talk radio both because it is on television and because it is treated no differently than CBS or ABC or CNN.
Of course, there are downsides to Fox News for the Republican Party. But I think those downsides are longer term. The network contributes to the radicalization of the GOP and makes it harder for moderates to cross the aisle and work constructively with Democrats. The way the network uses images of minorities to strike fear into their white audience contributes to the alienation of people of color from the Republican Party. And, ultimately, there has to be a price to be paid for making a huge segment of the American population stupid and misinformed. It’s a deal with the devil. You win an election today but you can’t govern effectively and wind up losing elections tomorrow.
Yet, on the whole, I don’t think the modern GOP could exist without Fox News. They couldn’t mobilize the support they have without the network.
Excellent post. I think that we can safely say that having a nationwide television network to broadcast 24/7 a single political movement’s propaganda, spin and outright lies disguised as objective “news” is an unparalled benefit that not even the Hitler movement possessed. KKKarl Rover knows that Fox helps him in running of the Repub party. It is certainly vastly superior to yesterday’s method of having individual city newspapers which were in one party’s camp or another.
The First Amendment concept of the “marketplace of ideas” is a clear failure in the modern world. Lies DO NOT get revealed and rejected. The factual truth does not conquer the lies. Indeed, the smiling Bishop just ran the first prez campaign ever which continued pushing lies that the corporate media had attempted to debunk. So forget the 18th century “marketplace of ideas” rationale—that’s now a sentimental and romantic notion.
I would guess that outside of totalitarian regimes with state control of the media (N Korea for example), Fox News is a unique network in an advanced industrial democracy. Responsible democratic nations would not permit such an obvious propaganda organ to exist as a purported “news” organization, as it poisons the democratic process by harming voters minds with lies, racism and divisive resentment, which wrecks the democracy and makes it unable to function. Which is where we are at in Gridlock Nation.
Having said that, perhaps questioning the value of the Fox Poison Kitchen by supposed “rational Republicans” (haha) like BusinessInsider mag is a step in the right direction. But the road to undermining this monstrous propganda machine that plutocrats have built to advance their horrendous cause is pretty goddam long and arduous at this point.
And a key reason for this is science. We understand how we “think” (don’t really think) and so much of it is assumptions and emotions built in by evolution that were effective once but are far, far from logical or reasoning. The marketplace of ideas concept is born from an understandable ignorance of how the human brain works.
Faux Noise viewers, even moreso than cable news viewers in general, are OLD. As they die off, the problem will solve itself.
that’s a very optimistic view.
Well, a look at the demographics of this year’s electorate does tend to make me optimistic in that particular way.
Yes, the Tea Parties are full of young people poisoned by Fox.
Phase II of Fox has been the transformation of the hosts themselves into pundits who are incapable of moving off the, ‘kill the messenger’ target and into practical analysis.
In the meantime the GOP has gotten what they wished for. Unfortunately Fox and Friends has delivered a closed system. So closed that the Gay rights, women’s issues, the peoples’ issues have blown right over their heads and they have zero ways to catch up without leaving themselves impotent.
Curious, what’s the bet today? Are the hitmen coming after Rove? I’ll assume Mitt is now beyond irrelevant but Rove’s ass is Fair Game, ha!
I was reminded today that in the ’70’s the GOP was a Party of Pro Choice. And of course the 70’s also brought the EPA. Will the GOP suddenly jump the shark and pick up Global Warming? We should be so lucky.
I still liken FOX News to Rush Limbaugh in that their purpose is to misinform and enrage people. They are both formatted to produce this angry, “Can you believe the Liberals are getting away with this?!” theme.
When the only source of news and political information you get is delivered in anger, you become angry. And now that FOX has generated this image and format, they can never walk it back. They tried to carefully manage Rove’s tantrum about Ohio during the election coverage and they couldn’t do it. The monsters run the show.
So until the populace understands that they are being fed vitriol and decides they would be better off without it, these hate organizations will continue to flourish and prosper. And you gotta know that Limbaugh is peeing himself with joy, knowing he’s going to rake in millions more over the outrage of another four years with Obama.
Rove may be peeing himself but it ain’t with joy. He’s meeting with his Crossroads donors today.
Fox News will pretty much continue as it is until Rupert Murdoch goes away.
The best approach to disarming Fox is to laugh at it.
They laughed at the Hitler movement, too.
Didn’t work out so well.
Our closest Hitler moment was shortly after 911 with Chaney as VP. We dodged that bullet only because W continued as President.
It depends on what you mean by “hurt”.
In your context -giving people of like a mind a gathering place nd a place to organize- it does help.
But in the greater context of actual partisan politics -winning elections, accomplishing partisan goals, attracting more members to the party- it does not help the Republicans at all. Instead FOX enables the radicals and extremists who go on to lose in the general (Mourdock, Angle, the witch lady, West, Akin) while throwing out people who can win (Lugar). And on those occasions when the radical DOES win (a la “Mr. Schizo Goes to Washington”), they do crazy shit like the Debt Ceiling fight, banning contraception, and yapping about “legitimate rape” which also reflects badly on the GOP, and further costs them elections.
Did you see Conor Friedersdrof’s piece? He uses the term “information disadvantage”, and I think this quote also helps describe why FOX News does not help the GOP:
In other words, they ran against an Obama who existed ONLY ON FOX NEWS AND ONLY IN THEIR MINDS. And so they lost. Despite Matt Stoller’s protests to the contrary, you don’t win by losing, and thus FOX doesn’t help the GOP.
Instead of a bubble, you could view Fox News as an aquarium – capable of supporting life, but eventually taking away the pet’s ability to survive in the wild. Fox nurtures a certain level of support and solidarity among its viewers, but does not equip them to converse with non-viewers and does not help Republican politicians to win contested elections.
I have long contended that it is highly damaging, in an evolutionary adaptive sense, to be able to perceive your environment accurately. If you cannot realistically evaluate actual risks, benefits, and opportunity you will not survive. The epistemic bubble that most right wingers inhabit is largely maintained by Fox, and Fox has had some success extending its messages outside the bubble. However, this election is a great example of the axiom that eventually reality will bite you in the ass. Look at how many Republicans, including professionals like Rove and Romney’s campaign team, who were caught absolutely flat-footed by the election results. If they had been able to accurately assess their risks, benefits, and opportunities in conducting the election, they might have done better, or at least not been gobsmacked by the result. Now Rove has to go back to his billionaire benefactors and explain why he just flushed millions of their money, various pundits have to eat crow or double-down on surreality and erode any outside the bubble credibility they might have, and even, I see this morning, Netanyahu may pay a political price for so overtly trying to tilt the election toee Romney. Bet he was getting his info from Fox too.
I think you meant “not be able to” in the first sentence, didn’t you?
I started a comment, and…surpise, surprise!!!…it grew.
Now a stand-alone post.
Booman-The Correct Question Is: Does The Media Help or Hurt The United States of America?
Later…
AG
Permit me a small edit: “the network is necessary to make the modern GOP possible by essentially un-teaching you how to think.” Neither could survive without the other. That’s the nature of the Big Lie.
It is true that Fox News is necessary for the modern Republican Party to exist. But Kristof, in today’s Times, in a column directed to Republicans, argues that precisely for that reason they have to cut it loose. Because with the base it sustains, they are finished.
“Part of the problem, I think, is the profusion of right-wing radio and television programs. Democrats complain furiously that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity smear the left, but I wonder if the bigger loser isn’t the Republican Party itself. Those shows whip up a frenzy in their audience, torpedoing Republican moderates and instilling paranoia on issues like immigration.
“All this sound and fury enmeshes the Republican Party in an ideological cocoon and impedes it from reaching out to swing-state centrists, or even understanding them. The vortex spins ever faster and risks becoming an ideological black hole.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/opinion/kristof-can-republicans-adapt.html?scp=1&sq=can%20repu
blicans%20adapt?&st=cse
I agree with someone above who said that ain’t happening as long as Murdoch is alive. Although their viewers are also a dying demographic.
The whole time I was reading that article, I was thinking about how much it applied to MSNBC. At the least I wonder if other MSM outlets might be disinclined to report on a story that MSNBC is leading on.