Fox News vs. mental stability

[YetAnotherBloodyCheek]

There are several things I wanted to say in response, none of which are meant to be critical of you, just informative of the situation in the US that makes Fox News such a big deal.

The first thing that is important to note is that Fox News is a big operation, and includes news programs, commentary programs and entertainment programs. The program that you reference here falls squarely in the entertainment category. It's on in the early morning and mostly watched by people getting ready to go to work, focusing on fluff and only glossing over hard news. The host that's referenced, Gretchen Carlson, isn't a hard news person, she's most famous for once having been Miss America (though she did graduate from Stanford and Oxford).

Second, your source is questionable. You are not going to get fair, or balanced reporting from Slate, one of the most Left-Wing publications in America. And their primary source, Media Matters for America, is a Left-Wing group that exists solely to defame and ridicule Fox News. The combination can be extraordinarily ugly and unfair; this article is possibly the sanest thing I've seen from the two in the last 8 years.

Third, we have a real problem with news media in America. Prior to Fox News we had a serious monochrome media, All-Left-of-Center-All-the-Time. Imagine all German media, TV and print, being run by the left-wing of the SDP. When Fox News arrived it was a breath of fresh air because it presented viewpoints that a lot of people held, but that were NEVER reported. That's the main reason why Fox News dominates the US news media today, with the lowest rated Fox Program (that airs at 3am Eastern Time) garners higher ratings than the top-rated prime time programs on either the more centrist news network CNN, or far-left news network MSNBC.

BTW, the entire US experiment in public investment in solar energy could have learned a lot from the German experience. Ours has been an utter fiasco, with billions of dollars going to friends and donors of the ruling party and very little to show for it. The place in the US that definitely has less sunshine than Germany is Washington DC, where all these sweetheart deals were made. Deals that only Fox News bothers to report about, and groups like Slate and Media Matters are desperately trying to keep quiet.

Yeah, I see your point. Fox is some sort of a lighthouse example for so-called biased, tendentious journalism. I am neither a leftie or rightie, I just do not like bad journalism, whether it appears in the U.S., Europe or elsewhere in the world. However, if someone states long enough that Germany is sunnier than large parts of the U.S., it is likely to become the public option.

What a single sentence can do..

About Fox News - or American News Service in general - I am highly "onionated" and am far from being opinionated ...

http://www.theonion.com

That is all I can say about US-media; anything else would be just highly prejudiced, plain stupid, and would probably lack a solid base required for any 'good' opinion.

As for Germany's media: The printmedia is dominated by leftys and/ or the political party of the SPD - that'S true; but there are the Springer Press as well as the quite conservative and comparably broadly accepted newspaper of the FAZ, which provide no 'lefty' mambo jambo; besides the print-media any other media is very diverse in its political, social, and economical agenda. And actually I would expect the overall US-American media-landscape to be similarly diverse considering the 50 states and the US as a nation with its many, many different faces.

Regardless of that I just want to point out: It is kind of 'hard' to generalize the quality of any news-service based on single and extraordinarily bad articles or news provided by the news-service.

My 2c.
All the best!
Liam

That being said, it says 'all', doesn't it?
I hope your day was not as bad as your morning, Sir.

All the best!
Liam

The SPD, what a comedy group. Sadly.