One current face and voice of the outraged Republican movement in America is Glenn Beck. Beck is a conservative radio and television host on Fox News, the fair and balanced network. Do have a watch Beck and the critique from The Young Turks:
Beck's comments about Obama came after the Cambridge Police Dept. and Sgt. James Crowely were publicly criticized by the president after the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Gates. Beck then broadens the attack here and here.
It is ironic that old style journalists disparage bloggers for their wallowing in opinion and vitriol in comparison to the quality of professional journalism of the traditional media institutions when we have this kind of product on Fox News designed to increase audience numbers. Or is 3.am the online future of the traditional print media-----gossip gone toxic?
| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:24 PM | Permalink
Beck is straight-out unbalanced and deranged. He makes our own talk-back radio lunatics seem calm and objective - fortunately we don't have anything on TV that even approaches his level of mindless angry ranting.
He is hugely popular, is taken seriously by politicians at all levels, and writes books that sell by the truckload. Hardly any serious establishment figures are game to call him out for what he so obviously is. And that tells you pretty much all you need to know about the state of public discourse in the USA.
Imagine what would happen if Murdoch got his hands on a free to air television channel in Australia and modeled it on Fox News. That channel would constantly whip up its outraged, resentful and angry white conservative base into a fury by abusing liberals and social democrats as the enemy within.
That moment seems to have passed, thankfully, because of the global financial crisis.
Gary I might be naive but I believe the audience in Australia for such a channel would be very small. Ultimately I think one of the factors that did in Howard was a reaction against his culture wars/war on Islam stuff. But then at heart I remain an optimist.
The thing about sports is that you can do independent journalism online and make a go of it, because sport has a natural affinity with bookmakers as an advertising partner. The Mirror site and indeed nearly any sports site you care to mention will have advertising for sports betting. It is like a symbiotic relationship.
The problem is, no one has really come up with a similar relationship for hard news or opinion. (with the exception of the speciality of finance news, which is why the only papers that make a go of charging online are the Wall St. Journal and the Financial Times.)
I'd heard of Beck but never seen him in action before. If dull is the price we pay for avoiding extremists like that, give me dull.
I can't imagine that kind of thing doing well in Australia, not because I'm an optimist, but because Australia has a conservative set of behavioural norms. Even Andrew Bolt behaves himself on telly.
Beck is straight-out unbalanced and deranged. He makes our own talk-back radio lunatics seem calm and objective - fortunately we don't have anything on TV that even approaches his level of mindless angry ranting.
He is hugely popular, is taken seriously by politicians at all levels, and writes books that sell by the truckload. Hardly any serious establishment figures are game to call him out for what he so obviously is. And that tells you pretty much all you need to know about the state of public discourse in the USA.