The startling power of Fox News Part 2: GOP Kingmaker
About a year ago, I posted a page discussing the incredible influence of Fox News.
Now almost a year later, not only has that influence NOT decreased, it has in fact increased and become even more acute than almost ever before. With an election season looming, you can bet that Fox will up the ante even more.
For starters, look at the number of GOP Presidential debates we’ve seen so far and how many of them are either directly or indirectly connected to Fox News (hint: almost all of them). Fox has not only aired the debates but has worked to set the tone and outcome of them as well.
Fox News is something of a Holy Grail for any would be conservative pundit. Even a short appearance on the network can turn a right wing nobody into a right wing somebody.
Fox News is the Sun Records of the Right wing.
For those who don’t know, Sun Records is the company that gave many huge recording artists their starts, including Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and the King himself, Elvis Presley.
I guarantee you Andrew Breitbart would not have 1/8 of the audience he has if not for Fox News. You could probably say the same of Pamela Geller too.
And how many times do we hear of prominent right wingers landing Fox News gigs?
Sarah Palin, Juan Williams, Mike Huckabee, John Bolton, the list goes on and on.
On top of that, other known television personalities have revitalized their careers by jumping to Fox. Geraldo Rivera and John Stossel are great examples of this.
On the surface it appears to be success, but there’s a dangerous flip side to that success.
In the same way Fox can make stars out of right wingers, they can make sworn enemies out of “Liberals”
George Soros, Frances Piven, George Tiller.
Piven has received death threats after being prominently featured on the network and Tiller lost his life because of it.
And there are, regrettably, more to come.
Fox News is NOT a news network. It is a super powerful information outlet, constantly pushing a single point of view without regard to any information that might disrupt it.
Think about it:
This one network has enough power to affect the political debate in this country and it will most likely play a crucial role in the election of the next GOP nominee and perhaps the next President.
If that doesn’t scare you, it should.