3 ms·

As a brit, Fox news fascinates me. Because every clip of it I watch is so clearly opinion piece propaganda, they don't even pretend like they're reporting the

As a brit, Fox news fascinates me. Because every clip of it I watch is so clearly opinion piece propaganda, they don't even pretend like they're reporting the news Even our "equivalent", the Murdoch owned Sky News channel is nowhere near as bad as Fox news

cortexio 6y ago
That's naive, it's litterally every big news org in america. CNN, MSBC, NYT, WAPO, HUFPO, FOX, CBS. Their level of propaganda is insane. At this point im convinced they are paid to do so. Then you have NBC, they are also biased, but not that much And im not sure about ABC yet, i havent read their news much, but if i read their headlines, it seems they are actually reporting news. As in neutral. But i could be wrong.
pmyteh 6y ago
We're about to get our own: News UK News (from Murdoch) and GB News (fronted by Andrew Neil) are starting, expressly on the Fox News model. It was thought until quite recently that the requirements for 'due impartiality' and 'due accuracy' in the Broadcast Code precluded expressly partisan TV news (unlike newspapers). But these two have been licenced anyway, so clearly not.
- intended 6y ago
  Wow. There’s 300 mn people in the UK and 66 mn in the UK. Id worry that polarizing people would take no time at all.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  Ofcom explicitly can't take pre-emptive action around content issues - the offending content must be actually broadcast before they can do anything. They can decide that a person is not "fit and proper" to hold a broadcast license, but that's a fairly large hurdle to overcome (and it is, of course, judicially reviewable). To be honest, this is how it should be. A presumption in favour of broadcasting, but with the ability to shut a broadcast down for repeated and/or egregious violations.
nathias 6y ago
I agree, but its the same with the left media, the news are so highly politicized and opinionated that when comparing two news stories wouldn't be able to tell they are talking about the same event. One calls the other conspiracy theorists, the other is fake news, and everyone is applauding when their team is censoring the other.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  The people are as naive as the Q people. They don't realize they're being just as heavily propagandized and manipulated, if not more so. In the 90s and during the Bush years many on the "cultural left" (let's use that to refer to low-information voters who are left-sympathizing) had at least an intuition for the degree to which the security state controlled the media and how untrustworthy the media was — I thought we'd had this reckoning in the aftermath of the disastrous Iraq war but apparently mood affiliation is a helluva drug. This historical cycle will not end will unless people start thinking a little more critically.
- jeltz 6y ago
  There is left wing media like that but none of it is close to as big as Fox News. Yes, both sides do it but quantity matters.
  - janlukacs 6y ago
    i'm not american, but watching CNN and FOX News is EXACTLY the same thing - two propaganda machines masquerading as news.
  - intended 6y ago
    This is being nice to Fox, which was designed and imagined from, the ground up, as a partisan machine. I mean these are the people who happily pushed and continue to push creationism because evolution (science) is a problem for them. People are aghast today by how there’s a separate reality, but the human trials were done in public. Creationism was the writing on the wall. Lumping Fox in the same breath as both sides is not true. The other side doesn’t include just “leftist” content, it includes the BBC, NYT, and apparently Jstor papers and Darwin. Fox also actively prevents content that undoes its narratives. They argument is that “the other side does it.” There’s no doubt that there is motivated reasoning and bad arguments in the normal news. But Fox uses that as an excuse to give up altogether and just double down. America is where it is because Fox News paved the way. You couldn’t give them enough credit for what they achieved.
narcissismo 6y ago
Yes. Brexit was clearly a grassroots movement started by a 65 year-old man on an allotment.
koheripbal 6y ago
There is likely some significant sample bias if you're receiving clips from social media. If you go to conservative forums, you'll find the same biased clips of CNN/MSNBC that portray those networks as heavily propagandized.
- simonh 6y ago
  Also a Brit. I occasionally go directly to the Fox News web site just to see their take, because I'm basically a conservative and have been a lifelong Conservative voter here in the UK. The main problem I have with Fox News is the lack of reflective self-analysis of conservatism or republicanism. There's no sense of trying to figure things out, to look at problems with a clear eye and then say what the conservative answer to an issue is, there's no attempt to course correct when things go wrong or in an unexpected direction. It's all about on-message heavily editorialised spin, omitting or heavily spinning anything that doesn't fit the narrative. As such, I find it almost completely useless to me. The news is incomplete and the opinion is uninteresting. They're really little better than RT. Fortunately there are some decent conservative leaning news sites, such as The Federalist and National Review, but Fox News does seem to dominate. Even though I often find myself disagreeing with what the leftier US news organisations say as opinion, they're much better at actually delivering facts and presenting differing opinions with useful context. To be fair, we have the Daily Mail over here. It's not as bad a Fox generally, but it depends on the topic. The BBC does definitely have a left bias, but it's pretty mild and they're really good on informative content. We do have The Economist though, which is our jewel in the crown of news and opinion IMHO. The bottom line is though I even can go to the Guardian web site, and I might think they're off the rails a bit and missing context. Some of their opinion pieces are ridiculous, but I can generally trust their factual information. I can't trust Fox or the Daily Mail on facts. That really worries me because a movement based on or informed with extensive misunderstanding of basic facts, or worse with a disregard for the truth, is doomed long term.
agumonkey 6y ago
In the recent years it seems every country had its fox news variant. In France it could be BFM (albeit quite lower in terms of noise, but still prone to mob level conversations)
dazc 6y ago
So how did Sky News cover the US recent election? I assumed it would have been singing to the same hymn sheet as the rest of the UK media but I am open to the idea I was wrong?
- ChrisRR 6y ago
  I haven't seen any UK news outlet that attempts to paint trump in a good light, not even sky news
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

cortexio 6y ago

That's naive, it's litterally every big news org in america. CNN, MSBC, NYT, WAPO, HUFPO, FOX, CBS. Their level of propaganda is insane. At this point im convinced they are paid to do so. Then you have NBC, they are also biased, but not that much And im not sure about ABC yet, i havent read their news much, but if i read their headlines, it seems they are actually reporting news. As in neutral. But i could be wrong.

pmyteh 6y ago

We're about to get our own: News UK News (from Murdoch) and GB News (fronted by Andrew Neil) are starting, expressly on the Fox News model. It was thought until quite recently that the requirements for 'due impartiality' and 'due accuracy' in the Broadcast Code precluded expressly partisan TV news (unlike newspapers). But these two have been licenced anyway, so clearly not.

intended 6y ago
Wow. There’s 300 mn people in the UK and 66 mn in the UK. Id worry that polarizing people would take no time at all.
M2Ys4U 6y ago
Ofcom explicitly can't take pre-emptive action around content issues - the offending content must be actually broadcast before they can do anything. They can decide that a person is not "fit and proper" to hold a broadcast license, but that's a fairly large hurdle to overcome (and it is, of course, judicially reviewable). To be honest, this is how it should be. A presumption in favour of broadcasting, but with the ability to shut a broadcast down for repeated and/or egregious violations.

nathias 6y ago

I agree, but its the same with the left media, the news are so highly politicized and opinionated that when comparing two news stories wouldn't be able to tell they are talking about the same event. One calls the other conspiracy theorists, the other is fake news, and everyone is applauding when their team is censoring the other.

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
The people are as naive as the Q people. They don't realize they're being just as heavily propagandized and manipulated, if not more so. In the 90s and during the Bush years many on the "cultural left" (let's use that to refer to low-information voters who are left-sympathizing) had at least an intuition for the degree to which the security state controlled the media and how untrustworthy the media was — I thought we'd had this reckoning in the aftermath of the disastrous Iraq war but apparently mood affiliation is a helluva drug. This historical cycle will not end will unless people start thinking a little more critically.
jeltz 6y ago
There is left wing media like that but none of it is close to as big as Fox News. Yes, both sides do it but quantity matters.
- janlukacs 6y ago
  i'm not american, but watching CNN and FOX News is EXACTLY the same thing - two propaganda machines masquerading as news.
- intended 6y ago
  This is being nice to Fox, which was designed and imagined from, the ground up, as a partisan machine. I mean these are the people who happily pushed and continue to push creationism because evolution (science) is a problem for them. People are aghast today by how there’s a separate reality, but the human trials were done in public. Creationism was the writing on the wall. Lumping Fox in the same breath as both sides is not true. The other side doesn’t include just “leftist” content, it includes the BBC, NYT, and apparently Jstor papers and Darwin. Fox also actively prevents content that undoes its narratives. They argument is that “the other side does it.” There’s no doubt that there is motivated reasoning and bad arguments in the normal news. But Fox uses that as an excuse to give up altogether and just double down. America is where it is because Fox News paved the way. You couldn’t give them enough credit for what they achieved.

narcissismo 6y ago

Yes. Brexit was clearly a grassroots movement started by a 65 year-old man on an allotment.

koheripbal 6y ago

There is likely some significant sample bias if you're receiving clips from social media. If you go to conservative forums, you'll find the same biased clips of CNN/MSNBC that portray those networks as heavily propagandized.

simonh 6y ago
Also a Brit. I occasionally go directly to the Fox News web site just to see their take, because I'm basically a conservative and have been a lifelong Conservative voter here in the UK. The main problem I have with Fox News is the lack of reflective self-analysis of conservatism or republicanism. There's no sense of trying to figure things out, to look at problems with a clear eye and then say what the conservative answer to an issue is, there's no attempt to course correct when things go wrong or in an unexpected direction. It's all about on-message heavily editorialised spin, omitting or heavily spinning anything that doesn't fit the narrative. As such, I find it almost completely useless to me. The news is incomplete and the opinion is uninteresting. They're really little better than RT. Fortunately there are some decent conservative leaning news sites, such as The Federalist and National Review, but Fox News does seem to dominate. Even though I often find myself disagreeing with what the leftier US news organisations say as opinion, they're much better at actually delivering facts and presenting differing opinions with useful context. To be fair, we have the Daily Mail over here. It's not as bad a Fox generally, but it depends on the topic. The BBC does definitely have a left bias, but it's pretty mild and they're really good on informative content. We do have The Economist though, which is our jewel in the crown of news and opinion IMHO. The bottom line is though I even can go to the Guardian web site, and I might think they're off the rails a bit and missing context. Some of their opinion pieces are ridiculous, but I can generally trust their factual information. I can't trust Fox or the Daily Mail on facts. That really worries me because a movement based on or informed with extensive misunderstanding of basic facts, or worse with a disregard for the truth, is doomed long term.

agumonkey 6y ago

In the recent years it seems every country had its fox news variant. In France it could be BFM (albeit quite lower in terms of noise, but still prone to mob level conversations)

dazc 6y ago

So how did Sky News cover the US recent election? I assumed it would have been singing to the same hymn sheet as the rest of the UK media but I am open to the idea I was wrong?

ChrisRR 6y ago
I haven't seen any UK news outlet that attempts to paint trump in a good light, not even sky news

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]