Ringing in the New Year, Fox News style
Matthew Ralph

I thought ringing in the Y2K bust New Year of 2000 watching a large piece of Lebanon balogna being lowered from a crane was special.

That is until I was gathered around the television set watching an obnoxious female reporter rambling on about freedom, liberty and 2006 on Fox News.

By the time the ball dropped in Times Square on 2005, I had already built up a Fox News callous. I use this analogy because comparing my experience with days long exposure to the nation's "fair and balanced" cable news program brings to mind the sensation of tearing skin on my palms connecting with a fastball on a cold fall day or my fingers burning from trying to play power chords on my acoustic guitar.

The previous three days visiting with my brother and his in-laws in Virginia Beach had been spent listening to the man of the household yelling at the TV about the "liberals" and "homosexuals". No matter what the news report that came on the TV or scrolled across the bottom of the screen, it seemed that everything had a conservative slant and was the blame of our country's liberal media and those pesky homosexuals who, heaven forbid, think they have a right to visit one another in the hospital and share benefits.

"I hope the whole state falls in the ocean," the Fox News faithful yelled the first morning I was there, responding to a report about mud slides in San Francisco.

Biting my tongue and knowing that, absent my brother and sister-in-law, I was clearly outnumbered and already playing a road game in unfamiliar territory, I tried my best to change the subject. The weather being almost 60 degrees, I started down that path thinking if I could talk about the weather while eating my cereal it would take some attention off of cable TV. This went okay until I made a comment about my utility bills.

Sure, it's true my natural gas bill is bad and it's true I don't like it. But voicing this opinion only opened me up to a rant literally of Alaskan proportions. Rather than the current administration in Washington, which according to Fox News' slant is more or less above reproach because of the president's personal relationship with Jesus, all blame for the high cost of utility bills, according to the Fox News talking point being reiterated, was the crazy liberals and the state of Alaska. If not for the crazy liberal tree huggers and the pesky state of Alaska with its miniscule out of touch population, we would be drilling there and my heating bills would be comparable to my municipal water rates.

All that without even a mention of Iraq. As I learned from an interview with two soldiers, who apparently speak for all 200,000 of their fellow troops deployed in the middle east for our president's war on terrorism, the Iraqi people are pleased with the occupation and that all good patriotic soldiers, like the ones interviewed, were not questioning the war or the occupation. Funny thing is, when I did get away from the "fair and balanced" grip and listened to some of the lying, agenda pushing public radio, I learned that close to half of readers surveyed by the Army Times, a conservative publication with a large circulation of present and former soldiers, didn't think the occupation of Iraq was going well and that the 2,100 and counting deaths signified a need to change course.

But why let the facts get in the way of a good fair and balanced story? My conservative counterpart, whose rants had me on the verge of forgoing my strong anti-two party convictions and registering Democrat, didn't demonstrate much desire for facts or detailed information about the quick tidbits, sound bytes and talking points being splashed on his screen. Despite his rant about how we should not let the foolish Florida teenager who hitched a ride to Iraq to do research for a journalism class assignment back into the country, he showed no interest in reading the whole story of what reportedly happened in that day's Virginia-Pilot. After all, who needs to read for yourself what the actual reporting of the story was when you can have Fox News tell you that the liberal media got it wrong because the reporter didn't insert his opinion into a news story.

It's a well known story, after all, that our president doesn't read newspapers. He relies on a much better and reliable source of information - his aides.

Prior to my arrival in Virginia Beach for the long weekend, I didn't have much experience with Fox News. I knew that my brother had a heck of a time getting his future father in law away from the TV when he asked for his blessing to marry his daughter. I also knew, from the "liberal" and of course anti-Fox News biased documentary about the channel some of the history behind it. I also knew that Stephen Colbert does a hilarious job of imitating the cable program's style on his new Comedy Central program. And I knew that taken in without a faithful follower in the room yelling back at it, that it was actually amusing and informative. It's nice to hear where the insane letters we often get at my newspaper are coming from.

Take my favorite letter damning my paper, which by the way sticks mainly to local politics but runs a fair share of AP copy, as a liberal pawn this year. By the letter writer's Fox News (I presume) inspired logic, we were once again failing to offer fair and balanced coverage because we didn't report on Joe Liebermann's more moderate opinions of the Iraq controversy and partisan thrust behind withdrawing troops from the danger zone. The reason we didn't have Liebermann in our paper, as anyone with half of a brain could easily conclude, was because it was an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal.

I think Jon Stewart (who unfortunately wears his partisan support on his sleeve) said it best in his now famous rant on CNN's Crossfire. Talking points and right versus left opinions are hurting America. One-sided coverage disguised as fair and balanced is hurting America.

I left Virginia Beach with my respect still in tact for, aside from the Fox News support, someone I consider a great guy. Incidentally, my prayer request had come true my last morning there when I woke up to a blacked out TV set.

But while I could clearly separate the man from his emotional and aggressive politics, I rang in the new year with a sick feeling in my stomach knowing that as long as cable networks like Fox News continue to get high ratings and make advertisers lots of money and convince their supporters that they are providing unbiased journalism, the more our democratic system that encourages open dialogue, freedom of speech and most importantly the challenging of the rich and powerful of this country, will be compromised.

For good measure, I left behind a small souvenir in Virginia. A subscription card to Mother Jones magazine. Perhaps a steady diet of Fox News and some reading of more left-leaning publications like Mother Jones would do my hard right conservative friend and his faithful some good.

I know it didn't kill me seeing and hearing a different perspective as another year changed over.

posted [01.21.06]

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