My Fox News Experiment

Don't ever watch news and political analyst television programs. You can't trust a single one. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, not one of them are 100% reliable. Why? Because they're all corporations. They're aiming for viewers, not the straight facts! If they have to twist the facts and the sources, insult the enemy, then that's what they'll do to get the ratings. People these days are looking for reliable sources for what's really going on in the world because we've wised up - we know that our regular local news channels aren't giving us crap and we need the facts. So then you have programs like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Don't trust a single one. You cannot trust television news.

Both my parents are Republicans. They think Democrats are selfish, rich bastards who couldn't give a crap what happens to the country, but rather their political power and how much they're paid. I do not agree with them. I do not agree with Democrats either. But I will say that I see many Republicans in politics today thinking that they are "above the rest" because, well, they're not Democrats. I see both sides as equally corrupt. My dad disagrees with me. My mom's more open to my opinions. She's a bit like me. I suppose when I turn eighteen, I'll register as an Independent. But here's my point. I'll use two examples: my dad, a Republican, and my English teacher, a Democrat. Here's something interesting I noticed.

My English teacher believes that Fox News is "a bunch of biased, corrupted bull and [that] Bill O' Reilly is a complete douche bag." I used to watch Fox News, I thought it was a really good source for information and I thought he was saying that just because O' Reilly's a Republican. My teacher recommended BBC News and CNN, and he said that MSNBC was "okay." He also said that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report were genius shows.

My dad believes that Fox News is "the most reliable news provider out there." He says that it gives the full story of what's going on in the world. He said that Bill O' Reilly, Hannity and Colmes, and Greta were completely unbiased news reporters who had the right idea about the world and politics. My dad told me not to trust CNN or MSNBC. He thinks that The Daily Show and the Colbert Report aren't good influences because "they are satiring Fox News, a channel that really lives up to its claims" and that "it is also trying to influence us to lean towards the left-wing" AND that shows like those are "trying to bring down corporations like Fox News."

So I conducted an experiment of sorts. I've watched the other new programs my teacher and my dad mentioned, and I noticed that MSNBC, sometimes CNN, and local news channels did lean towards the left-wing. But I wanted to see if Fox News really had a bias like my teacher was saying, and that my dad was saying did not. I'll admit, I found out my answer a bit on accident. See, my teacher turned me into a fan of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I'm gonna get onto that subject a bit later, but I typed in Stephen Colbert on Youtube, and I found out that he did an interview on Fox News with O' Reilly. I clicked on it, and I came to my conclusion.

The Interview. I'd recommend watching, only about five or so minutes long.

Stephen Colbert did not take O' Reilly seriously at all. I got a bit pissed at him for doing that, not even giving him straight answers, but then I realized why. Watch the interview closely. Pay attention to the subtleties. If you notice, O' Reilly was trying to make him look like an idiot. Notice the type of questions he asks, especially near the end. The thing with the bears and owls, how Stephen pronounced his last name, it got a bit petty at the end. But Colbert beat him at his own game - I'm sorry, but O' Reilly was being a dick. Then look at this:

O' Reilly's follow-up to the interview. Also recommend watching it, or at least the first half. Pretty short too.

This solidifies my opinion of O' Reilly. He mentions how many viewers he gets before anything and how Fox News has more. And the clips they play of Colbert. They're tricky with that. The beginning, when he's all pointing at himself saying "Me me me me me me me," I like how they played that first. And the guy who he picked to talk too, he was the author of "110 People Screwing Up America." And O' Reilly was being pretty sneaky with how he talked about the show. He kept on mentioning the "younger demographic" and "young people forming their opinions based on this show." If you watch the full interview, basically he made The Daily Show and The Colbert Report look like an immature show for younger people partly informed about the news.

You can tell now what's going on. Fox News DOES have a bias. I've watched Greta and Hannity and Colmes, and they both lean to the right-wing. They tend to rag on Democrats and frown upon Democratic views a bit more than left-wing. Don't trust O' Reilly at all. Hannity and Colmes - eh. The only show from there I might trust would be Greta, because she gives a lot of information about murder cases, things like that. But back to my experiment. Fox News is very against shows like The Colbert Report and The Daily show in particular, because I won't deny that they parody Fox News more than anything else. Although they lean more left-wing, they're parodying Fox News more not because it's aimed towards a Republican demographic, but rather because they realize that they're no better than any other company in the business. They're as much for the ratings as anyone else is. And that scares the Fox News Corporation. They add in some things about The Daily Show, here and there. Tries to beat 'em at their own game. I'd post more videos but I wouldn't want to bore you if I haven't already.

So, you can draw your own conclusions from this I suppose. My point: Don't trust everything people tell you. Find out more. But that's the problem, isn't it? Finding a non-biased source of news that you can trust. I'm having that problem too.