One of the problems of talking about the right wing media and the fascists behind it is that one is not allowed to advance to the conclusion without first defending the premise.
That premise being the right wing media. Right wing!?
Right wingers get immediately indignant at the thought of “right wing” and “media” being used in the same sentence. >From their point of view, there is only the left wing lying media, and then there is the unbiased, honest reporting of the news sources with whom they agree.
Certainly in view of the fact that there are two sides yelling at and berating each other, the one side calling the other “right wing,” and the other side yelling in response “left wing,” it is fair to take the truly impartial stance, and to call the one side the way the other labels it, and to call the other side by the name its opponent gives to it. One should be grateful that they know where they stand relative to each other and want to distinguish themselves from one another, and that they are both not fighting over wanting to be called the same thing. It would be an all-the-more difficult case to judge if they both wanted to call themselves the true liberals or the true conservatives.
However there is one thing they are certainly fighting over, and that is who is reporting the truth.
Who is reporting the truth?
Right Wing Television
Television is the principal medium by which most people appear to get their news and opinion these days.And this is especially true of the Gee Dubya Bush-supporting right wing. The left and right in America today are perhaps more polarized than ever before, and that is not at all the result of the muted, calm debate that presents fact and conclusion of both sides one usually finds in the print of all but only the most biased of newspapers. Rather it results from either the short sessions featuring biased, histrionic hosts interviewing agreeable guests, or that occasion when the viewer is to be entertained by a shouting match between both sides and, rarely, by all sides.
The Fox News Channel
“Fair and Balanced” is the motto that this 24 hour cable news network likes to trumpet to its viewers. A more accurate motto however would be Fairly Unbalanced.This horribly misnamed network—it’s the word “news” that doesn’t belong, as if that were not obvious—has set out to distinguish itself from the competition. It certainly has. Apparently thinking that those who like to watch professional wrestling and tractor pulls had no news outlet, and knowing that these people represented huge numbers to be tapped, FNC set up an operation that traded in on journalism and drove off the showroom floor with the news equivalent of a stock car crash derby.
This proud, in-your-face, media gem of the right wing features shouting matches in spades. Sort of. A real match would pit two opponents with either equal ability or debating conditions. FNC instead fixes the fight however. The mission of the network is to have the opinion representing the right to be victorious, or at least have the better chance at being victorious. One way that FNC can achieve this fix is by strait-jacketing or handcuffing the well-spoken member representing the left at this staged fight. How FNC shows do this will be described.
FNC can also maximize the chance of the right winger (that is, the person representing the FNC point of view) by dumbing-down the left wing opponent in its rigged debates. FNC might, for instance, hang out around the playground of the schools of the exceptionally challenged (the unkind, less-than-politically-correct word is “retard”), and lasso one of its students, who is then set down in the hot seat at the studio just before the spotlights are turned on him. In some cases, the designated left wing debate participant is not the real McCoy at all: it’s a pretender, or rather a right winger whose opinion is to the left of the designated winner of the debate, who is the more extreme right winger.
FNC represents the epitome of “infotainment.” This is a derogatory term for a network that calls itself news and journalism. The programming on its schedule is set to appeal and to cater to the lowest common denominator, which unfortunately is the numerically significant, commercially important, and monumentally ignorant masses.
It does not necessarily resort to lying (at least all the time) to do this however. It all depends on how one defines a lie. If one reports only the truth and reveals facts that support one’s side—pretty much principles of debating—then FNC could claim that this is what it does and it’s up to others with different views to do their homework.
Then it also depends also on how one defines “news” and “journalism” as well. Does it represent the case where reporters, journalists, and news readers knowingly report only one side, and then dismiss accusations of bias by replying that no news operation is completely free of bias and without subjectivity, so let’s all leap head-first into being thoroughly biased and outrageously subjective?
Or is it the job of a journalist to serve the truth? Credible journalists will tell you that truth is the reporting of whatever it is from all sides, and from all angles. That the truth is the reporting of all opinions, with only one correct one among the many incorrect ones. It is not the job of the news reporter or the editor to judge which is the correct one, but only to make sure they are all heard and read, and to trust the reader/viewer to make that judgment. If FNC is fulfilling that role, then it is probably in the business of journalism.
Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor
Bill O’Reilly is the host of the all-commentary, no-news, fact-free The Factor. O’Reilly needs to find a new motto for his show, because the one he’s using is definitely not working. How about “The Spin Starts Here,” or maybe “Only Spin Is Found Here”?O’Reilly is a master in the infotainment business. Among his strengths is that he is very well-spoken and appeals to his audience with a certain folksy charm. On occasion O’Reilly is quite eloquent and very literate, and you sense that he is a man frustrated by unrealized ambition.
It is possible that O’Reilly applied for the job of being the most respected and trusted journalist in America—something reserved for the anchors of network television news like the Conkrites and Brokaws and Jennings and Rathers—but that he gave up the effort because it perhaps required as part of the dues-paying process the need to lick a lot of boot and kiss a lot of ass on the climb up to the top, and O’Reilly had too much dignity or lacked the patience to do such things.
But then if O’Reilly had so much dignity, why does it seem like he made a bargain with the dark side?
The years in the apprenticeship of tabloid, celebrity gossip reporting—O’Reilly was reporter for the tabloid TV show Inside Edition—must have taken something out of someone like O’Reilly. He must have concluded that no one ever became richer by being reputable and honest or serving with distinction. Thus O’Reilly must have figured that if he could not reach the pinnacle of respect in his trade, then he could at least reach a high point in dollars and mob popularity, the compensation for being crass.
Selling out his self-respect is not O’Reilly’s only weakness however. He naturally has all the weaknesses that come with being a right winger.
Yes, people, get over it: Bill is a right winger, despite whatever he may tell you. As many times as O’Reilly may show you evidence of an extreme right winger calling him a "Commie pinko homo-loving liberal" and of an extreme left winger writing to tell him that he makes Bush look like a Democrat, that does not mean ole Bill can claim to stake out the middle ground. Look at Dan Rather’s mail: you can bet that plenty on the right call him a traitor who gives aid and comfort to America’s enemies, but you can also find letters from the extreme left who call him a corporate lackey in service to a right-wing, Republican Party agenda.
O’Reilly has all the traits of being a right winger, particularly those that reveal him to be petty and vindictive. His stances on most of the issues would find agreement with the likes of Bush, Cheney, many in America who call themselves "conservatives." The patrons of various truck stop diners, as well as assorted members of the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and other well-known, right wing hate groups, get up and give Mr. O standing Os for a majority of his positions.
Right wingers like O’Reilly also never forget the heroes of their past, like Mr. Hysterical Paranoia himself, Joe McCarthy. In the typical fashion of McCarthyism, O’Reilly’s most recent outrage was to call for the boycott of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and for the blacklisting of the producers and actors who were responsible for the made-for-television film about Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
Now although O’Reilly is identifiably a right winger, he does stand with the left on rare occasions. For example, O’Reilly is staunchly opposed to the death penalty, a view he shares with many members of the "extreme" left. He naturally comes by his fierce opposition to the death penalty because he is an Irish Catholic and a papist, and the Vatican’s position on the DP is clear.
Generally The Factor is all you would expect in FNC programming. It does treatments on many—too many—subjects in the news within a one hour program, and each treatment is the most superficial possible. Within a program segment, either a guest is interviewed directly by O’Reilly, or O’Reilly presides as master of ceremonies in a one-ring circus in which two or more guests are pitted against each other and then are encouraged by O’Reilly to strip and wrestle in the mud.
Naturally O’Reilly has his own opinion. And he is not only the first to get that opinion out in these program segments, but he continues to do so frequently during the segment, typically shouting down the guest who takes the opposing view. With the guest that agrees with O’Reilly’s position, O’Reilly and that guest bounce off of each other in a kissy-faced dialogue in which they make sure the main points are mentioned and reiterated without exploration of the alternatives or even acknowledgement of an opposition. When the opposition is actually present to provide a little confrontation and to dare heretically to question the settled truths pronounced by O’Reilly and the guest selected to provide affirmation for O’Reilly, the opponent’s message is side-stepped and the opponent himself will often be attacked personally. Indeed, FNC has done a great deal to make the ad hominem the chief means by which all debate issues are resolved.
Hannity & Colmes
The working title to this show before it aired its first hour was Hannity and Whoever We Can Find To Be A Spineless Left Winger. This is not really a joke. FNC had already signed on Sean Hannity, who was host of a virulently, hateful right wing radio program taking predictably fascist positions. Indeed, Hannity makes Rush Limbaugh, whom Hannity calls his icon, look like a left winger; Limbaugh could have been put opposite Hannity and truthfully been called the relative left winger.But FNC did happen to find Alan Colmes, that combination of individual who would not be telegenically competitive and would be soft-spoken. The show works by Hannity and Colmes being given exactingly equal time for direct and cross examination of guests brought on for a subject that fits within the typical FNC segment. (A FNC segment is a period of time about 5-8 minutes long that represents the attention span of the typical simian FNC viewer for any given topic.)
Hannity is a rabid attack dog naturally, trying to give enough rope to the “liberal” guest to hang himself, after which Hannity interrupts the guest repeatedly in order to pull the rope. Most guests who take the predictably opposite view are wise to Hannity and the show’s concept, and they adapt quite well in responding to Hannity. As such Hannity has actually tried to turn the show into a court of law: he gives the guests a question to which he demands a “yes” or “no” response with no elaboration, and then Hannity berates and shouts down they guests if they dare do anything beyond that.
As for Colmes, a bowl of Jell-O® could beat him in a debate. Occasionally Colmes shows arched-eyebrow indignation about a right wing outrage, but the show largely depends on Colmes being Colmes, which is a liberal who rolls on his back and exposes his throat to the snarling dominance of the conservative Hannity. If the dynamic were actually to change in which Colmes ever got the good licks, he would either be replaced or the show canceled, since people who like to watch the lions feed on their political opposites would soon tune out.
