Fox News Cover-up??????

[jon1856]

Found this YouTube link in an e-mail.
I checked and found nothing saying that it was false.
Kind of scary.
And very if you drink milk or believe that the corporations that now own the news do not control it.
FOX News Whistle blowers. UNBELIEVABLE!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trWcqxrQgcc

[skylark]

This looks like a clip from "the corporation." It is a movie I watched a couple years ago -- and I've been drinking organic dairy (I like Horizon) products ever since! I figure the chance of nipple puss being in organic milk products is lower. I might be wrong... but I like milk too much to give it up completely and that's the best I can figure to do.

Honestly, the entire movie is worth seeing... this milk products issue (and cover up through the media) was used as one example of many to persuade movie watchers that the corporate structure is set up to value profit only and that without government regulation on the corporate structure (because who else will look out for the public interests... like health issues) we are pretty much effed. That's at least what I got out of it.

[jon1856]

Found this on Youtube-Fair and Balanced-You choose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms&NR=1

[UGAalum94]

So, you all think that televisions stations have an obligation to air shows that they fear may damage their advertising relationships?

If it were public broadcasting, I'd be right there with you in terms of this amounting to meaningful censorship, but if you are a privately owned, for profit station shouldn't you have the right to choose what you air?

No doubt we should always remember that the news we get is incredibly biased*, but I'm not sure that the reporters really thought their rights were. They were hired to make a show; the show they made was going to make advertisers mad (or give them grounds to sue); the network didn't want to air it; it apparently couldn't be edited in such a way as to make it satisfying for the reporters and the station; it didn't get aired.

* If it's just a Fox thing, it kind of surprises me that the story didn't get picked up elsewhere.

I'm really not a fan of Fox other than the Simpsons, but isn't this really just corporate news as usual? Certainly, we could try to influence networks by boycotting their shows unless they were willing to be better about not letting advertisers dictate the news. And we have more news related options that ever with the internet.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by jon1856

Found this on Youtube-Fair and Balanced-You choose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms&NR=1

You think that all the channels aren't doing this to all the candidates? I tend to think they all like to feast on the negative and the petty.

The coverage of Hillary is somehow more positive? Really?

Fox is often spectacular in their failure to pretend to neutral (and their lack of professionalism), which makes their own tag line of "fair and balanced" really amusing, but other networks seem to make up for their relative subtlety with relentless consistency.

[skylark]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

So, you all think that televisions stations have an obligation to air shows that they fear may damage their advertising relationships?

If it were public broadcasting, I'd be right there with you in terms of this amounting to meaningful censorship, but if you are a privately owned, for profit station shouldn't you have the right to choose what you air?

I personally don't think it is a Fox thing at all. I think that the public has an expectation that journalists (TV, newspaper, and otherwise) and those people that employ journalists will report true and accurate stories that pique the public interest without regard to whether their advertisers will pull funding. It is what gives a newspaper or TV program credibility.

What is wrong is when journalists feed this expectation and pretend that this is how the business works because it misleads the public. I think if more people knew this was the norm, you'd see a lot more people personally lobbying their government officials to raise money for public broadcasting. Can you imagine having a couple of stations instead of just a single PBS that is inadequately funded?

[UGAalum94]

I tend to think the marketplace usually works okay, and that we might not need more PBS, as much as I love watching it sometimes. I certainly don't think we need more taxpayer supported news channels. I mentioned PBS because I think we very much have an expectation that they aren't beholden to advertisers (although ADM used to be (maybe still is) a big sponsor which probably should creep us out if the topic at hand is how agricultural companies influenced FOX)

If we're really outraged that advertisers influence the news, they we'd ought to watch and support the advertisers of channels and shows that reflect our attitudes about investigative journalism or the press as a watchdog. And if one doesn't exist, then there'd be a gap in the market from someone, just as FOXnews has successfully exploited a perceived gap in right wing news sources.

It seems like it works for print journalism okay, and there ought to be a way to make it work for TV news as well.

If you think about news or even general interest magazines, which might be a dying market share unfortunately, or online magazines like Slate or Salon, the problem doesn't seem to be as pronounced, does it? What's the difference? Is it that TV news audiences are already so passive that it doesn't really bug them?

ETA: or maybe it's that the cost and rates of advertisements keep any one advertiser from being crucial to print or online media sources.

[UGAalum94]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331106,00.html

This is a foxnews online story that I saw linked on Instapundit today. Take it for what it's worth. The dude sounds like little bit of a crack pot, but I still don't expect google to block him out of their news searches.

But it does demonstrate and immediate accountability that online sources are subject to that TV channels don't seems as subject to.

ETA: maybe it's just a question of being bound to TV news stations somewhat geographically. I'm not going to be watching the FOX stations in Florida, so I don't care that much about their practices; if no one locally wants to cover the killing of the BGH story, then nobody who isn't looking for links on YouTube from the local market likely knows or cares.
With the internet, everyone is a skeptic.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by jon1856

Found this on Youtube-Fair and Balanced-You choose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms&NR=1

Lets not spin this into something its not. The original video has nothing to do with politics.
Murdoch cares about the all mighty dollar above all else. He does a great job with Fox News, their ratings destroy CNN and MSNBC.
Those reporters are dumb for not taking the bribe though.

[skylark]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

Lets not spin this into something its not. The original video has nothing to do with politics.
Murdoch cares about the all mighty dollar above all else. He does a great job with Fox News, their ratings destroy CNN and MSNBC.
Those reporters are dumb for not taking the bribe though.

LOL. Because politics and money and media have nothing to do with each other.

[RaggedyAnn]

Just a side note on the milk...I read about that or heard about that last year. We were buying only organic milk, but now there are companies that don't use the Bovine Growth Hormone and advertise it right on the container.

[UGAalum94]

Who hadn't heard about the hormones in milk? That's one of the oddest things about this whistle blower deal.

Perhaps they drew more direct causal relationships, but I guess we'll never know.