Can You Show Pornography and Call Yourself a 'News' Network? Was Tokyo Rose a 'News Anchor'?

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Well, the corporate mainstream media is by and large defending FOX against accurate and unusually candid characterization by the White House.

It's mindboggling to believe that a WH lapdog press corps who embraced Jeff Gannon would somehow quibble about whether FOX News -- which does everything from incorporating GOP message points as "news" to leading "tea party" rallies to ignoring basic facts and replacing them with propaganda -- is an arm of the right wing and the GOP.

This week BuzzFlash gave its Media Putz of the Week Award to Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post for cluelessly coming to the defense of FOX.  Marcus, who usually leans liberal, was just one of the plethora of corporate press shills who seem to think if you call yourself a news network, you are a news network, no matter what your content. 

That's why we wonder if BuzzFlash switched to posting pornography, Ms. Marcus would defend us as a news organization, immune from criticism from the White House. It's positively daffy to consider FOX a legitimate news outlet. The corporate media should be holding its nose and distancing itself as far as it can from Murdoch's skunk. Instead, it takes FOX seriously.

While we have been critical of Obama's staff in recent months for falling for the concept of a "fixed center" to public opinion -- as if it were something that you would find on exhibition in a museum -- we were thrilled to hear them particularly warn of the danger of other media using FOX as a source or letting FOX set the tone and content of coverage.  This is indeed what currently happens, and as a result we have a confused, frustrated and ignorant public being led off a cliff of deception.

That's why BuzzFlash.com started its Turn Off FOX activist initiative. No, it's not about you turning off FOX; it's about getting FOX turned off in public places, about convincing others not to watch FOX, about carrying the message around on your car to Turn Off FOX by reaching thousands with one bumper sticker, and much more that you can personally do.  The campaign is just beginning and there is much more we will be asking of you.

You can support the White House, sanity,democracy, and give a big "up yours" to the corporate media by joining the Turn Off FOX campaign here.

FOX reaches a small majority of Americans, but its influence is broad because it pushes the media so far to the right and makes insurrection and lying acceptable as "news." It is as legitmate a "news" station as a channel showing the latest pornography or broadcasts of "Tokyo Rose."

Jake Tapper of ABC was furious at a White House press briefing that they should be so unfair as to criticize FOX. This is what happens when you let a corporate media control what is "news."

Join us in helping to marginalize and shun FOX. Only by being evangelists for the truth will we take back the media and build an informed democracy.

Sign up here to get other Americans to Turn Off Fox and expose them for the demagogues that they are.

BuzzFlash has already gotten some great activist responses, including a man in a large Midwestern city who got an owner of several famous fast food franchises to shut off FOX in his restaurants.

Become an advocate for real news.

Join us.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG