I normally enjoy to read Esquire and I just finished this article about Shepard Smith at Fox News. According to the article “Shepard is in Fox News’s DNA”, if that is good or bad, you are the one to decide, but it is definately contraversial. To quote the article:
“Fox News really is different from its competitors, not just for the way it treats ideology but for the way it treats television. Its DNA — like Shep Smith’s DNA — is rooted in local news, in tabloid news, in rebels who like working for the Man, in anchors and executives who have been number one year after year and are still so aware of where they came from that they can keep a straight face when they, like Sharri Berg, claim, “We are the underdog.”
It is though clear that Fox News are not the underdog, however it will be interesting to see the new place that Shep Smith & Fox will take in the post-Bush world. It is the same for the very entertaining, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. What position they will take towards the administration will be very interesting to follow, hence I was also very disappointed that the journalist writing the article never asked Shep Smith about this. Barack Obama promised Change and the world has indeed Changed since he came into office. How will Fox react to this? How will the react to a change in The War on Terror? And about the Daily Show – Bush was clearly more funny than Obama.
but back to Fox News – Fair and Balance – as their slogan is lying…ehh saying.
There is an interesting quote in the article
“Say this about Fox: They might not do the news better. They certainly don’t do journalism better. But they do television better, or faster, or at least more shamelessly, or at least more enthusiastically, and that translates to: better.”
Is that acceptable? How should we as journalist react to that? I think it is the classic problem that supply and demand doesn’t always give good quality when it comes to journalism. Should we as journalists be shameless?
I believe, in an almost Socratese way, that we should sometimes deny the public what they want and instead give them (force feed them) what they might not want at the first taste. We have a responsibility as journalists to teach the public about Good Journalism.
Fox News has been able to gain a lot of support because they don’t do proper journalism but instead feed the masses with right-wing fast-food. The article describes Shepard Smith’s own slogan as:
“Because They Hate Us and Want Us to Fail”
That form of “reactive” journalism and cheap journalism has to be fought but it is an almost impossible force. Hence, it starts at university. We should be taught to read and do good honest journalism – unfortunately we don’t at the moment.
News of the World, the Sun and the Daily Mirror should all be banned from being sold at universities together with a ban on Fox News. To hell with democracy and free speech, we are fighting an even greater battle: Education of a future generation.
