Protest Fox News Channel's War Coverage

Sisters and Brothers,

Can I be a little harsh? But if I was organizing this, I wouldn't assume a picket would do anything to change or impact the media, even if it was KQED...which, on a side note, I wonder why anyone doesn't target them. They are just as guilty as anyone else with pro-war, unbalanced programming.

My starting point would be to shut it down or disrupt it by taking over the stion/office and then negotiating. After all, the people own the airwaves, right?

Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the Gestapo over at Fox know very well what they're doing and care nothing about antiwar views or people.

There are better ways to spend your time and energy. As they say, direct action gets the goods (if you do it right).

Just some friendly suggestions,

Me.

The way to hurt them is to call their advertisers, encourage your friends to call the, call the cable provider, call the news channels, let them be very very aware of the fact that you are taking money from their wallets. Start with a rant about how sickening you find their sponsorship of a station that glorifies human suffering and destruction, a channel that is "unpatriotic" (in your view), that it disgusts you that their product is associated with them. That you / your church group / friends / bowling team / union / etc etc will boycott them until they stop.

Lie down on the streets, block the traffic, get up - go for lunch and call the mayor and chief of police and complain about yourself. Act indignant. Where's the national guard? What am i paying my taxes for? I am a community leader / business owner etc etc

Action causes reaction.

Make a difference, turn it off!

I think it is more appropriate to demonstrate at media outlets than in washington. I also think education via signs, pamphlets and the like is more appropriate in this instance where many people have never considered the degree to which their information is slanted. So far direct action has mainly fueled the propaganda machine it seeks attention from. If direct action is ever appropriate in this instance it will be after a period of concerted educational activities, of bringing it to the attention of farmers in Iowa or folks up the coast here in Eureka if these actions are to gain popular support.

I think Fox news is not Fair or Balanced and they are not against the war. SO WHAT? I know this media is not fair or balanced either. However they are entitled to report the news as they wish. Little thing called FREEDOM OF SPEECH. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Encourage your friends not to watch it. But if you force them to change, that is a form of censorship. They have a right to disagree with you and report the news as they want. Its what makes this country great.

... to report the news any way they want. because then what america is getting isn't news, but "news".

journalism is like any other profession. it comes with responsibility and ethics. a doctor can't treat your cancer any way he or she wants. doctors must "first do no harm". it's not a matter of first amendment free speech. a doctor cannot lie to you and expect that lie to protected by the first amendment. it doesn't work like that.

same with journalism. they can't say anything they damn well want because then they are lying and MISinforming. they aren't giving you the facts, just lies, distortions and propaganda. sorry, but that's not news. it's "news".

the only way for FOX "NEWS" to report the news "any way they want" would be for them to publically admit that they have a certian bias. that way all who are watching would be aware that they aren't getting just the facts, but instead a biased version of them. it's a matter of trust. people watch it thinking these men and women are professionals doing their job of informing them. but if they are not professionals reporting the facts, then the audience needs to be told so.

just like if you went to a "doctors" office. you assume the doctor is a liscensed professional. and you should be able to check the liscense in order to make sure. if there were no liscenses, and no code of prefessional conduct and ethics, you could go to someone calling themselves a doctor who was really nothing more than a snake-oil huckster.

it's the same with journalism. they can't say anything they fucking want and call themselves a news organization or professional journalists. because that is NOT what professional journalism is.

Fox News reports the news professionally as any legit news sources does, yes some of the host have their own biases. You have to remember that ratings which bring in money is based on entertainment value. I see a lot of sources being quoted and linked on this website that have their own agenda, fair and balanced is not part of it.

... fair and balanced isn't part of it, then why does FOX "NEWS" claim that as their philosophy? as far as i'm concerned, those kind of hypocritical bullshit statements make them an even larger target. personally, i think they say that just to piss people off.

and plus, i think it's hard to pin down the bias of a news organization as just a matter of obvious fact (i'm not talking about shows like o'reilley here). it's alot more subtle and sophisticated. it seeps out and you miss it if you're not looking.

it's how many graphics of the american flag are shown, what kind of stories get reported and which don't, what sources get cited and which don't, what guests and analysts say and what they don't, what pictures are shown and which aren't, what questions are asked and which aren't. even the news scroll at the bottom of the screen. for instance, the CNN scroll has as many direct statements from the u.s. government and military as they do actual news reports. they don't challenge or verify any of these official statements, they just put them up there word for word unchallenged. and the u.s. government says thank you very much.

if you watch any of these news shows for an hour, the bias or the slant or the angle slowly seeps out. it's nothing obvious, but it's still apparent.

as for FOX "NEWS", there's a reason why republicans seem to find that news organization so popular, and those on the left despise it. it's no conspiracy. it's no accident. plus, the head of it, roger ailes, is a long time republican supporter (not to mention rupert murdoch). again, it's not alledging there's some evil conspiracy. it's just the way it is.

so FOX "NEWS" should admit the bias and quit it with the "fair and balanced" jingle.

Freedom of the press as set forth by the First Amendment to The Constitution of The United States is one of the most visible examples of the disparity between political freedoms and economic freedoms. The political freedoms that we cherish as the basis of our nation are extremely important agents of social change and liberation. However, the unfortunate truth that is so often overlooked is that there is no and has never been a free press. To be able to publish something, one must have access to a press. That requires money. There is no freedom of the press for those who cannot afford to pay for the press. I agree that no matter how deporable, unethical, and terribly frightening the actions of FOX News may be, for the most part, they do have the right to say what they will. We as well have the right to say as we will, and there is no question that the reporting found on this website is biased as well. The problem as I see it, and I'm not the first to do so, is that a multi-billion dollar multi-national has more of a right to say what they will in exact proportion to its greater ability to finance saying it. I support any action to get voices heard, to display all the different perspectives of the issue. That is why the internet, if not stymied by the corporations we are sicsussing, has such a huge potential to spur intelligent discussion. I support this protest, though I will not attend, especially since I do not truly understand what it will hope to achieve. The people who work for FOX know they're biased. The people who disagree with FOX already agree with the protesters. And everyone else will, unfortunately, ignore it.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/

I have no reason to trust al-Jezerrah anymore than I do the corporate networks. They both have a single-minded focused agenda to push.

... i don't diagree with your point that the media requires access to big money in order to operate, and in that sense is not free. it must answer to that money, and it has a vested interest in that money. this is true.

but i still disgree that a news corporation can say whatever the fuck they want, and still call themselves a news corporation. that's bollocks. the audience puts their trust in them. just the way a patient puts their trust in a doctor. there is no freedom for these professionals (journalists and doctors) to abuse that trust and lie. that is not ethical. nor is it protected speech. an advertising company can't make false claims in it's ads. that's another example of speech that is not protected under the first admendment.

so for FOX "NEWS" to spew biased or slanted coverage, while parading as a news corporation, is the same as going to a crank doctor's office and having the guy say he's a liscensed neuro-surgeon. it's an abuse of trust.

you can lie to your friends, your friends can lie to you. you can lie to your boss, your boss can lie to you. you can say whatever the fuck you want to these people. but you CANNOT lie to your customers.

You are absolutey correct. As far as I know, and I am no legal expert on the matter, advertisers and companies cannot lie to their costumers about their product or service. However, as is obvious in all commercial communication, there are countless tricky ways to get around that limitation, some subtle, some not at all. One cannot falsly advertise a product or service in any concrete way, but one can suggest many things about it using language with no meaning of its own. To use your analogy of the doctor, just look at the advertising practices of the pharmeceutical industry. They cannot lie about their products in their advertisements, however, they are free to use all the imagery and relative adjectives they may in order to suggest how wonderful their drug is, and to make those suscpetible believe that these drugs do things they indeed may not. This marketing is not just to consumers. On average, $8000 is spent PER PHYSICIAN per year by the drug industry in advertising directly to doctors, in the form of special gifts, "educational" seminars, old-fashioned print ads in medical journals, etc. This is not in the slightest ineffectual, so your claim that when we see a doctor we expect complete honesty is not false, however, even unbeknownst to many of the physicians themselves, there is a huge bias for commercial drugs than for generic ones. Now is this wrong? Hell yes. Is this illegal? Not yet, though it maybe should be. The point is, I remain unconvinced that the FOX News actually directly lies about the services it offers in an illegal way. "Unbiased," I think, is a relative adjective that would have a lot of trouble standing up in court as really meaning anything. However, I profess that perhaps I am ignorant of exactly the details of the FOX News claims. Should you wish to enlighten me, I would appreciate that in all earnesty. Thank you for disagreeing me, it makes me think.

One reason for my possible ignorance as to the claims of FOX News channel is that I've commulatively watched probably about 100 seconds total of the FOX News channel in my life.

I get the distinct feeling most people don't recognize the difference between news and commentary. I challenge you all on this site to listen to just the news
on Fox News Channel and state it's not fair. Then you can go to the talk shows on the same channel and listen to opinions of all sides. However in liberal publications and television channels they have only the liberal side and their news is tarnished with opinion. News should be facts only and as many of them as possible. You won't get this on the major networks or the large newspapers of this country.
C. Phillips

FOX news is not the only one with bias. ALL NEWS MEDIA HAS BIAS. The degree and left or right of center is the only difference. Focusing on FOX simply because they are conservative is not fair. Boycott all of the news sources since they all are biased.

... the major problem with FOX "NEWS" is they claim that they are "fair and balanced". none of the other news corporations make such pretentious, bullshit claims. so as long as FOX "NEWS" continues to do so, they are setting themselves up for attack.

yes, i agree there is a difference between straight news and commentary. but the fact that for every hour of broadcast, there's about 5 minutes of straight news, and 55 of commentary, is not a good thing. and the commentary sure ain't news, and it sure isn't being done by repoters in the field.

when the bias and slant seeps out, it seeps out in the commentary of the guests that have been purposely selected by producers to say exactly what the producers want them to say. it's no mistake they are on the show, in other words. so i really don't think this excuses the news corporation from charges of bias. they know the commentary they want, and they research who will give it to them...

as a side note, the reason there's so much goddamn commentary and punditry is because something like CNN has a full 24 hours of broadcast time to fill. they have to fill it with something, so they just find people with big mouths who think they have something to say that we all want to hear.

i'd rather see a news organization with no talking heads, and no commentary, especially by pundits. instead, there would be a continous loop of news stories, per hour, 24 hours a day. as a new story came up, it would go to the top of the hour, and would replace an older news story on the bottom of the hour.

sure, if there wasn't alot happening on a particular day, you'd see the same stories every hour. the same loop would just keep popping up. but this kind of format would totally destroy any chance for abuse and bias as talking heads and commentators and pundits and so-called debate and talk shows might create. because the only human being between you and the raw info would be the reporter bringing you the story. no middle men and women. there would be no place for these kind of employees in this corporation. plus, it woud be really cheap in terms of personnel and production costs, with no talking heads and no pundits and no studio camera personnel and no technical staff to pay and no studio sets to build. just continual, 24 hour, stripped down, raw and unvarnished news reports...

Fox and CNN are for people who can't form an opinion without having it stuffed down their throats. C Span may be boring, but at least I'm not being lied to.

Fox News can care less what people think. It is all about the ratings. Half the people listen to Howard Stern hate him (myself not included). As long as people watch, Fox's racist and biased blather will continue.

Rupert Murdoct finance his evil doing with money earned from other shows and businesses. Boycott all other Fox shows and Murdoct's owned businesses.

Boycott as much as possible and as often as possible! Find alternate sources for your news and entertainments. Just not Rupert Murdoct owned!