—I hate what Fox News has done to almost everyone in my family

[Cheetah]

I came across a twitter thread and an interesting, and sad, post about Fox News' brainwashing has effected the family relationships of lots of people. Thought it was interesting enough to share here: https://luke.substack.com/p/i-hate-what-theyve-done-to-almost-39f

And I'm happy this blight hasn't taken root in Norway yet...

Two random examples from the blog post:

I met my mom for dinner last night. Somehow it ends up on politics and yeah, my mom's now a big racist, shaking in her boots at the word “socialism.” We also agreed to the no politics thing, but she's a big time Facebooker. Inevitably she'll say something dumb from a meme or some horsehocky and I'll just have to go off again.

I don't think she was always like that. I know she was a Bush person, but I don't think she has always had such interpersonally toxic beliefs. It's been at least since 2014, because I remember hearing her say something ignorant about Ferguson and having a physical reaction to it.

My instinct is to challenge her and try to “educate” her but then the response is “you're calling your mother a racist?” and that type of question just makes it hard to say anything, especially to my mother.

I was raised by a strong pro-choice feminist mother, who now tells me “cute stories” that happen on The Five, the horsehockey Fox daytime show, loves Trump, and thinks abortion should be illegal after six weeks. Depressing doesn’t even cover it. You can’t break through that wall of horsehocky.

I grew up in a house where we openly talked politics. Now, it’s noticeably absent from our conversations. She actually said that she hopes my daughter, who is four, grows up to be conservative. When I said “absolutely not,” she seemed truly baffled. Their brains are rotting on this stuff.

I will say that whenever she spends time with my minority friends she seems to temporarily soften on the racist stuff, then she goes back to Texas and watches a few hours of Fox and it’s back to “normal.”

 

[Synobun]

Dude needs an editor. What a train wreck of a post. If he has good points in it, it's buried beneath a lot of chaff.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Couldn't read all of it, too depressing.
There are people like that in the UK although I only know one, my sister's father-in-law. I've had a few arguments with him about Muslims, immigrants and the EU but I haven't talked to me since the time he told me Bolansaro was going to clean up Brazil.

 

[H4run]

For a propaganda media this reality is a compliment, their method is (systematically) pretty effective.

 

[aelf]

Well, the obvious solution is more civility. Don't be mean to racists by calling them out - they're just misunderstood salt-of-the-earth types who have the right to speak their minds without getting shut down. You're probably a bad person in some other way too.

Just channeling a certain rural poster here.

 

[Marla_Singer]

My instinct is to challenge her and try to “educate” her but then the response is “you're calling your mother a racist?” and that type of question just makes it hard to say anything, especially to my mother.

I have experienced something similar with my former colleagues, and this was really painful. It has actually forced me to leave my job.

The thing is that I don't know what those people read hence I'm not really able to fully understand their psyché. Overall, I would say they end up following news which are constantly getting into the same direction which is basically that foreigners are a cancer destroying the society from the inside. As such, they don't perceive themselves as "racist" as they consider their point of view is more than enough argumented and they only defend themselves from objective evils.

I would only say I have no clue how to react towards this, but it's obvious it's only growing stronger (and this in every countries), particularly among people coming from smaller towns.

 

[Glassfan]

Well, yes, FOX is biased, but isn't all major media? The days of Edward R. Murrow are long gone. In fact, I would have to say, thank God for Fox. Otherwise the news would be a relentless liberal wasteland.

I follow Google News on my cell. Numerous sources with alternate viewpoints to present different sides of a story.

 

[Cutlass]

Well, yes, FOX is biased, but isn't all major media? The days of Edward R. Murrow are long gone. In fact, I would have to say, thank God for Fox. Otherwise the news would be a relentless liberal wasteland.

I follow Google News on my cell. Numerous sources with alternate viewpoints to present different sides of a story.

There is no major news organization in the US which has a bias that in any sense resembles that of Fox News. The other broadcast networks only semi lean liberal. They do not push an agenda, and drive all their reporting based on how it fits their agenda. That does not happen outside Fox News in the US.

Now the quality of most reporting in the US has declined. But that is not a partisan thing. That's just that there are fewer news organizations, they are more profit driven, and they have leaner budgets and tighter schedules. That said, only Fox is actively working for a political agenda, and a political party.

 

[downtown]

Fox News is trash, but buddy, it didn't do any of that stuff. The guy's mom, and just like everybody else, is an adult that is fully capable of turning off the TV. Fox may have amplified the racism, it might help mobilize it, but it didn't create it. That was already there.

And yes, all media is biased, but that's because they're humans, not necessarily because of overt political agendas. In my experience, politics would be pretty far down the most obvious, or even damaging, biases among major media outlets.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Fox News is disconnected from journalism, so the "all media bad" nonsense is basically false apologizing for what Fox is. Fox tells their viewers what they want to hear, with no regard for source, confirmation, or even plausibility.

That said, there is a key phrase there that is often ignored; "what they want to hear." Fox isn't making these horrific caricatures out of their viewers. Those viewers want to be told these distortions. I'm pretty much good with "Hey, you watch Fox? Cool. Well, be seeing you...later...much later...like never."

 

[Birdjaguar]

If you look at the other stories carried by Fox on their website, much of it is tabloid level titillation. Oh tonight they have a headline: Princess Diana should not have died from car crash injury, expert says

 

[Broken_Erika]

Fox News is Infotainment. Not news.

 

[H4run]

Fox News is Infotainment. Not news.

Instead of keeping people entertains and chills, it makes people angry and delusional, I think it is more a political tool, propaganda machine than an entertainment. The consequences that they able to creates can be quite serious. Not all form of free speech are good.

 

[Berzerker]

There is no major news organization in the US which has a bias that in any sense resembles that of Fox News. The other broadcast networks only semi lean liberal. They do not push an agenda, and drive all their reporting based on how it fits their agenda. That does not happen outside Fox News in the US.

Now the quality of most reporting in the US has declined. But that is not a partisan thing. That's just that there are fewer news organizations, they are more profit driven, and they have leaner budgets and tighter schedules. That said, only Fox is actively working for a political agenda, and a political party.

you dont watch msnbc, do you?

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Well, the obvious solution is more civility. Don't be mean to racists by calling them out - they're just misunderstood salt-of-the-earth types who have the right to speak their minds without getting shut down. You're probably a bad person in some other way too.

Just channeling a certain rural poster here.

It is an unfortunate fact that these yokels must be dragged kicking and screaming into modernity for America to progress.

Sick of seeing others defend these people, even as they double down on their ignorance and bigotry.

"Economic anxiety" my ass, these people voted for trump because they were influenced by a network almost indistinguishable from a white supremacist front, a front that is also a major institution for the GOP.

 

[Cutlass]

you dont watch msnbc, do you?

Low quality is a fundamentally different thing from pushing an agenda.

 

[Josu]

"Glad" to know it is not only where I live that media has became biased Infotainment

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Is there supposed to be some evidence of racism in the first quote, or are we just taking the blog poster's word for it?

 

[Kyriakos]

There is no major news organization in the US which has a bias that in any sense resembles that of Fox News. The other broadcast networks only semi lean liberal. They do not push an agenda, and drive all their reporting based on how it fits their agenda. That does not happen outside Fox News in the US.

Now the quality of most reporting in the US has declined. But that is not a partisan thing. That's just that there are fewer news organizations, they are more profit driven, and they have leaner budgets and tighter schedules. That said, only Fox is actively working for a political agenda, and a political party.

Isn't NBC (or how it's called) pretty obviously pro-democrat (and at -most?- times infamously pro-establishment democrat at that)?
Cnn isn't particularly known for being a source of actual journalism either.
Fox is just more blatant, of course. But it is the difference between openly being a meme and faking seriousness.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Is there supposed to be some evidence of racism in the first quote, or are we just taking the blog poster's word for it?

There comes a point where if you continously deny or minimise/downplay fact that people of colour are discriminated against by the various institutions in American society and harmed by rhetoric spewed by fox news, in this case the police, then you are in fact defending, empowering, enabling and excusing racism.

In the same way one would be considered anti semetic if they continously espoused and defended rhetoric and institutional policy that discriminated against Jews.