Fear the Fox

“We Report, You Decide.”

Give me a break. Although I’m certainly not the first person to criticize Fox News for its reporting style, my main problem with Fox is not as much about their blatant right wing pandering as it is the commentators’ carefully chosen, hyper-inflated diction.

For example, September 11 exposed the vulnerability of what was once thought of as an infallible nation. In the aftermath of that perilous day came the controversial Patriot Act, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the present hostile discourse toward Islam. While some caution is completely warranted by the attacks on America by a few radical Muslims, the perpetuation of this distrust and aggression by Fox News is completely immoral and flat out wrong. We’re coming up on the ten year anniversary of 9/11, yet instead of moving in a more accepting and understanding direction towards people who practice a very peaceful religion, events like the controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” strongly indicate the opposite.

Furthermore rather than seeking to educate their viewers on Islam, Fox commentators continuously choose to exploit their unwarranted fears to keep them watching. Ignorance only encourages fear, whose only cure is education.  (I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record here, but get used to it. Education is always the moral of the story).

Unfortunately, Islam hasn’t been Fox’s first target and it certainly won’t be the “news” corporation’s last. Their present coverage on everything from the budget deficit to the President’s military intervention in Libya is just textbook replication of this organization’s hyperbolic style. And how have they been rewarded? With unprecedented high ratings, which only encourages the same reporting methods that produced the gratuitous fear and completely reinforces the vicious, ignorant cycle.

So in the interest of breaking the cycle, I am issuing a challenge to anyone reading this: take ten minutes of your day to watch Fox’s news coverage. Then actually inform yourself on what they were reporting via the Internet (without the use of another news station website either. They’re all biased; Fox is just the worst). The truth might actually surprise you.

Try Wikipedia. They’re much more trustworthy than Fox.

But that’s just what I think.