FoxNews on Lincoln-Douglass Debates
Proving the importance of a social science education, FoxNews ran a piece about the Lincoln-Douglass Debates. This is not a typo.
Here’s a video, via Ari.
… and though while the FoxNews interns’ lazy use of Google Image Search would lead first to mere and slight embarrassment, it was only the first in a long string of Election 2008 debacles that would lead to the collapse of the Murdoch-inspired news networks.
I propose a toast, that this future might meet us. At the expense of channeling the late, great Spiro Agnew — and I say that sarcastically — I really hate television news.
May 4, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I could not agree more! I stopped watching television news years ago. It’s horrible and not at all analytical or thought provoking. It’s controlled/owned by corporate America and they have their own agenda. I don’t see the media as playing the role that the founder envisioned.
May 4, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Back in the day, American newspapers were pretty much always partisan gossip rags. FoxNews is an extension of that tradition.
May 5, 2008 at 9:21 am
As atrocious as news reporting was in early America, the problem with TV news is subastantially different. It’s not dominated by a “corporate” viewpoint. It’s been turned into just another entertainment genre.
May 5, 2008 at 11:34 am
There was a certain amount of entertainment in journalism in the Gilded Age, though. Ask Grover Cleveland.
Television hasn’t made journalism yellower. It’s just made news a prettier shade.
May 9, 2008 at 6:47 am
I don’t think that the effect of media consolidation can be denied. It has made a difference because there are less independent-minded newspapers, etc. I agree that TV news has always been limited, although CNN under Ted Turner was actually fairly progressive (not in a political sense but in an openness to cover stories from various perspectives).
The more that the FCC allows vertical and horizontal consolidation of media, the more we will be forced to use the internet as a source. If net neutrality doesn’t get quashed, we might not even have the internet as we now know it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
May 9, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Large, multinational media conglomerates are interested in a profit, first and foremost. As often as not, new, exciting perspectives — though not always a la Fox News — will get them the larger share of the audience.
For every Rupert Murdoch representing one huge conglomerate, there’s an Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. to balance it out.