Are We Stereotypes

[jasreeve17]

I know I must not stereotype and I'm trying hard not to.

(I will say it 100 times before I go to bed.)

Whilst reading the fox news thread today, it was slightly surreal to me, and got me thinking.

- I moved apartment a few months ago and we only had fox at the new place, at first. I thought that it was a joke channel, a kind of propaganda infotainment show - no news as such and certainly no objective reporting (though lots of objectionable reporting). I don't know much about US politics, but this channel seems to me to have one message only; Republican good. Democrat bad.

One day the missus tuned into an Aussie station that had regular news updates. Even though it wasn't a news channel as such it had far more news content than the fox news channel, I thought, and I quite liked it.

A week or so ago, that was replaced on my cable by Al Jazeera. I presumed this to be a pro Arab news channel, but actually find it pretty good and interesting reporting.

When I lived in Mongolia and had a wider list to choose from, I preferred BBC World News to CNN.

(I worked in braodcasting in the UK and was always proud of the BBC. Set up as an unbiased pure news station, neither funded by government nor advertising. I thought that the TV license idea was exceptional and maintained a high level objective news station)

Back to the Fox thread - some people seem to love it and claim that it's a fantastic real news station. Some think that BBC is crap. Others liked CNN.

Trying to make sense of the thread, it seemed to me like people loved what they'd grown up with and were making very few educated or intelligent decissions, regarding their news station choice. Me too, I grew up watching the BBC and it's good. Or is it?

What news channel do you watch and why do you watch it? Do all British conservatives love BBC, Labourites love ITV, US Republicans love fox, US democrates love CNN, Arabs love Al Jazeera, Aussies love errm, I forgot the name... you get the idea. Any thoughts?

[cathyy]

As far as Fox news being a shill for the Republicans, you're right. Evidence coming out in the Scooter Libby trial has been quite embarassing to Fox as to just how complicit they were in promoting the President's drive to invade Iraq. Their status as a news rather than spin outlet has been seriously compromised. Not that the average Republican Evangelical will care and stop watching.

I like BBC, too, but my favorites are the Daily Show and the Colbert Report when I can get them online. They present a lot more news than most of the news channels.

[farangsay]

You made a very relevant point in you first

para. You changed apartment and found

yourself with a different news channel.

So choice is not a strong factor here in

which news channel you watch.

I prefer to look at the web services.

Most mornings I look at the Nation

and BP sites and occasionaly BBC

or others.

I think I remember Fox "news" from

an apart in Phuket. Were they the ones

that devoted 50% of their air time for

about three weeks to some American

girl that disappeared on a trip to the

Dutch Antilles ? And the "terrorist threat"

was always high. Why they think it

useful to put that station on sattelite

services I don't know. Americans don't

travel that much and other nationalities

can think.

[Dupont]

All the chanels have an adgenda, mostly left wing. The problem most people have with fox is that their opinions are more widely held than most others. Thats why it is so popular.

The Beeb is full of trill little lefties who cannot presend news without taking one side or another, and this comes through in their voices.

Bill O' Reilly still commands more respect that any other cable news presenter. It;s just that those on the trendy left scream and shout and wail about it so much that some think that he is a minority figure.

you lefties... get a life... and a bath!

[lannarebirth]

I don't think it's a matter of being a sterotype so much as it is being a consumer of news. Each consumer has a set of views and each station panders to a segment of the population which only wants to hear things they already believe to be true.

[jasreeve17]

Both your comments on Fox seem just about right to me.

Pure pro Republican speeches, done via a never ending stream of chat shows, with no chat. Just the presenter introducing a Democrat, then slaughtering them. Followed by introducing a Republican, where they both then laugh at the Democrat. I don't know the rights and wrongs of US politics, but is such one sided reporting, with no news content, really allowed to have a broadcasting news license?

Farangsay, right again. No international content at all. None. Why broadcast it as an international news channel?

Maybe I need to start going online for my news? But, in the UK I'm just used to watching the news on TV - with Skynews (Newscorp as per Fox), ITV and BBC, each having something to offer.

Actually, thinking about it, I don't like skynews, as much as ITV or the BBC, as they are too similar to CNN in my opinion. Concentrating on dramatic pictures of airplanes crashing into buildings and missiles flying down streets, with pretty limited depth of analysis. But, if it sells... not what I perceive as a quality news channel though.

The Al Jazeera channel looks interesting. Certainly shows a different perspective, and initially seems much less biased / more objective than I thought that it might be. I'll give it a go...

[jasreeve17]

All the chanels have an adgenda, mostly left wing. The problem most people have with fox is that their opinions are more widely held than most others. Thats why it is so popular.

The Beeb is full of trill little lefties who cannot presend news without taking one side or another, and this comes through in their voices.

Bill O' Reilly still commands more respect that any other cable news presenter. It;s just that those on the trendy left scream and shout and wail about it so much that some think that he is a minority figure.

you lefties... get a life... and a bath!

Thanks for your thoughts Dupont, and it's the kind of thing I'm noticing. Strong views, but so different from my logic. I'm not a lefty, some on this forum would think of me as bordering on a fascist, but Bill O' Reilly is a horrible main, accepting only views that fit 100% with his own. Very closed minded and aggressive to the sacraficial lambs he gets set up with. I don't know if he is right or wrong politically, but what he does doesn't warrant airtime on a news channel, does it?

[jasreeve17]

I don't think it's a matter of being a sterotype so much as it is being a consumer of news. Each consumer has a set of views and each station panders to a segment of the population which only wants to hear things they already believe to be true.

Again, a good point. But I'd like my news presented factually, followed by biased responses from both sides of the argument. Am I unusual in that?

An example was during the recent Israeli / Hesbollah conflict. I started watching it on the BBC, and I saw a report of what happened, followed by analysis with pro Israelis, pro Lebanonese and pro Hesbollah. I think that it's called balanced reporting (though far from perfect, a decent attempt)

I then moved apartment and watched it on fox. It was a report followed by an interview with an Israeli army officer. No balance at all.

Do the consumers that you mention want balance or reinforcement of their ideals. If it's the latter, then isn't that a huge problem?

[farangsay]

I don't think it's a matter of being a sterotype so much as it is being a consumer of news. Each consumer has a set of views and each station panders to a segment of the population which only wants to hear things they already believe to be true.

As opposed to those of us in the tiny minority who are more

interested in what really happened.

[lannarebirth]

I don't think it's a matter of being a sterotype so much as it is being a consumer of news. Each consumer has a set of views and each station panders to a segment of the population which only wants to hear things they already believe to be true.

As opposed to those of us in the tiny minority who are more

interested in what really happened.

Well yes, that would be nice, but that's not really available much anymore, is it?

[lannarebirth]

Do the consumers that you mention want balance or reinforcement of their ideals. If it's the latter, then isn't that a huge problem?

The latter I think, and yes, i think it is.

Personally i don't like confrontational pundits spinning what they want you to believe the news is. I deally I'd like a factual accounting of events, and I'd like to think I'd read enough books to know what that will mean. Anyway, that's my ideal. What I did instead was got rid of my TV.

[endure]

I've only ever seen Fox once. I arrived in Thailand on the day that the tsunami struck and the room that I was staying in had Fox as one of its TV channels. The thing that struck me more than anything was that whenever they did a news piece on the tsunami the majority of the time was spent talking about how generous the American public were being rather than actual news of the people who were suffering the effects of the tsunami.

[jasreeve17]

Do the consumers that you mention want balance or reinforcement of their ideals. If it's the latter, then isn't that a huge problem?

The latter I think, and yes, i think it is.

Personally i don't like confrontational pundits spinning what they want you to believe the news is. I deally I'd like a factual accounting of events, and I'd like to think I'd read enough books to know what that will mean. Anyway, that's my ideal. What I did instead was got rid of my TV.

I agree with you. So why don't we have factual news on tv. Is it that the interested parties are too powerful, i.e. I presume that the Newscorp management (Mr Murdoch) are pro Rupublican in the US. Or the heavy advertisers are pro Rupublican.

Thus the BBC model is better - funded by the tv license, with the sole requirement that they provide factual unbiased news to the entire population. Or is that just my bias showing itself?

[popshirt]

All the chanels have an adgenda, mostly left wing. The problem most people have with fox is that their opinions are more widely held than most others. Thats why it is so popular.

The Beeb is full of trill little lefties who cannot presend news without taking one side or another, and this comes through in their voices.

Bill O' Reilly still commands more respect that any other cable news presenter. It;s just that those on the trendy left scream and shout and wail about it so much that some think that he is a minority figure.

you lefties... get a life... and a bath!

And the right-wing-gods-and-gun folks may feel more at home in the Red States than elsewhere in the world. One of the reasons I moved to Thailand was to distance myself from the closed minded shrill conservatism expoounded by Fox (but endemic to the US by know-nothings there) only to find it here on cable in LOS! My Thai friends, many of whom are learning English sometimes watch Fox and ask me what does all this mean? I patiently explain it to them, but that is another story, another thread...........as for bathing, I do wish the "righties" would do something about their awful hair, both women and men.

[lannarebirth]

[Thus the BBC model is better - funded by the tv license, with the sole requirement that they provide factual unbiased news to the entire population. Or is that just my bias showing itself?

As someone who considers themselves apolitical, I'd say Fox is a right wing mouthpiece and the BBC is a left wing mouth piece. CNN is crap, but used to be very good at breaking news as I recall. I find the internet to be much better, but there's not much truth on there either.

Edited February 18, 2007 by lannarebirth

[farangsay]

All the chanels have an adgenda, mostly left wing. The problem most people have with fox is that their opinions are more widely held than most others. Thats why it is so popular.

The Beeb is full of trill little lefties who cannot presend news without taking one side or another, and this comes through in their voices.

Bill O' Reilly still commands more respect that any other cable news presenter. It;s just that those on the trendy left scream and shout and wail about it so much that some think that he is a minority figure.

you lefties... get a life... and a bath!

Do tell is that a republican political slogan ?

Or is it just that your humour is as challenged

as your command of the English language ?

BTW do you know where the terms "left" and

"right" as political designations originated ?

[jasreeve17]

[Thus the BBC model is better - funded by the tv license, with the sole requirement that they provide factual unbiased news to the entire population. Or is that just my bias showing itself?

As someone who considers themselves apolitical, I'd say Fox is a right wing mouthpiece and the BBC is a left wing mouth piece. CNN is crap, but used to be very good at breaking news as I recall. I find the internet to be much better, but there's not much truth on there either.

The BBC shouldn't be left wing should it? Maybe a little as the people working in broadcasting are likely to be traditionally left of centre, and without a focus from a biased backer / financial provider, this may show through. But all major political parties get equal airtime.

Also, there are limited large content providers, a lot of the internet news will be the same as the tv news, if you're focusing on the major sites. If you search for fringe sites then in theory you can get any news on the net. Hard to find though.

[qualtrough]

A lot of people are mystified how any Americans could continue to support Bush. If you are one of the mystified people, spend some time watching Fox and you will have your answer. A synonym for Fox viewers is "Kool-Aid Drinkers".

[fxm88]

Don't forget that far more Americans still get their news from any of the free-to-air network news programs than from all of the cable news outlets. Anyways, a couple of good sites for keeping up with the lies and distortions spread by the media are:

http://mediamatters.org/

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

[jasreeve17]

To go back to my original question, it seems that many of us are stereotypes. It's just so easy to do so - it requires no thinking and it's comfortable.

I'm a BBC stereotype, although I'm trying to break the type. Dupont, looked to very much fit into the fox stereotype (and I'm not saying this is bad, because I have no knowledge of US politics).

Lannarebirth looks like he may not fit into a stereotype that I'm aware of, and I respect him for that.

I'm certainly going to make a conscious effort to watch my news from different sources and see what happens to me. I've mentioned Al Jazeera, I'll try CNN online too, one of the non Newscorp asian offerings (it'll have to be online) and Fox at home.

I'll probably end up even more confused....

[fxm88]

To go back to my original question, it seems that many of us are stereotypes. It's just so easy to do so - it requires no thinking and it's comfortable.

Which "stereotypes" are you even thinking/talking about? If you've defined them I do apologize, but I must have missed where.

In any case, the biggest stereotype of anyone watching television news is that they're old: "Fox News Channel and CNN are two of only three leading basic networks (the other being the Hallmark Channel) whose median viewer age is over 60. Headline News rings in next at 59.9, and MSNBC is still on the rickety side at 57."

[jasreeve17]

To go back to my original question, it seems that many of us are stereotypes. It's just so easy to do so - it requires no thinking and it's comfortable.

Which "stereotypes" are you even thinking/talking about? If you've defined them I do apologize, but I must have missed where.

In any case, the biggest stereotype of anyone watching television news is that they're old: "Fox News Channel and CNN are two of only three leading basic networks (the other being the Hallmark Channel) whose median viewer age is over 60. Headline News rings in next at 59.9, and MSNBC is still on the rickety side at 57."

That's pretty interesting.

So where are the youngsters (say under 55) getting their news from? If it's the internet then I suggest that the same people that put the news onto the TV are putting it onto the internet too. Well, actually I don't suggest, I know that's the case. Thus nothing much is changing, other than the medium that people get their news from.

Sorry, I seem obsessed with stereotypes today (blame Robski...), I preluded to it in my original thread message.

[sceadugenga]

Unwashed Lefties 21 Right Wingers 1

Maybe there's hope for the world yet.

My father spent six years of his life fighting people who turned propaganda into an art form.

Murdoch, Fox et al are involved in similar techniques to keep modern day Nazis in power.

I bath twice every day, more in the hot season.

[jbowman1993]

All the chanels have an adgenda, mostly left wing. The problem most people have with fox is that their opinions are more widely held than most others. Thats why it is so popular.

The Beeb is full of trill little lefties who cannot presend news without taking one side or another, and this comes through in their voices.

Bill O' Reilly still commands more respect that any other cable news presenter. It;s just that those on the trendy left scream and shout and wail about it so much that some think that he is a minority figure.

you lefties... get a life... and a bath!

For those interested in Bill O'Reilly, may I suggest getting a copy of Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell Them". That will tell you all you need to know about Bill........

I watch the Jim Lehrer News Hour, which is broadcast here in Thailand every day at 4 on channel ...... 6 or 7 on the UBC box. It is one of the best, and presents a nicely neutral spin on events.

JB

Edited February 19, 2007 by jbowman1993

[garro]

I remember living in Phitsanulok city a couple of years back and we had Fox news via cable in our apartment. I couldn't stop watching it! I had never seen something so right-wing in my life. It was during the last US election and I spent many hours wanting to scream at the TV. It was addictive. I found it hard to believe that this was possibly how a lot of Americans actually viewed the world; scared the s**t out of me.

I remember Bill O'Reily as a smarmy-arsed gobshite who believed himself to be an expert on world affairs. If you are reading this Bill, I apoligise but it is just the way you come across.

I think the BBC is fairer then most but I still take their news with a pinch of salt.

[longway]

Personally I only trust what I read on Thaivisa.

[jumnien]

Good thread and though-provoking. It explains why many farangs, being fed right-wing anti-Thaksin prattle from the Post/Nation, found it so hard to believe why so many Thais would still vote for Thaksin and didn't trust the coup.

[kmart]

Seems that world politics (especially in the US) has never been as polarised as now. Both Fox News and CNN are parodies of news programmes, that have an agenda before any news breaks.

I find Fox news particularly depressing, as it panders to a totally self-centred and bunkered thinking.

I agree with the poster above. A lot of my relatives died helping to defeat the propagandists, radicals and book-burners in the last century. It would be a shame if it was for nothing.

[Robski]

Good thread Jasreeve, I'll take the blame if need be.

The thing I like about being outside of the UK is that I can limit the amount of news broadcasting I am subjected to on a daily basis, I can be selective and look at the main points without getting snowed under with rhetoric and propaganda.

I agree with your views on Fox and it's funny to see those that defend Fox use the same kind of right wing rhetoric that is used in the Fox broadcasts, 'if you're not with us you're a leftie' which translates as 'I'm a neo-con fascist' laughable and illogical but Fox news suits their opinion.

Al Jazeera is a very interesting channel, the reporting is obviously pro Middle East, just as every Western station to some degree is pro Western, but it is very good to see another perspective on the major issues in the Middle East, I remember watching it with some Egyptian friends in 1999 when they we're reporting the devastating effects of sanctions on Iraqi people, especially the rise in infant mortality rate, I was unaware of the effects, there were hardly any reports in the Western media, but people of Middle Eastern origin we're seeing the terrible effects on a daily basis, I reallized then what a huge gap there was in perspective between West and East and just how that gap was maintained by the media.

Back to the original question, my news channel of choice is Channel 4 news in the UK, it is impartial without sitting on the fence, it asks the tough questions and brings to light many stories that other news channels won't go near.

The anchor man is John Snow, he is a veteran reporter who has covered many conflicts and disasters around the world and he has a lot of editorial control over the news that is covered.

[Jet Gorgon]

Hey, Jas. I watch Al Jazeera and other Asian news. You are right. Fair reporting, especially just after 9-11.

A pity about news reporting these days. FOX is def nationalist republican. Beeb is anti American and misses alot of the main points in any story. Globe and Mail, NYTimes, etc, very left wing. Used to love to pick up an International Herald Trib, but that's gone to pot as well. Not news, it's THEIR opinion of the news. Distressing.

Agree Cathy, love Daily Show and Colbert, my favs; but only really fab if you know what the news is that they are slamming. Not for end of day summation news gatherers.