Fox News commentators are getting tons of heat for calling the church massacre in Charleston a war on Christianity while ignoring it as a racial attack.
Larry Wilmore on his Comedy Central Show captured the outrage here.
He’s right. And Fox News deserves the criticism.
It is their Brian Williams problem.
How so? We just heard from the defrocked NBC News anchor who now is sent to the minors of TV by playing the role of breaking news anchor on MSNBC.
Williams admitted he made mistakes. He said he wrongly tried to insert himself further into a great story he was telling.
That’s exactly what Fox News does for its audience — and for ratings. Other networks do it too. Fox seemed to do it here while blatantly altering facts.
Think about it. All Fox News is doing is getting their audience to be a more intricate part of the story. “You, too, Fox Viewer, are a victim of this as well,” is what Fox mouthpieces are saying to the conservative crowd to make them feel good.
It’s what TV does. They give you immediacy and emotion. But for a news organization, this way of presentation is patently wrong, which is why Fox News is not news; it is political commentary and, in many cases like this, propaganda.
First, there is no War on Christianity.
No one is closing down Christian churches. And we are certainly not erecting mosques and instituting sharia law as many extreme right-wingers seem to think.
Second, if anything, America is turning its back to traditional Christian institutions, but not to Christianity.
A recent Pew Research Poll backs this up. If anything, young people are becoming more spiritual and looking for communities that accept them. Like most institutions in America today, mainstream churches are losing congregations because they have failed to give people what they need and want.
Fox News and the rest of the traditional media are also part of the failed institutions we have: Congress, the Presidency, corporate America, banks, Major League Baseball, NFL, universities, etc.
What Fox News does for ratings is to perpetuate what they have blamed many Americans of doing – acting as victim. But the Victimhood of America for cable news channels brings ratings. You make people feel like they are something special and the media is there to help them. And if informing them correctly hurts that sense of victimhood then we will err to the side of making you feel good. Most Fox viewers are still comforted in knowing Saddam Hussein led the terror attacks of 9/11.
Before anyone accuses me of being a liberal, commie, socialist, let me quickly add other media outlets – the aforementioned MSNBC – does the same trick of bestowing victimhood on their viewers.
Although in this horrible case in Charleston, I think we can say we have real victims here.
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