by: Dr. Cynthia Boaz, Truthout | News Analysis
TRUTH OUT: There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship – the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded…
1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren’t activated, you aren’t alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don’t think rationally. And when they can’t think rationally, they’ll believe anything.
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person’s credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. “liberals,” “hippies,” “progressives” etc. This form of argument – if it can be called that – leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass… (more)
In line with this, a study released late last year by the University of Maryland found that Fox viewers were significantly more likely than viewers of other stations to be misinformed about current political questions:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/17/fox-news-viewers-are-the-_n_798146.html
The study was not that encouraging about the viewership of other networks, I’d also say, but Fox came out the worst of all.
I would not limit those techniques to FOX. Many of them are used by CNN and MSNBC. We are subjected to the most sophisticated propaganda machine in history. The more I stay away from it, and then return to it for a brief viewing, the more obvious the propaganda of all the commercial networks becomes. Most Americans are fooled. The FOG is thick (Forces Of Greed).