 "Photo:")
By Cass C. Carter Ombudsman uwgpaper.umbudsman@gmail.com
On Oct. 30, 1938, Orson Welles began his famous broadcast of Mercury Theatre on the Air, which is commonly known today as the War of the Worlds Broadcast. Within this broadcast, Welles simulated a live newscast of a fake event: an alien invasion.
Despite frequent warnings that the show was not real, and despite the outrageous nature of the claims made by the newscaster during the drama, panic ensued. People, believing the broadcast to be real, took to the streets to flee from the 'gas attacks' from the invading Martians. Impressively, despite no such invasion, these fleeing individuals claimed they could see or smell the gas and that lightening was visible off in the distance.
Rupert Murdoch is either a genius of avant-garde performance art in the form of his network, or a pathetic wackjob. Fox News Channel has always had a bias; its supporters will tell you that it has its right-leaning bias to "balance" the "liberal" networks like CNN and MSNBC. However, it seems lately that FNC has become a rogue locomotive and completely detached itself from the rails in an attempt to do some multi-track drifting, straddling a line between news and entertainment, and at times, forgetting which is which.
FNC has been spending a great amount of valuable ad time to broadcast its own ads for the corporate lobbyist-organized protests where right-wingers are to gather and begin "teabagging" with each other. It seems FNC has lived up to the prediction that news companies will cease to be satisfied with reporting news and will get into the business of creating news. Most people predicted it would happen by having a news channel van perform drive-bys and hit-and-runs. I'm still going to seek cover if I see an FNC van, just in case they get that idea.
But at least they do have some integrity; they use these ads to frequently set themselves apart from the mainstream media. Now, for right wingers, "mainstream media" is an epithet; it's an Atwaterism-they can't say "liberal jew media" anymore without seeming anti-semetic and alienating the Christian Zionists in their number. But for people for whom "mainstream" is an antonym for "fringe," I don't think it serves their point.
However, the best part of this is that they've gone so far off the rails that Glenn Beck's regularly using his show to compare President Obama to Nazis and Stalin and telling people the cops are coming for their guns and he's going to put you in FEMA camps. I haven't seen this kind of nuttery on a cable news broadcast since Alex Jones was a guest on Geraldo at Large.
The difference between Murdoch and Welles, and ultimately why Welles was a true artist and Murdoch is human garbage, is that Welles actually put warnings before, after and during his fake news broadcasts to let people know it was fake. Murdoch sells his fake news as real, on the hour, every hour.
So, while Welles' broadcast spurred people to the streets in fear, running from an invasion they only saw and sensed because the authoritative newsman told him it was so, Murdoch's broadcasts of fake news have cost people lives. Not just the police officers, whom an avid consumer of right-wing media was certain was coming to take his guns had killed, but he's certainly a piece of the puzzle.
No, I don't want people to forget that a fan of O'Reilly, Hannity, Savage, and a reader of right-wing books from them as well as a book by Bernard Goldberg that provides any insane right-winger a "hitlist" acted on their writings and killed people in a Unitarian Church. Understand this: If people can be driven into a mad hallucinatory panic over a fake news broadcast that openly advertises it is fake, what damage can a fake news broadcast do when it advertises that it's the only cable news that tells the truth, and almost intentionally feeds into the paranoia of nutjobs?
So, when Beck, O'Reilly and others on their network screech and scream about how their talk of gun grabs and FEMA concentration camps in no way contribute to people who hear them and believe them start running out and killing people, it rings false. It rings even more false when those murderers cite their own words as the reason for their killing people, and how they wish they could kill the people Beck, O'Reilly, Savage, Hannity and Goldberg say are responsible for these conspiracies.
Besides, as to FEMA concentration camps, I thought O'Reilly and Hannity regularly hosted friends of the network like Michelle Malkin who were writing books defending the idea of concentration camps? Now all of a sudden, it's bad? When Obama said he was bringing change, he sure wasn't kidding.
Be the first to comment on this article!