Tracy Knauss is a progressive satirist who has done great art collages like the one shown below:
But even Knauss’ solid slapdowns of Fox News likely didn’t prepare Tracy for the tragedy that struck his family; his mother, an ardent Fox News viewer, refused medical treatment that led to her death; she refused it due to false information spread by Fox News. Read on:
This is not my normal political satire. This is the truth. For real. FOX NEWS KILLED MY MOTHER — For about 20% of Americans, many of them older and/or uneducated, Fox News is the main source of information. But rest assured Fox is not about news any more than it’s fair and balanced. FOX is the main propaganda arm for the Republican Party and America’s plutocrats. It is THE worst of the corporate owned media. FOX’s founder, Roger Ailes, was the top media consultant to the last four Republican presidents. No way was he going to create a fair or balanced news media. FOX News is killing America one lie at a time, one life at a time. I know this personally. FOX News killed my precious mother, Hallie. She watched FOX religiously. And when she fell ten days before she died, she refused to go to the doctor because, “I don’t want Obamacare to get all of my information!” she declared, recalling the warnings from FOX News “anchors.” She was emphatic. She was not going to consort with the Muslim enemy. As she made out her will she told her lawyer, “I don’t want any of my money going to the Muslim Brotherhood!” And her last protestation dealt with “Obama’s death panels.” Mother died just days later. I hold FOX News responsible for my mother’s death.
– Tracy Knauss, as quoted at Silenced Majority.
Here is the graphic Tracy posted with the entry above:
And this also appeared on Tracy’s Facebook page:
Thomas Jefferson commented with great hope that he was confident in the capacity of Americans to make wise decisions, depending upon the quality and veracity of information provided in the public square. Unfortunately his worst fears have been realized. He did not anticipate private subscription cable news service whereby a person can feed their limited world vision with hate and fear, instead of hope and goodness. It’s no wonder Canada doesn’t let Fox News establish their tentacles there. Yes, it was my mother’s decision to watch Fox News, but in her generation the Fairness Doctrine itself indoctrinated Americans to believe anything said on the “news” channels. Somewhere along the way the Fairness Doctrine was eclipsed by the greedy pursuit of money and ideology. A station like Fox should never have been issued a broadcast permit. Its obscenity is found in its banal distribution of faux news, lies, and innuendo, in its deathly doses of vitriol, which, if taken daily, leads to death of one’s brain, one’s soul and one’s nation. It’s time for the survivors to fight back against this Fox News death machine.
– Tracy Knauss, as quoted at The Drudge Report.
I think Tracy should sue Fox; he might not win, but I think it would at least scare them. I’d also reinstate the Fairness Doctrine but, short of that, why not just make Fox drop the ‘News’ part of their name and require them to run a disclaimer along the bottom of the screen to the effect: “The informational content of this network may or may not be based on fact. Believe any of what we say or show at your own risk.” Oh, and make them all wear clown suits while on the air.
Well RS,
Certainly not your normal fare. Depressing, but thank you for letting us know of this.
I do disagree with the idea that Fox is an arm of the Republican Party. Instead the Republican Party is supported & promoted as a source of programming for Fox. It’s Fox using the Republicans, not the other way around.
I’m also not sure I agree with the Clown Suits…
The worst part of it is that Fox et. al. actually believe that they balance an otherwise “liberal media”.
Comment by db — March 22, 2012 @ 10:00 am
Db, I think Fox started out as an arm of the GOP but you’ve got a point — since Obama’s election they seem to push the Republicans with Ailes’ and/or Murdoch’s agenda.
The clown suits, to my mind, would just be honesty in advertising, but I see what you mean: in an otherwise serious piece, I ended with a somewhat inappropriate attempt at humor.
I disagree that the people at Fox News really think they’re balancing out the liberal slant of the news. Some few down on the scale no doubt believe they are balancing out what they think, regardless of the facts, is a liberal MSM, but others at the top, such as Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Cal Thomas, are cynics who are well aware they are spreading right-wing propaganda and that the MSM isn’t really that liberal and, aside from that, can be easily cowed into reporting what the right wants them to report. They know the US media is owned by conservative corporations run by Republicans, whatever the political opinions of individual reporters lower on the ladder might be. Every propagandist, in order to be good at the job, must be a total cynic about the misinformation and lies they are spreading, and that is true from Woodrow Wilson’s man George Creel’s Committee on Public Information in WWI that depicted German ‘Huns’ as bloody barbarians who bayoneted infants; to Joseph Goebbels’ Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda that blamed all Germany’s problems on Jews and Slavs; to Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn’s Communist witch hunts of the ’50s and the infamous Blacklist. The people running these propaganda operations were cynical, sociopathic opportunists who believed in their ’cause’ only insofar as it increased their money and power; they scoffed at the true believers while privately savoring their ability to move the masses with well-constructed lies. Such is the state of Fox News, at least the top executive officers and big name air talent.
Comment by RS Janes — March 22, 2012 @ 5:55 pm
RS,
So your argument is that Palmer was not inherently anti-Bolshevik, Goebbels was not inherently anti-Semitic, & McCarthy was not inherently anti-Communist but that each of these persons cynically used those causes to promote their own personal rise?
Not sure how we’d test it.
Now, I’ve heard some quotes from Bill O’Reilly & Glen Beck suggesting that they realize that they are “entertainers” not “reporters” but I’m not sure that the whole “Liberal Media” argument, which has been trumpeted at least since Nixon, isn’t believed. There are several quotes, from a few different Fox personalities, that suggest that they see Fox as “fair & balanced” by being the “news of the right” to balance the SCLM’s “news of the left”.
Comment by db — March 23, 2012 @ 4:53 am
I can’t speak to Palmer, but George Creel knew he was manufacturing propaganda to ‘help’ the Allies win WWI. He didn’t believe in the baby-bayoneting Huns or the other malicious lies he propagated.
Goebbels was no doubt anti-Semitic (although it’s been said he had some distant Jewish ancestors), but he also didn’t believe the vicious propaganda he concocted. He knew that Jews and Slavs weren’t the cause of Germany’s economic crisis but, politically, he used anti-Semitism to bring Hitler to power. (Something like the Bush Administration agreeing on Saddam’s WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq. Our intel agencies knew he had no WMD and was no danger to the US — it’s was all propaganda to sell the war.)
McCarthy may have been anti-Communist, but his main interest was in establishing himself as a national figure so that he could run for president, just as Nixon had used the Alger Hiss spy case to gain national prominence. McCarthy’s chief advisor Roy Cohn, who drafted the lists of supposed Commies, knew very well most of those he singled out were not Communists — he was also expanding his power and I’ve read he got a ‘delightful chill’ up his spine everytime he humbled or terrorized some poor actor by threatening his or her livelihood with an accusation of Communist sympathies. Similarly, J. Edgar Hoover exploited the ‘Communist threat’ to enhance and expand his power, even though he knew that, in many cases, he was actually spending taxpayer money to keep US Communist groups going so that he could use them in his campaign against Bolshevism. Hoover wrote a book about the ‘Commie menace’ called “Masters of Deceit” which, if he had been honest, would have been autobiographical.
The point is, it’s not what they believed, it’s that they intentionally invented lies to defame whatever adversary they decided would bring them the most power and money and what Goebbels descibed as that ‘secret thrill’ of putting something over on the suckers. If they had to do it for free, I doubt any of them would have played the game.
This is not to say that there weren’t ‘True Believers’ in the ranks, but that those at the top did not believe the propaganda they spread.
Comment by RS Janes — March 24, 2012 @ 3:19 am