What do you mean by "the news," anyway?
John Kiesewetter’s July 18 rant Opinion: Jan. 6 hearing coverage shows why Fox News Channel isn't news got me thinking. It’s a review of the things Fox News personalities have avoided telling their viewers about the Jan. 6 hearings.
My first reaction to reading the piece was, “This is not news, John.” While Kiesewetter’s piece is labelled “opinion,” there are many facts presented in the article and Kiesewetter gives a good rundown of what Hannity et al are not saying.
Hiding information from the audience is a separate issue from complaining about newscasters’ outright lying. In my opinion it’s a form of censorship.
Lying and spinning facts is one thing. Purposely hiding important facts from one’s audience is a different kettle of fish. The message you’re giving is that audience members cannot be trusted to make up their own minds.
Lest anyone think I’m just picking on Fox News, I’m not. I rarely rely on TV broadcasts for news and have not done so for many years. My reason originally was not because they regularly lie but because they are usually inefficient purveyors of information. Also, I spend much of my working day on a computer and dip regularly into a variety of news sources. By the time “evening news” rolls around much of what is reported I already know; see Where I Get My News These Days for what I mean. As I discuss there, most of my newsgathering is via online sources, some of which are branches of traditional publishing venues.
Even there, though, I’ve learned that trusting any single soure for news is problematic no matter what your politics are. For example, the Washington Post used to be my number one go-to news source not anymore. The reason is not because it often publishes editorials with which I disagree; I have always enjoyed reading different points of view if they are well written. The problem is that much of what the Post (and other traditional sources such as the New York Times) publish involves not reporting basic facts but on also publishing analyses, predictions, assessments, and interpretations.
Only a portion of what the Post publishes is labelled “opinion” but so much else is someone else’s interpretation or evaluation; I prefer making up my own mind about things. Also, I may watch MSNBC or read Twitter for interpretation, but not for basic facts and news. I have to go elsewhere.
This is one of the reasons that I find what Kieswetter discusses so disturbing. Fox on-air celebrities are censoring the news in order to push their own political agendas.
Hopefully, though, Fox viewers will be smart enough to seek out multiple sources of information in order to get a more complete picture of what’s going on in the world.
Copyright (c) 2022 by Dennis D. McDonald
