February 17, 2007
Really tipping off balance
Tomorrow night will not be the first time false news and information will be presented on Fox News Channel, but as far as I know, it will be the first time they’ll be open to admitting that the information they present is not 100 percent accurate. That’s because the network that dubiously continues to use the word “news” in its name will air it’s newest show, The ½ Hour News Hour.
The new show comes from 24 creator Joel Surnow and he describes the right-wing slanted news spoof thusly: “The premise of the show is: Let’s balance out the 50 other shows that go after Bush and Cheney each week, that hit all the same talking points and all the same ‘white Republicans are racist idiots’ ” Of course those shows would be just as happy to point out when white Democrats idiotically spout racist blather, but that seems to occur much more infrequently.
Several promo clips are up on YouTube now and it seems like the show might struggle for laughs, even with the evil scourge of a laugh track employed liberally. Oh wait, not liberally, they’d use another word for it, maybe robustly. The two clips (available here & here) feature old and obvious jokes with little nuance or underlying commentary in the mix.
Instead, they play to their base, presenting their idea of a guffaw-inducing liberal’s worst nightmare; President Rush Limbaugh and Vice President Ann Coulter. Here they miss the point because a liberal’s worst nightmare is much more reality based and rooted in the sad path of warmongering, enemy baiting and liberty squelching Our Fine President decided on.
I think the second clip is the more illustrative of the pair. It’s lengthy roasting of Illinois Senator and Presidential candidate Barak Obama, and it hits all the easy targets from yesterday’s news by highlighting all the things the right wing loves to hate about him. The jokes are mostly from the repertoire of a bully and include implying that he’s smelly and taunting him over his middle name.
There is little substance in the quips and they certainly fail to raise salient points and/or critiques about him. That’s where this promo has it wrong. The show’s competition at The Daily Show and the Colbert Report use hyperbole and satire to expose hypocrisy, often holding it up to a mirror and occasionally sending it through a prism. But they often keep things simple and let the hypocrite’s own actions and words do their work and only cut in at the end to make light of the situation or occasionally express outrage. From the looks of these promo clips The new show on Fox News will basically become the space where the network can air all the bad things they’d like to say about liberals and then swaddle themselves in the thin concept that “it was all a joke.”
These jokes will probably play well with the base audience that tunes to Fox News to be comforted by being told what they want to hear, but I’m not really here to critique the program based on the promos. No, I’m here to complain about the very idea that Fox News is going to be airing a program that presents false information in a news format.
I don’t care if people want to do an entire program bashing liberal politics, or even if their was an entire show dedicated to mocking me every week. There’s plenty of TV outlets to go around and if people can make money doing a show they should go ahead and do it. However, if a network is dedicated to presenting “Fair and Balanced” news 24 hours a day, they’re failing at their mission the moment they air a partisan program that looks like news but isn’t going to present information as accurately as possible.
I know, I know, Fox News is a partisan shill of a news outfit and they already present slanted and occasionally incorrect information so this show is really nothing new. But it becomes different when a network claiming to be a reputable news operation decides to present comedic entertainment that looks just like it’s regularly scheduled programming.
I’m concerned for those poor Fox News viewers who in numerous studies have been shown to be regularly misinformed. If they turn on the network and don’t know the show is a parody they’ll likely believe everything they hear and spread it as the new gospel. There’s plenty of recent evidence of the way known mistruths can spread throughout the right wing of the political divide.
In doing this show, Fox News shows an insecurity toward the rising influence of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and their nightly shows. They hate when they see themselves mocked and seem to always feel the need to win a game of “got you last.” The Daily Show and The Colbert Report set out to make a point through humor, but in the end their number one goal is to make people laugh, that’s why their shows air on Comedy Central.
If The ½ Hour News Hour is really about making jokes than it should find a home on another network. Surnow did pitch the show to the Fox Network, but it’s really not the type of program the major networks are going for these days so it was shipped over to Fox News. It probably should have been sent to Fox’s FX cable channel, but that’s a network that doesn’t get a ton of right wing viewers.
That’s the real hypocrisy at the heart of all this. Fox’s fiction networks ply their trade with some of the most over the top and boundary testing displays of sex and violence. Right wing true believers constantly rail and complain about that sort of filth and flarn and yet see no contradiction in their support of the news network owned by the same company. They turn to Fox for a dose of a candy coated truthiness and wikiality, and if this show is a hit they’ll be able to get it wrapped up in low quality jokes just like a Laffy Taffy.
The scary thing is what this show might be capable of doing. The network will be able to offer up all the falsehoods and character assassinations it likes and hide behind a quick “just kidding.” The Obama piece features plenty of old news and middling jokes, but it certainly plays a lot like an attack ad. This show could turn into the network’s outlet to air all the things in the way they would really love to be reporting them. With our eternal election season this show could be wielded as quite the right wing hammer, smashing at Democratic candidates in a completely unbalanced atmosphere.