The world of broadcast journalism has been the subject of criticism for years. The problem is that partisanship has taken over broadcast media, which has led to America’s top news media networks becoming seemingly very biased toward one side of the political spectrum.
Now one of these networks is taking their lack of objectiveness too far.
Fox News has decided to launch its own streaming service, called Fox Nation. The service will feature Fox News’ most popular content producers and hosts, as well as new talent. The network has stated that the streaming service will focus on opinion-centered shows.
This means that the service will probably be less oriented around objective news broadcasts and more around talent similar to Sean Hannity.
Fox News is notorious for heavily favoring conservatism and republicanism. Its serious lack of consideration for the other side of politics at certain times has left it the subject of considerable scrutiny.
That isn’t to say that it is the only one is guilty of this. CNN is also considered to be a very biased news entity, but instead toward liberalism. Similarly to Fox News, CNN also gets a bad reputation.
These two networks are representative of journalism’s main issue today, and it really looks like neither of them are taking steps to correct that. Fox Nation, for instance, is a blatant step in the wrong direction.
Naturally, I enjoy and appreciate opinion writing and broadcasting. The purpose of it is to give people who are less versed in a certain issue a perspective from someone who is knowledgeable about it. It’s a critical part of journalism, but popular news media is twisting it to further its own biased propaganda.
The issue with Fox News and CNN is that they both have opinion contributors who struggle to recognize both sides of an argument. There have been times when those supposed-pundits have been wrong, just because they refused to accept something that didn’t align with their political beliefs.
I don’t believe any of the personalities at these major news networks are dumb. They have to be aware of journalism ethics that look to protect against news media bias. However, there is one aspect of media conglomerates that has a major effect: the fact that these networks are owned by corporations.
Partisanship is something that sells because it caters to a specific crowd of people. Being heavily partisan allows networks, similar to Fox News, to tell its viewers what they want to hear.
In turn, the network gets boosted ratings from its targeted audience. In the end, that’s really all these corporations want, more money and ratings. They could care less about the journalistic aspect of broadcast media.
This leads me to believe that perhaps somewhere in the contracts of certain opinions contributors, they are being told to blatantly ignore the other side of the argument because it doesn’t appeal to the target audience.
This isn’t true journalism, it’s entertainment.
Fox Nation, from a corporate perspective, is a brilliant idea. It charges a subscription, and there will absolutely be people who will throw money toward it in order to receive confirmation bias. It’s an entertainment product, nothing more.
Fox Nation gives the network a platform to be even more rowdy than its allowed to be on national television. The network has said that it plans on catering to the “Fox News Superfans,” which probably means the content being produced will exclusively be directed toward people who radically lean right.
This streaming service is just another testament to how corporations are absolutely manhandling the objectivity and importance of journalism. Opinions writing and broadcasting is not supposed to be entertaining. Sure, personalities may have their own quirks to them that make them enjoyable to listen to. But opinions are supposed to be a consideration of both sides of an argument with a well-articulated conclusion, not a platform to push radicalism.
Fox Nation is setting a bad precedent for other networks. If it is successful, which it likely will be, there will be no reason for other media conglomerates not to try to get into the market. Journalistic integrity takes yet another hit with the introduction of another money hungry product.
