Jillian Smith | Staff Writer
Fox News, an affiliate owned by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox media company, has a long-standing history of conservative right-wing opinions.
Murdoch, born in Melbourne, Australia was raised in the United States, proudly achieving what some might consider “the American Dream.” In the years since, Murdoch created News Corp., his media conglomerate, and has since accrued a massive international network of print, broadcast and online media outlets and a personal net worth of $13.3 billion according to Forbes.
Being the CEO and Chairman of a major international corporation certainly increases ones’ international influence.
This influence puts Fox News, and all of Murdoch’s outlets, in a paramount position which he has used to spread strong right-wing messages.
¨I believe that most of the information that is shared [on Fox News] is educating an audience on what seems to solely be based on opinions and not actual data,” said Davante Falls, a senior in Communication.
“I’m a curious person who’s interested in the great issues of the day, and I’m not good at holding my tongue,” Murdoch admitted at the Leveson Inquiry on culture, practice and ethics of the press in 2012, reports Bloomberg Business.
Along with a lack of self-control in his speech, Murdoch bolsters a lack of media censorship in the acceptation that he allows his outlets immense freedom in their pro-republican broadcasting as well as in their extreme anti-democratic attitudes.
¨Another problem that I see within the ethical realm is that they are very close-minded when it comes to hearing other opinions,” said Falls.
On many of their popular programs, such as “The Five” and “Fox and Friends,” Fox News reporters not only take an anti-democratic political stance, they also seem to be harshly critical of some of the major groups of Democratic constituents such as women, blacks and latinos.
¨Nine times out of 10, I feel offended by things on Fox News, one of the many reasons I don’t watch it as much,” said Falls, who identifies as a black male.
Following the terror attack on Paris’ satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, Kennedy Montgomery, co-host of Fox’s “Outnumbered,” said on the topic of profiling “sometimes bad guys don’t look like bad guys.” Co-host Shannon Bream then amended her earlier suggestion of profiling to reduce terror attacks by saying that it may not work if the alleged suspects don’t “look like typical bad guys.”
What does the typical bad guy look like to a Fox News reporter?
That fact that these “reporters” are informing people on how to profile the “typical bad guy” shows how illegitimate this source of “news” is, as well as how prone they are to making derogatory racist comments.
To further their illegitimacy, Fox News has frequently been caught using manipulated images, graphs, video clips and other multimedia to distort the viewers’ perception and manipulate their opinion.
Crystal Lu, a junior in International Studies and Communication agreed saying,”they use flawed studies and skewed stories to gain their audiences’ attention and support. They also seem very bigoted and ignorant when they interview people of different mindsets.¨
According to Pulitzer Prize winning PolitiFact, only 10 percent of Fox News claims could be proven true while 58 percent were proven mostly false or worse. This can be compared to rates like 80 percent of claims proven true for CNN and 44 percent proven mostly false or worse for NBC and MSNBC.
This “news” is more like a source of conservative propaganda rather than honest, ethical journalism.
¨It seems that Fox News is not a news station, but just a platform to use as a political resource for certain subjects,” Lu said.
Glen Beck, former headliner on the Fox network, once said “I could give a flying crap about the political process … We’re an entertainment company.”
So, viewers beware.
