Hacker News Reader

Comment by eqdw | Hacker News Reader

Fox news is a laughably pathetic excuse for news.

But, so are the rest of the major corporate news outlets. In the US, they're all garbage, and Fox isn't any worse than the others.

The best way I can describe this is by analogizing to Canada, where I'm from. In Canada, when you watch or read the news (eg CBC), for the most part it just tells you what happened. In the US, when you watch or read the news, for the most part, it tells you how you're supposed to feel. Of course, Fox tells you you're supposed to feel conservative and (eg) NBC tells you you're supposed to feel progressive. But they all do this. They all editorialize. They all try to manipulate your emotions. None of them are willing to just present facts and let you think for yourself.

View on HN

This is exactly my feeling with French news as well (the mainstream ones at least).

Since one of our national sports is to protest, people complain that "they" (the bad news paper or station) is showing one side only, and that "we" are different.

In reality they all tell the same thing, objectively without even editorializing it. So I can read Le Monde, Le Figaro, l'Obs, la Croix or l'Humanité and get the same info. And this is very good.

There are other ways to shape discourse, too, though. For example, cover some stories to the point of obsession and simply completely ignore others, even if they should qualify as big news. The best way to counter that is to read a lot of widely varied news stories and insist that all of them present solid, factual and scientific grounding.

eqdw: >Fox news is a laughably pathetic excuse for news. >But, so are the rest of the major corporate news outlets. In the US, they're all garbage, and Fox isn't any worse than the others.

I agree that all the major corporate news outlets are pretty bad. But Fox News is _significantly_ worse. They push patently false narratives on purpose. Up until March, Sean Hannity was calling the Coronavirus a "leftist hoax". He never apologized or corrected himself and even had the audacity to further report "we've always reported accurately on the Coronavirus". Most of their shows push some form of the "deep state" conspiracy theory. And now they're helping the president push this "Obama-Gate" hoax.

Everything they do is designed to help the GOP and the president.

Jon Stewart once put it very well when he said (paraphrasing) - "other news orgs are sensationalist and maybe a little bit lazy, but none are as activist as Fox News".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com