Media manipulation of information was common in places such as the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and is common in current day North Korea and China, to name a few examples. Now the United States can be added to that list of propaganda-spewing nations. The source of this propaganda is not our government, however, but Fox News, which is owned by the powerful and wealthy owner of hundreds of media outlets worldwide, Rupert Murdoch.
A recent World Public Opinion (WPO) poll discovered that a whopping 60% of people who watch Fox News almost daily believe that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.”
It is an accepted fact, however, that the world’s climate is changing. The conservative National Academy of Science (NAS) issued a statement in May of 2010. It said, in part that “a strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems…”
Leaked Fox email: global warming is "called into question"
How is it possible for 60% of almost daily viewers of Fox News to believe otherwise? In December 2010, the liberal watchdog group Media Matters released a leaked email written by Bill Sammon, the Washington-based managing editor of Fox News. The email, which was dated December 8, 2009, read, “We should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.”
“But only a crank,” says an editorial in the Los Angeles Times in response to the leaked email, “would deny the underlying temperature data that show the Earth getting warmer…because to do so is to deny material and measurable facts.”
Benefit of propaganda to Murdoch
How could this benefit Mr. Murdoch? Perhaps if millions of people believe that global warming is a hoax, then the dependency upon petroleum will continue unabated. This may point to Murdoch’s having significant investments in oil companies. The New York Times reported in April of 2003, after the beginning of the war in Iraq, that “the editorial policies of… his English-language news organizations have hewn very closely to Murdoch’s own stridently hawkish political views.” The Guardian reported him saying in February of 2003 that “The greatest thing to come out of this [war in Iraq] for the world economy… would be $20 a barrel for oil.”
“The only reason for doing it,” says the Los Angeles Times, “is to further a partisan agenda, in this case an attempt to cast doubt on climate science in order to fend off government efforts to limit greenhouse gases.”
Fox News "Fair and Balanced"?
The network claims to be "fair and balanced" and Murdoch has said that he refrains from partisan politics. But he has used his media empire to push his political agenda. A former Murdoch executive told Fortune Magazine that he "hungered for the kind of influence in the [U.S.] that he had in England and Australia" and "part of our political strategy" was the creation of Fox News.
To that end, Murdoch put John Ellis, the cousin of George W. Bush, in charge of Fox's election night vote-counting operation. Slate reports that "Ellis made Fox the first network to declare Bush the victor" and after the election, Fox bragged that they had an audience of 6.8 million on Election Night, which strongly suggests that Ellis was in position to tilt the election in favor of Bush.
This makes a mockery of our democratic electoral process and shows that Fox News is nothing more than a plaything for Murdoch to manipulate viewers under the guise of "news." Please click here to see three video reports on Fox News and its misinformation and propaganda.
Other results of WPO poll
According to the WPO poll, those who watched Fox News almost daily believe that:
- most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (91%)
- most economists have estimated thehealth care law will worsen the deficit (72%)
- the economy is getting worse (72%)
- most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (60%)
- the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (63%)
- their own income taxes have gone up (49%)
- the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (56%)
- when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (38%)
- and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (63%)
In 2008, a Pew study ranked Fox News last in the number of "high knowledge" viewers; a 2007 Pew poll ranked Fox viewers as the least knowledgable about national and international affairs; a study off the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe that Saddam Hussien was linked to Al-Quaeda, that troops found WMD in Iraq and that world public opinion supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times strongly stated that Fox should "crack down on such partisanship in its news ranks or it should stop pretending to be an objective news source."
Eric Brothers - Eric Brothers' forthcoming book,The Berlin Ghetto, will be published by The History Press in the U.K. in 2012.
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