quote

[acroyear]

"The Republicans seem more interested in locking me up for trying to encourage people to participate in our democracy than locking up Bin Laden for his attacks on our democracy." -- Michael Moore.

Yeah, he's a jerk at times, but constantly harrassing him is actually aiding his cause, because as a producer of entertainment (whether factually based or not), attention is what he needs.  If you just let a blowhard go, he'll blow himself out of the picture.

But as long as you keep trying to shut him up, you keep him in the papers and that's all he really wants...

...so to the Bush-ites, I say, keep trying to shut him up!  I dare you!

oh, and for those noting that right-wing Fox News keeps beating CNN and that must be "proof" that more americans support the "Fair And Balanced" view of the news, I note that they ignore the fact that CNN + PBS + MSNBC + the 3 networks FAR outnumber Fox in totals.  For moderate and honest news coverage, we have choices, you know...

Comments

Re: comment

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aiming the Fox comment at rational people who understand how news (even biased news) and markets work.

I was aiming that at the more general jackass (usually Murdoch's financial backers and/or O'Reilly-heads) who like to take a simple and accurate headline (Fox News coverage of the debates had higher ratings than CNN's) and use to paint this distorted picture that Fox's target audience is bigger than CNN's.

Trust me, this is exactly the type of headline that Fox uses to do exactly such a distortion. You'll see it in their marketting soon.

Does Fox's rapid increase mean anything? Well, first off part of their increase is that there's an increase in digital cable and satellite subscribers in general, with more options. People now have more choices (and Fox as a choice) that they didn't have 3 years ago. There are many would have chosen Fox News then but couldn't because their cable options didn't support it. However, they certainly kept Rush's radio ratings up there as an alternative...

Second, Fox News is right now the only player in a vertical market, with ALL of the other news outlets playing in a horizontal field. Fox is going for a niche audience, and the thing about niches is that you run out of customers sooner or later, OR your niche becomes the target for everybody.

In other words, where moderate, unbiased news (trans: "the liberal media") has created a commodity, they're going for brand recognition by saying they're not part of that commodity, that they have a unique product to offer (which they do; nobody else distorts on such a drastic scale...well not in this country's tv media at least).

Now the only way to get into Fox's niche is to also go with a conservative bias...only nobody's going to do that because 1) they get enough criticism as it is (some people actually are still honorable about their work in this field), and 2) the conservatives know from the 2000 election that all you have to do is divide your opposition and you win. Divide your own support and you're screwed.

So nobody's going to take on Murdoch anytime soon, but would rather lend their support to it in order to keep up this illusion that the number of (ultra-)conservatives is growing and everyone else should join them.