Salon suggests Fox News is the only biased outlet
December 16, 2021
A new piece from Salon suggests that the rest of the media should gang up on Fox News.
They want them to tell everyone that it’s not a real media outlet, that there’s too much politics there. The actual complaint is, of course, is that the worldview on display at Fox isn’t to the taste of those at Salon – therefore it must be talked down and made to seem unserious.
They’re not joking either: “What might help: sustained storytelling about what Fox is, what role it plays. It should be embedded in stories about everyday political fights. It’s hard to really understand anything in politics without assessing the role of conservative media. You have to expose audiences to the sources and vectors of bad information. It’s not enough to fact-check.” There should be a sustained policy of other media outlets attacking Fox for being politically incorrect.
“I mean, let’s think through what it would look like to have the industry turn on Fox and aggressively tell stories about its propaganda and misinformation role. “
Well, why would anyone want to do that? “The audience is so fractured at this point that such journalism isn’t reaching the mass audience it would have 15 years ago. Whole days go by where Fox viewers aren’t exposed to the events of the day being told by most other mainstream outlets. “
The answer is that Fox allows folks to get their news from a non-Democratic viewpoint. It shouldn’t be a surprise that, being largely young, ill-paid and college educated, the vast majority of the media is to the left of center and Democrat. The argument being put forward here is that any media outlet that doesn’t toe that particular line should be delegitimized. How can propaganda work if folks can gain their information elsewhere?
Salon is actually in the top 100 media outlets by some categorizations and gains some 8 million views a month. Yet here it is arguing for the shouting down of alternative opinions.
Freedom of the press meant to the Founding Fathers that there would be no one-party line. Sure, the law talks only of the government itself not restricting speech or media but using the authority of one part of that media to delegitimize another is still a breach of the basic idea. Salon really is calling for the American media to make sure Fox News is not regarded as a legitimate media outlet. Not for any reason other than it doesn’t like what is being said.
What a way to – as they say over on the Left – promote diversity, eh?