Whose news is this?

A recent posting by Bonnie Goldstein reveals a Slate.com ‘hot document’ that only illustrates what many of us already suspect, and lesser know. The internal memorandum of the Fox News Channel, you know, those “fair and balanced” folks, reveals a general direction of news content presumably aimed at some broadcast segment.

The memo frames one hyperbolic story after another. The document begins with an attempted political analysis and concludes with tenuous inferences linking “Mexican gangs”, “pot production”, the National Guard, and of course “the border”.

Any surprise that “Mexican”, gangs, drugs, and border must all be mentioned together? This is not to say that there never are any connections amongst these broad ideas, only these sweeping and ill conceived excuses for newsworthy inquiry contain the depth of an inverted lake. According to the Fox News document, the U.S. must not only protect itself from job seekers, but now must protect itself against the “law of the lawless land” as it was concluded in a “recent study” (No details of the study are revealed.). In typical fashion, the story concludes by asking “does the U.S. have the right to defend its borders or not?…Let’s see if anyone says no.”

Is there anything that can’t be blamed on 'the border'? Is it the leading cause of AIDS, cancer, the demise of U.S. automobile companies, or the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Darfur? I’m not sure. I guess I’ll wait for Fox News to tell me in their fair and balanced reports.

(Don’t any of their information consumers ever wonder why they must restate their fairness and balance? Do people believe that fair people need to incessantly claim that they actually are fair people?)



Don’t take my word for it…http://www.slate.com/id/2154078/entry/0/