What is the agenda behind Fox Business News carrying Freedom Watch and John Stossel? I have heard Stossel call the drug war ‘idiotic’, Napolitano shredding Rumsfeld. They even have Lew Rockwell, who makes Ron Paul look like a moderate, on the show tearing apart the NeoCon agenda and trashing the Fox Business’ propaganda that ‘we’re not in a recession’!
What is the agenda behind this? Just cashing in on libertarians? These guys really do not fit in on a network family where Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are the least NeoConnish.
Fox is a business. It has no agenda. Only consumers.
Why else would Fox, a channel started by a former Australian Labour Party worker, take such a Republican stand in its various anchors? Because it’s a business.
Why would Fox, a business funded by rich Muslim businessmen, have so much anti-Islamic news on it? Because it is a business.
That’s a somewhat naive view. Businesses don’t take consumer preferences entirely as given they attempt to cultivate some and discourage others which will aid their monetary gain in the long run or other plans. No existing business acts entirely as a business in the clear cut abstract economic sense- everyone is a consumer and producer in whatever business they are in, it is just a question of degree.
That’s a somewhat naive view. Businesses don’t take consumer preferences entirely as given they attempt to cultivate some and discourage others which will aid their monetary gain in the long run or other plans. No existing business acts entirely as a business in the clear cut abstract economic sense- everyone is a consumer and producer in whatever business they are in, it is just a question of degree.
I agree, and I think it is also naive for another reason: in a democratic state the amount of power that media organizations wields will tend to turn many sectors of them into de facto branches of the government. For example, how is the New York Times not a de facto government agency? They are a part of the unofficial propaganda arm of the United States Government. Fox, as one of the largest and most popular media network families in the United States (indeed, in the world) can not help but being a force in its own right when it comes to elections and legislation. For them not to have a political agenda would require them to be virtually oblivious to this.
Fox is a brand owned by News Corp, which owns many, many, many other brands around the world.
Fox News’s original market seizure strategy was to compete with ABC, CBS and NBC, and also CNN once it came out. With so many excruciatingly dull alphabet news organisations chasing the same excruciatingly dull audience, Fox has always tried to market their news more to the middle-American everyman, and has used every trick - dirty or otherwise - in the book to achieve this feat. The annoying flashy bright red colours have been there since the early days, and are part of an overall marketing strategy to make news more accessible and interesting to Fox’s heartland target market, pictured below:
They don’t actually have political principles, or anything quite that much like human feelings. Their editorial bias consists of “play whatever those boring prudes on the mainstream networks of record would find offensive, without being too gratuitous. Push the boundaries of what’s considered acceptable rustic political incorrectness. That’ll get 'em out of their methlabs for a while.”
Neoconservatism’s appeal is obviously beginning to wane in America, so they have to find something else that CNN or CBS would find somewhat offensive and quaint, and I guess John Stossel’s mustache and the Judge’s honesty fit the bill for now.
Still, whether or not they have a political ideology is beside the point. They are political, and not merely for marketing reasons. Large swaths of the media are de facto government agencies; or at least incestuous with them.
Ricky James Moore, what you just say is speculation. Here is a difference between speculation and fact.
A speculation may be plausible, but not necessarilly true.
A fact may be implausible, but is the truth.
Just because New York Times is an establishmentarian paper does not mean it is run by the establishment. You have merely highlighted an incentive for a democratic government to control media, but have not established whether it actually happens.
To your mere speculation, I could counter another speculation - that ordinary people do want to see foreigners burnt, bombed, and murdered in order to feel comfortable about security, and do have demand for a news media that satisfies their bloodthirst; that the establishment might not even care what the media or millions of subjects think about them, and that the media’s desire to sycophantically appease the establishment is both their own initiative and a way of satisfying customers.
Both would remain speculation, and they can be neither proven nor unproven, but strengthened or weakened in the case for them. Let’s learn some skepticism. No organization is guilty, until proven innocent - not the least a neoconservative news channel run by a pacifist ex-socialist.
I heavily doubt that Rupert Murdoch is a libertarian at least in practice. I’m not saying you’re wrong (cause I just checked it on Wiki ), but I don’t buy what he’s selling.
Fox Business caters to people who follow the economy. Most people in the know at least support the concept of a market-based economy. A lot of those folks are libertarians. It’s the latest fad with the Tea Party coming to fruition. All of a sudden after the Ron Paul movement caught fire, Stossel joins Fox Business and Napolitano goes off the leash.
