I don’t have a good category for “Media Studies”. Janet
and I watched the “OUtfoxed” DVD last night, and far from being a “left wing wacko conspiracy video” like the Right accuses it of being; I found it to simply be a revealing media study. As the Right usually does when its darker underside is shown for what it is, they rant about “the left”. Having donea great deal of Media Study in the MARC program at United Theological Seminary in 1990-91 (Masters of Arts in Religous Communication), this was a revealing and thorough study. My fellow MARC students and I were somewhat concerned about how the Media waved the flag in the Gulf War that was in the process of happening. That “liberal media”. I often doubted it , and was convinced otherwise as gthe Gulf War started and continued and eneded.

I also picked up a book “What Liberal Media” (by Eric Alterman), who was on the video). NO, I think the media is money driven, much in the way that politics is. It’s about audience, and about advertising, and increasingly about ideology. The Fox network became quite noticable to me as a :”Republican Pundit Central” during the 2000 elections, when I was watching quite a bit of CNN, MSNBC, the 3 major networks, and Fox. Conservative/Republican acquaintances of mine seem disgusted with the suggestion that Fox news is anything but what they (Fox) say they are: Fair and Balanced. Conservatives are thrilled with this idea: that here is a “balanced” , “objective” coverage that gives them just what theywant, and comapres themselves favorably and ioverwhelmingly stronger than the “liberals”.

I was a bit disgusted with the way they called the Fox News “token liberal” guy as a “Squirly-looking guy”, wondering what that guy will feel when he hears of that. That’s a vote of condfidence from a fellow progressive/liberal. other than that, the conservative and obnoxious conservative pundits are clearly the “strong” characters (like Mr. O’Reilly, who denied the accusation that he tells people to “Shut up”, which was dutifully followed up by about 20 different clips of him doing just that. This kind of overbearing , obnoxious arrogance seems to fulfill the deep longing of the conservatives who have wanted to say this to whomever they considered their “number one enemy liberal”.

I bought the DVD at Borders. It’s the numbner one selling DVD at Amazon.com. The producer/director has promoted the use of “home meetings” to view the DVD in groups which can then talk about things to do in response to this, even perhaps including help defeat the “Fox hero” and “ultimate authority”, the Bush administration. I much prefer the “Dean for America” philosophy (not to mention the policies to balance and begin to undo and address the problems we now have , no small thanks due to the ultimatye in arrogant US “regimes”.