Obama's winnable war on Fox News

During last year's election, every American I knew who was a total news junkie and a Barack Obama supporter would have the television tuned to cable news throughout the day. Every so often, some "massive" story broke that seemed like it could be bad for Obama. John McCain suspended his campaign. Sarah Palin said Obama "pals around" with terrorists. Joe the Plumber said something that appeared to represent old-fashioned common sense. Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright said something that emphatically did not. Rasmussen had McCain gaining ground.

Each time one of these eruptions occurred, the reaction started: OMG! This is a disaster. This could mean three, four points in the polls. There goes Virginia (the state, not a person). Goodbye, white vote. And so on.

Of course, none of these catastrophes ever came to pass. McCain's stunt backfired, Palin persuaded no one who wasn't already persuaded, Brother Werzelbacher did not have talismanic powers over voters, Ayers and Wright never counted for much and daily polls did not in fact drive the election. The large mass of voters stayed more or less focused on more or less important things. Obama won a substantial victory.

If you'd relied solely on cable television before the voting, you would have been surprised by the result. It's not that the cable nets were pro Obama or anti, uniformly. It's simply that cable lives off of daily, tempest-in-teapot pseudo-scandals, whomever they effect. And since the right was coming at Obama pretty hard last October, and since no one could quite be sure that America really would elect a black man as its president, all the little cable pseudo-scandals seemed like possible death blows. So why weren't they?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/14/fox-news-obama-white-house-war

:puke:

This has been clear for a long time.

we'd be watching President McCain calling the shots."

"...If Fox were that powerful, we'd be watching President McCain calling the shots"

Fixed Noise actually isn't as damaging as the other networks that more effectively pass themselves off as an unbiased news source. Most Americans recognize Fixed Noise as a tainted information source.

CNN and the rest, including NPR, do a hatchet job on Democratic causes every single day. Guests and hosts on NPR during this health care debate have been getting their talking points directly from the insurance industry.