Jealous of Fox
Jealous of Fox
By Joe Bob Briggs
April 16, 2003
I'm not kidding. Joe Scarborough, the new right-wing tough guy on MSNBC, is a dead ringer for Bill O'Reilly, whose take-no- prisoners "The O'Reilly Factor" is the highest-rated Fox show and the bedrock around which the dominant Fox night-time schedule is built. Scarborough even has the same bags under the eyes, the square jaw, and the tight-lipped "you're an idiot" manner of O'Reilly.
Isn't this kind of pathetic? People must be scared to death to start copycatting a network which is, after all, not that unique in the annals of Rupert Murdoch properties. Murdoch's Anglospherical empire has tabloids on four continents. Fox News is simply the New York Post of cable news--feisty, acerbic, full of dramatic hyperbole--but that doesn't mean we all have to be that way. What kind of wimp changes his whole editorial philosophy just because the guy across the street has attracted a bigger audience?
The reason Fox is successful is not that it's conservative. It's that the commentators say what they mean and mean what they say. They're in your face. And if they're occasionally self- righteous to the point of pomposity, big deal. I'd much rather watch that than the regal milquetoast triumvirate of Rather, Jennings and Brokaw, all of whom seem to be presiding over some especially portentous corporate board meeting.
New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg surveyed network news executives and media analysts earlier this week to get their take on what's being called "the Fox effect." Let's call it what it is: aping somebody else's style.
The reason they do that is that Fox News had 46 of the top 50 cable shows in a single week. The channel now has 3.3 million daily viewers, well ahead of CNN's 2.65 and MSNBC's 1.4. The rap on Fox is that they accept everything the American government says at face value, they hammer foreigners, they're openly pro- war, and they bash anti-war protesters as seditious and unpatriotic.
This is all true. So what? That's what they do. The best evidence of a truly free press is that you can have all kinds of personalities with keys to the broadcast tower. Fox is Al-Jazeera with an American agenda.
The question is: Why does it upset journalists so much?
Fox's answer would be, "Aw, it's just a bunch of belly- aching liberal journalists who finally got their comeuppance."
In other words, they would give us the barroom philosopher's explanation.
But that's not why they upset journalists so much. The labels of "liberal" and "conservative" are just straw men that ceased to have much meaning years ago. In fact, part of Fox's energy depends on its ability to make certain there are still plenty of liberals in the world. Without them, they would wither and die.
The reason the other networks are upset is that Fox is rabblerousing like an old Southern politician who knows how to throw out code words to keep the masses entertained, energized and alarmed. Besides "liberal," they've turned the words "France," "the U.N.," "leftist" and "anti-American" into highly charged slogans they use as shorthand to identify the Other, the Stranger, the Them. (Al-Jazeera uses words like "martyr" and "infidel" with similar effect.)
If you're doing things the old-fashioned way--that is, you don't have a Them, only an Us--then you don't get the benefit of the emotional energy jolt. Fox is like a skilled carnie operator throwing baseballs at a clown in a cage, and every five minutes the clown gets dunked in the water and everybody cheers. Meanwhile, all the other networks are ranged up and down the Midway with antique carousel rides and a barker out front who says "Won't you come and try our beautiful horsey?"
The way to compete with Fox is to get your hands dirty. Make fun of them when they screw up. (They already do that themselves. They're especially fond of taking out full-page newspaper ads when CNN screws up.) Point out disingenuousness and shallowness wherever you find it. Focus directly on what they're doing wrong, not what they're doing right. Copying their successful shows makes you look like an insecure 15-year-old girl who wears too much makeup and dresses just like Britney Spears.
The viewer, like the average citizen, has no stake in anyone's career or any network's fortunes, so he can be won over with all the old-fashioned stuff like logic, historical perspective and passion. But that takes people who are a) intellectually honest, and b) brawlers.
To use a fight-game analogy, Fox is a hard straight-ahead puncher, and maybe a little wild because it's young. And what do you use to defeat a wild Tyson-style puncher?
Counter-punching, of course. Defense. Finesse. The jab. The rope-a-dope. You wait on the roundhouse right and you counter it with the left jab and the right cross. You show some patience.
The principal weapon of every journalist, commentator, news anchor, is the truth. Fox is bound to make mistakes because they paint everything in such large unambiguous terms. The world is full of ambiguity. The planet is lousy with ambivalence. I make a half dozen mistakes every week even when I think I've done my homework--because there's always some deeper level I haven't quite gotten to yet. Fox's weak point is that they don't go that deep and so they tend to believe things like:
All Democrats are liberal. (Obviously not true, unless they're unaware of the bulldog Southern Democrat and his cousins in the Midwest.)
All war protesters are irresponsible. (Would they attack Gandhi? Would they pillory a Jesuit priest who refuses military service?)
All the press except them is biased. (This is one of their stranger self-delusions. Even if you accept that the press is biased, Fox is hardly what you would call a model of objective internationalist balance.)
American might is the best recipe for democracy around the world. (Well, yes and no. We're not really agitating for democratic reform in Saudi Arabia, are we?)
In other words, the counter-punch to a shouter is the Charles Bronson whisper. The equivalent of the boxer, as opposed to the fighter, is the man who constantly says, "But have you thought of this? Have you considered that?" The Achilles heel of Fox is that they swing so wildly they're liable to punch themselves out.
Start an investigative project that takes six months to complete and is so pervasive and stunning in its implications that even Fox is forced to grudgingly report on it. Take command of the defiles they've left unprotected. Force them to box. Be Oscar De La Hoya to their Fernando Vargas.
But don't try to copy their style. Make them respect your style.
Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his website at www.joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.
© 2003 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved