The two faces of Fox
By Anthony | October 20th, 2005 | 10:54 pmThe Parents Television Council recently named four Fox shows as being “worst for families”. From cnn.com:
Four Fox network programs, led by the comedies “The War at Home,” “The Family Guy” and “American Dad,” topped a parents group’s annual listing of the worst prime-time shows for family viewing.
The group’s president, L. Brent Bozell, said he was alarmed that the three Fox Sunday night comedies are being marketed as family friendly.
“Families should not be deceived,” he said. “The top three worst shows all contain crude and raunchy dialogue with sex-themed jokes and foul language. Even worse is the fact that Hollywood is peddling its filth to families with cartoons.”
Now it’s been pretty well documented by films such as Outfoxed and websites such as MediaMatters.org that the news programming on Fox is, shall we say, a little biased towards the conservative end of the spectrum, and in fact “Fox’s core viewers are conservative” according to a Pew Research Center poll referenced in The New Yorker.
However, if I’m not mistaken, it’s many these same conservatives who often speak out on the decadence of Hollywood and boycott companies for doing something they consider immoral. Considering that Fox has locked up the top spots in the list of family-unfriendly programming, shouldn’t we be seeing a conservative exodus away from Fox news in response?
October 21st, 2005 at 9:34 pm
I can’t believe that Arrested Development didn’t make the top four. But then again, I haven’t seen the others except for Family Guy.
I noticed this trend back when Married with Children was on. Except that with some people I knew, it seemed more like a reality show at the time.
October 21st, 2005 at 9:47 pm
Good point about Married with Children. Seems that Fox has been risking cognitive dissonance in its viewers for some time now. I haven’t really seen any of those four shows either… just a half episode of American Dad once, which didn’t seem all that good.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Dear PotatoStew,
Fox broadcasting is the premier example of “conservative hypocrisy” often thrown back into the faces of conservative folk whenever they talk about the “smut” on TV….I am not saying you’re doing this. The fact is, it is true. Rupert Murdoch will do whatever he needs to do to make money. He will run a conservative news show and very smutty TV shows – whatever works, and give big checks to whatever politicians he needs to give checks to. But, when there is a lot of complaining about the smut that is on TV, well then the ACLU jumps in, and it’s all about freedom of speech. It seems like a “conspiracy” of the right AND the left to diminish our culture and lower our shared values.
October 22nd, 2005 at 9:32 am
Hi Joel, thanks for the reply. I’m sure you’re right about Murdoch for the most part. The bottom line, monetarily, is probably very important to him. I’m questioning more the fact that the viewers seem to have no problem with this juxtaposition. Conservative religious groups will boycott Disney at the drop of a hat, but keep watching Fox News despite this sort of programming? It just seems strange to me.
Another thing — and this is pure speculation — is that I wonder who is watching this un-family programming? I have a hard time believing that the the conservatives are tuning in solely for the news, and then the liberals take over to watch these tv shows. How many red state “values” voters are supporting this sort of programming with their eyeballs? Again, I’m not claiming they are, I just wonder if that might be the case.
October 25th, 2005 at 4:00 am
anyone who *truly* votes for a candidate based on family values doesn’t watch the family guy. liberals that watch tv are greater in numbers than liberals that vote, so i don’t doubt for a second that the news/entertainment dichotomy at fox exists.
and joel is right about murdoch. he’s only conservative because he understands that in order to make money in american business (at least when he got his start), you’d better sleep and support the power elite network.