Fox News might have a soul. Well a host on Fox News might have a soul; I’m pretty sure Fox is a lost cause at Souls-R-Us. I know it’s shocking, but former Bush press secretary Dana Perino has recently attacked the network's dishonest rhetoric. I don’t know what’s more shocking: that a Fox News T.V. personality cares about polls, or — no that’s all.
Dana Perino’s outbreak is interesting because of her title—she’s a show host, and a former press secretary. Notice something about those credentials? None of them include Journalism.
Perino’s allegiance is not to the truth. Her job is to keep the viewers watching. Now I may not agree with her political leanings but it’s interesting to see someone on a 24-hour news outlet care about facts. For why, here’s a bit of history.
In 1980, CNN was established as the first 24-hour news outlet. It was costly, ambitious, and a complete mess. Then the Falklands War hit, and it turned out that people liked having 24-hour live coverage of a war. They were updated immediately and the ridiculous cost of CNN was justified by the enormous viewership it had. When the war ended, they lost views, and journalists were costly. So CNN began hiring pundits, who are cheaper than journalists and because of their ability to pull views CNN ended up replacing its journalists with pundits. Sound familiar?
Enter Satan—Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch as a media mogul had the savvy to realize a truth that’s oft taken for granted. Journalism is a primarily liberal field with few outlets catering to conservative consumers. Fox News was established as a conservative outlet on the 24-hour news platform early on. Meaning Murdoch pulled all conservative viewership, and profiting from CNN’s model of employing ‘not journalists’ we can easily see how Fox News became the “Fair and Balanced” network it is today.
Fast forward to Dana Perino, and take another look. We have a woman who was not hired as a journalist, calling out her co-worker Eric Bolling. Honestly? Props to her. She's not a journalist, she's a former press secretary. She's saying that polls matter, and that Fox is being blatantly misleading.
24-hour news is, (ironically) surprisingly, not news. At the very least, to be news they need to report on facts. Dana Perino, while noble in her intent, is symptomatic of the absence of credibility within the 24-hour news cycle as a whole. Perino’s allegiance to the truth isn’t even from the stance of a journalist—she’s interested in being honest to the viewers about the Republican Party. What does it say about Fox’s brand of "journalism," when a press secretary that works for them is more loyal to its viewership than its own platform is?
