If the inclusiveness of high-profile, well-rehearsed spokespersons from the Progressive Left represents FOX’s intent to attract new viewers from inside the Beltway, or from the Upper East Side of New York City
If the cable-news wing of the FOX network is committed to appealing to a more politically diverse audience, it’s risky business.
It could signal that FOX’s senior executives are concerned that too few liberal progressives are tuning-in.
Perhaps, in the wake of the discredited Russiagate debacle, their strategy is to take a step to the Left to gain market share from the sentient beings who burned out on the Trump-hating MSNBC and CNN. The execs may calculate that some of their disgruntled viewers will migrate from those dead-end channels to FOX, if FOX’s content is more inclusive and diverse. Two magic words today.
One possible sign of FOX’s diversification was recently noted on this site in “Deep State Propaganda Has Come To Live At Fox News.” Former DNC Chair Donna Brazile – the leaker of CNN debate questions to Hillary Clinton – is now a FOX commentator. (Say, isn’t she the same Donna Brazile who helped stack the deck again Bernie?)
Who’s next? Does current DNC Chair Tom Perez enter the FOX den on the condition that he abstain from his trademarked obscene profanity? Or, how about Hillary Clinton as a political contributor to FOX? She’s not working these days.
Although FOX’s “fair and balanced” slogan was officially dropped in June 2017, according to the New York Times, the Brazile move may portend a new slogan: “Diverse and Inclusive.”
If that’s what’s happening, it comes in the wake of the failure of FOX’s marquee format of the dueling talking heads (DTH). You’ve seen it. Particularly If you’ve watched FOX during the silly season of election campaigns—which is just about all the time nowadays. DTH looks like this:
Two 20-something persons, living an extended adolescence, labeled “strategists,” who’ve never appeared before on TV—one Republican, one Democrat—duel with their respective, scripted, partisan talking points. They’ve been retained by someone’s campaign and offered paid (or volunteer internship) work, either during a sabbatical from graduate studies in poly sci, or, they’ve escaped from a job delivering pizzas. They face the camera as they face-off in a heated debate, mano a mano (which means hand-to-hand, and not man-to-man, which would be sexist).
The third talking head in the middle, the FOX referee, separates them after they start talking over each other at increasingly higher decibel levels. Only after viewer patience wears thin, does the “moderator” split the combatants apart by talking over their talking-overs.
The usual outcome of these debates is much heat, and little light.
FOX’s DTH exercise is based on a false assumption born during the days of “fair and balanced.” That assumption is that the respective veracity of opposing arguments, particularly when focused on some political subject, is imbued with a moral, intellectual, and factual equivalency.
Problem is, they seldom are…equivalent.
Here’s what the DTH exercise would have looked like in 1943. FOX hosts a DTH debate during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. On one side of the TV screen is German "Resettlement Commissioner" SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle who makes the case for relocating Jews to “work camps” outside the city. Hard work. Fresh air. Country living, says Hermann.
On the opposite side of the screen is the talking head of Ghetto Jewish Council leader Adam Czerniaków. He says the camps are really about extermination and death for all Jews. Hermann vs. Adam. Between them sits the FOX News referee, tasked to assure that both participants are treated equally.
Silly example, you say. Okay. But the point is far from silly.
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The respective truthfulness of opposing political arguments are not inherently equivalent. And to consistently treat them as such, is an ignorant and naïve exercise in spreading mis- and dis-information.
See Donna Brazile on FOX for a current example.
This implied false equivalency is crystal clear at the end of the Mueller Investigation. We now know that all the noise from the anti-Trump side of those DTH debates on the Mueller Investigation was born of one big, Goebbels-sized lie. (How many hours did those debates consume?)
Likewise, if the inclusiveness of high-profile, well-rehearsed spokespersons from the Progressive Left represents FOX’s intent to attract new viewers from inside the Beltway, or from the Upper East Side of New York City, it’s a strategy that will double-back to bite the network right where it hurts—in their ratings.
Which prompts the question: Is FOX falling?
Related:
• Deep State Slithers Onto Fox News Front Page
• Deep State Propaganda Has Come To Live At Fox News
• Wolf Donna Brazile Arrives in the Fox House
Lee Cary——Bio and Archives
Since November 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles for several websites including the American Thinker, and Breitbart’s Big Journalism and Big Government (as “Archy Cary”). and the Canada Free Press. Cary’s work was quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). His articles have posted on the aggregate sites Drudge Report, Whatfinger, Lucianne, Free Republic, and Real Clear Politics. He holds a Doctorate in Theology from Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL, is a veteran of the US Army Military Intelligence in Vietnam assigned to the [strong]Phoenix Program[/strong]. He lives in Texas.
If the cable-news wing of the FOX network is committed to appealing to a more politically diverse audience, it’s risky business.
It could signal that FOX’s senior executives are concerned that too few liberal progressives are tuning-in.
Perhaps, in the wake of the discredited Russiagate debacle, their strategy is to take a step to the Left to gain market share from the sentient beings who burned out on the Trump-hating MSNBC and CNN. The execs may calculate that some of their disgruntled viewers will migrate from those dead-end channels to FOX, if FOX’s content is more inclusive and diverse. Two magic words today. 
