Fox News creating its own political cult
By Jay Bookman, January 13, 2014
Last week, I ventured into the alternate universe known as Fox News and once again knew immediately what Alice must have felt like after falling down the rabbit hole.
There was Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, discussing press coverage of the Chris Christie bridge scandal. In tones of shock and outrage, Cavuto "revealed" that according to Brent Bozell and the right-wing Media Research Center, "The big three networks alone devoted 17 times more coverage to (the Christie) story in one day, one day, than they devoted to the IRS scandal in six months."
Bozell then took the ball and ran with it:
"It really goes to show you how out of control this left-wing so-called news press is. We looked at it. It's over a 48-hour period. Eighty-seven minutes, 44 seconds devoted to Chris Christie. Nine reports on ABC, 12 reports on CBS, NBC had 13 reports. That's a tsunami.
Now, let them defend it by saying this is an important issue. OK. But you look at the IRS scandal and you see that since, since July of 2013, there has been a total of two minutes and 38 seconds devoted to the scandal, with one development after another after another on this, which is completely untouched by the same media who believed they need to spend two days worth of non-stop coverage on Chris Christie."My first reaction was to chuckle at the audacity of Fox for airing such a claim. Yes, TV news programs in general have a weakness for hyping minor stories into major ratings sensations, but Fox is generally the worst perpetrator. As you may recall, this is the network that spent uncounted hours rerunning a video snippet of two unarmed black men standing outside a Philadelphia voting precinct, blowing it up into a major threat to white voting rights all across America. It was all part of Fox's reprehensible marketing scheme, in which it attempts to win viewer loyalty by convincing its audience that they are victims of a conspiracy between the mainstream media and racial minorities intent on taking America away from its rightful owners.
Then there's the whole ludicrous "BridgeGate = IRS" comparison.
Was there an email from a White House deputy chief of staff that ordered the IRS to retaliate against Obama's enemies, as exists in the Christie scandal? More to the point, was there any communication whatsoever -- email, smoke signal, hand sign, ear tug or even lifted eyebrow -- from any Obama political appointee even suggesting that the IRS target their political enemies?
Was there the slightest evidence that Obama political appointees had even been aware of the IRS practice at the time it was occurring?
No, no and no.
Conversely, was there considerable evidence that progressive groups were also targeted by the IRS, using words such as "progressive" and "green" as flags indicating further review would be needed? If a greater number of conservative groups were flagged for review, was it because a greater number of applications had come in during that time frame from the suddenly surging Tea Party movement? Have multiple IRS career officials testified in public to Congress and under oath that they never saw any attempt whatsoever to politicize their agency's operations?
Yes and yes and yes.
Finally, what exactly has happened over the last six months of the IRS story to deserve coverage? The case got extensive press coverage when it first broke, but by May and June of last year -- well before Bozell's six-month window began -- it had become clear that the "scandal" had degenerated into a run-of-the-mill case of bureaucratic bungling, not political meddling.
But in the alternate universe that is Fox News, none of that ever happened. Fox viewers feel oppressed and victimized because they've been told they are being oppressed and victimized, and if facts have to be twisted and even fabricated to justify those sentiments, they and the network are clearly willing to live inside that warped reality.
In effect, they're insisting that 2+2=46, then whining that they're being discriminated against when the outside world points out that no, it really doesn't, because 2+2=4. And if you go even further and build a cultish political movement around the idea that 2+2=46, using various contrived "facts" as evidence, you pretty much ensure that outsiders will begin to look upon you as the political equivalent to Scientology.
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