For me, Keith Olberman here does what Outfoxed should have. I think this is a well worth watching piece of media criticism.
What makes this whole thing so interesting is not Bill O'Reilly's adherence to his own skewed perspective. After all, we can certainly imagine how hard it is for an aging dog to change his one trick. What is most interesting is that Foxnews edited the transcript.
This means a bunch of different, startling things. 1. Foxnews sees itself as not a reader or reporter of reality first. It is first a shaper of reality. When reality does not conform to the fair and balanced narrative that it proclaims at the top of every hour, it is reality that must be wrong. 2. Foxnews believed that retaining Mr. O'Reilly's truth was paramount to its mission. Perhaps, though, it is not an adherence to truth or even shaping reality that drove Fox to edit the transcript. Perhaps it is the ratings that the Factor brings in. 3. Foxnews must have no, and by no I mean no, respect for its audience.
So, what drives this media outlet. Perhaps it is ratings. Perhaps it is hubris. One thing we know for sure is that it is certainly not journalistic ethics.
Yet, is it fair to only accuse foxnews of such a moral lapse? In the Washington Monthly's "the other war room" by Joshua Green, I think it is possible to extend moral lapses to the current administration as well. Green argues that the Bush administration determines policy based on principles, a perfectly legitimate opinion about the nature of authority in a democratic system of governance, yet it then uses polls to shape the language with which those policies are sold. In other words, the Bush administration has consciously skewed perspectives in order to sell their narratives that often do not conform to reality.
Once again. Money? Hubris? One thing we know for sure is that it is certainly not what Lincoln had in mind when he wrote "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
5 comments:
Maybe it's even cruder:
". . . . . The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''"
link? Is the Cheney?
Doc, wasn't that quote coming from a government official?
I found the link. Here:
http://www.cs.umass.edu/~immerman/play/opinion05/WithoutADoubt.html
Thanks MCW, that was what I thought it came from. That means that the Bush administrations attitude is nothing new.
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