Essence of Fox
October 31, 2007 at 8:33 am by Andisheh Nouraee in News, Randomly NotedConventional wisdom dictates one loves or loathes Fox News because of the network’s politics.
I think what differentiates Fox from CNN or ABC, however, isn’t that it’s the place where Republicans and not-liberals go for TV news they like.
I think the secret is sensationalism.
All TV news sensationalizes. Fox sensationalizes with an intensity and shamelessness that other news outlets do not. Every moment of Fox News is calculated to get people worked up.
Example:
Yesterday afternoon in Phoenix, a toddler died after apparently being left in a hot car by his mom while she worked as a server at Hooters.
National news outlets are all over the story — because it’s tragic, and because the mother’s employment at Hooters provides an opportunity for networks to show scantily clad women, and for armchair phony moralists to make snide comments about “Hooters girls.”
ABCNews.com’s headline for the story is Forgotten Toddler Dies Inside Hot Car.
The Arizona Republic’s website headlines the sad death 17-Month Old Found Dead In Car.
FOXNews.com puts all of the story’s sensationalistic appeal right in the headline:
Toddler Dies After Hooters Mom Forgets Child in Hot Car.
The image they chose for the story is of 16 women in Hooters outfits at a convention in Las Vegas.
Fox looks at a dead child and a grieving family and sees tits and ass.
Yet it’s the preferred network of self-proclaimed family-values, traditional conservatives.
Send to a friend:
October 31st, 2007 at 10:06 am
That story makes me sad. Whoever wrote that headline is a supreme douche. It is written as if being a Hooters waitress played a role in the tragedy. Oddly enough, it may just be a ploy to connect with that segment of Fox News watchers who will listen to anything with the word Hooters in it. A group I am probably included in…who doesn’t love Hooters? I now hate myself. Thanks Andy.
P.S. I was going to say John Fitzgerald Page wrote that headline but it seemed excessive.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:09 am
Nailed it — Hooters pun not intended but duly noted.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I was wondering who named their kid Hooter and if he was sad about the death of his sibling…… then I realized no apostrophe……