More fun than facts

I don’t know how many of my readers watch The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart.  But I cannot pass up the opportunity to write about a segment last week.  It seems that President Obama’s successful Nuclear Disarmament treaty with Russia is being criticized by certain high profile Republicans. 

In case you haven’t read or heard about the treaty, it will reduce both country’s nuclear arsenal by about 30%.  It also states that America will not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear nation.  But it also states that in the event of a WMD or biological attack, all options are back on the table.

Well the Republican front-runners, hoping to make progress on their nomination to be the standard bearers for their party in the 2012 presidential contest, are having a “hey day”.  It’s to be expected.  And it’s normal.  And I guess to some extent, healthy.  But it’s gone off the rails.

As Stewart points out, F0x News, the network with the highest market share, “doesn’t think it needs to report the facts any more”.  This is not really new news.  It’s an accusation that has been leveled and confirmed before.  But this time it is so blatant that it would be funny, if not for the fact that Fox has such a large audience.

In the segment, Newt Gingrich completely misrepresents the facts of the treaty.  Sean Hannity does too.  And of course Palin, with her deep appreciation for and understanding of history decries this administration’s naiveté and yearns for the good old days of Reagan.  He would never have fallen for this kind of simplistic thinking.

Well, Stewart’s research staff always does a magnificent job and this time is no exception.  They show clips of Reagan himself stating his desire for nuclear disarmament.  His dream of a world without nuclear weapons.  His goal of reducing them by 30%.  The audacity of President Obama to actually get it done!

I know that many of my friends from the right have already stopped reading.  And that’s a shame because my worry is not with Fox News.  It’s with the readers that stopped reading already.  When a major news outlet has the undisputed largest market share and flagrantly misreports the facts on major issues, what does that say about us?

What does that say about the Americans who would rather watch news that they agree with, than the real news?  It’s not my place to suggest which news show you should watch.  It is my concern that this is what American politics has come to.

We have a major political party whose whole strategy is to disrupt, decline, refuse and otherwise resist anything this American president – our president - is attempting to do.  We have a news outlet who acts as the official home of radical right rhetoric.  And they have the nation’s largest viewing audience.  To me that’s very scary.

What’s even more worrisome is that objective surveys substantiate Fox’s claims that they are the “most trusted news source” today.  But as Stanly Fish, noted syndicated columnist says about our current era, “you don’t have to be accurate, you just need to be interesting”.

So it’s no surprise that Fox would have such excellent ratings.  I tune in from time to time and enjoy watching them tilt the news to the right.  And I have to agree, it’s more fun than watching PBS’s Nightly News with Jim Lehrer.  Lehrer’s show just reports the news in depth.  Not much flash and graphics, just real reporting.  Not even any beautiful young women with skin like silk.  Just plain ole news being reported by plain ole reporters.

So here’s a thought; watch Fox for the fun and PBS for the facts.  Nah.  Everyone “knows” that PBS is a liberal, left wing bunch of “moon bats”.  Remember what Nietzsche said, “reality is made up of competing stories about reality”.

Robert DeFilippis