Fox News cracks me up.

[Arkady]

Whenever an international event captures the news cycle, you can really spot the different lineage of Fox News and CNN. Even though CNN has fallen far from the days when it called itself the world's most important network, you can still see echoes of that heritage. You can see how the network set itself up with the BBC World Service in mind. You can see how it has a bureaus all around the world, and all kinds of top-notch analytical talent lined up to be able to weigh in, on short notice, about Taiwanese culture, bauxite production in Brazil, waste-water treatment in India, drought in North Africa, or basically anything else. Fox News, on the other hand, was set up along the model of so many other Newscorp tabloid offerings, where the focus is on local culture and the doings of famous people, only filtered through a partisan political lens.

The Fox News business model makes a lot more sense. It grabs a larger share of the audience, and although they're disproportionately the old couch potatoes that advertisers don't value much, you can make up with volume what you lack with quality. Just as importantly, it's a cheap model. Producing Fox News-style segments generally just involves having some right-wing talking head sit in a studio preaching to the choir, while bringing in occasional sparring partners, interview subjects, or foils for him or her to talk to. When in doubt, just read the latest GOP talking points memo. Maintaining a large international presence is much more expensive than that, which cuts into the bottom line. So, CNN has been slowly remaking itself in Fox News's image for well over a decade now -- shrinking its foreign presence, and relying less on a large stable of veteran reporters and analysts, and more on a few key telegenic personalities.

However, although I completely understand why Fox News has opted to focus on the profit-generating strategy of producing cheap content for provincial people, the results can still be hilarious:

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/07/fox_news_parodies_itself_uses_footage_of_random_sad_asians_instead_of_actual_koreans_partner/

When you have relatively little presence on the ground to cover a story, it's easier just to reach randomly into the stock footage vault and grab whatever vaguely related video you can find to accompany narration that's just a Foxified rewording of whatever the news wires are carrying. The kind of people who watch Fox News are unlikely to notice, or to care if they do notice, so it saves a lot of money. Then you can get back to listening to Brit Hume yell about how awful Obama is.

 

[NightSwimmer]

At least they didn't use video game footage!

 

[as seen on tv]

this isnt true only of CNN. major newspapers such as the NYT and WaPo have been severely downsizing their international presence for a decade now.

more and more media outlets - newspapers and electronic - are relying on free lancers and reporters who work in/for a specific country's media (especially in the middle east) because they have better contacts and local knowledge.

the summary execution of daniel pearl and other american reporters has simply hastened the impulse to curtail the official presence of US news organizations in that region, as well.

 

[GordonGecko]

For the best in political coverage and analysis....tune to Fox News!!!

Fox News: America's Number One Source For....Geography-

 

[worldlymrb]

Most Govt/Corp media just have the news faxed to them by the ministry of truth and the National Security Council,

 

[Drumcollie]

Arkady quoted Salon.com...oooh how non- impressive I can quote hate news and act like I am quotinfgg real news..funny...Mr. 5 paragraph diatribe is no better than the enquirer....Salon.com because democratic haters want to hate!

I would read the article but it's no more news than Dr. Suess...next tell us how Snuffaluffagusses are making too much money!

 

[Drumcollie]

For the best in political coverage and analysis....tune to Fox News!!!


Fox News: America's Number One Source For....Geography-

I am sure Salon.com coverage of Benghazi will be oooooh so muuuuuuuch better...Salon.com wher Democrats go to beautify their lies.

 

[marvin martian]

Whenever an international event captures the news cycle, you can really spot the different lineage of Fox News and CNN. Even though CNN has fallen far from the days when it called itself the world's most important network, you can still see echoes of that heritage. You can see how the network set itself up with the BBC World Service in mind. You can see how it has a bureaus all around the world, and all kinds of top-notch analytical talent lined up to be able to weigh in, on short notice, about Taiwanese culture, bauxite production in Brazil, waste-water treatment in India, drought in North Africa, or basically anything else. Fox News, on the other hand, was set up along the model of so many other Newscorp tabloid offerings, where the focus is on local culture and the doings of famous people, only filtered through a partisan political lens.

The Fox News business model makes a lot more sense. It grabs a larger share of the audience, and although they're disproportionately the old couch potatoes that advertisers don't value much, you can make up with volume what you lack with quality. Just as importantly, it's a cheap model. Producing Fox News-style segments generally just involves having some right-wing talking head sit in a studio preaching to the choir, while bringing in occasional sparring partners, interview subjects, or foils for him or her to talk to. When in doubt, just read the latest GOP talking points memo. Maintaining a large international presence is much more expensive than that, which cuts into the bottom line. So, CNN has been slowly remaking itself in Fox News's image for well over a decade now -- shrinking its foreign presence, and relying less on a large stable of veteran reporters and analysts, and more on a few key telegenic personalities.

However, although I completely understand why Fox News has opted to focus on the profit-generating strategy of producing cheap content for provincial people, the results can still be hilarious:

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/07/fox_news_parodies_itself_uses_footage_of_random_sad_asians_instead_of_actual_koreans_partner/

When you have relatively little presence on the ground to cover a story, it's easier just to reach randomly into the stock footage vault and grab whatever vaguely related video you can find to accompany narration that's just a Foxified rewording of whatever the news wires are carrying. The kind of people who watch Fox News are unlikely to notice, or to care if they do notice, so it saves a lot of money. Then you can get back to listening to Brit Hume yell about how awful Obama is.

You talking about "provincial people" is almost too much irony to bear...LOL

 

[Bernard_Fokke]

it's all about the rating$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[Figjam]

it's all about the rating$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

...indeed, it's not about quality or objectivity, it's about knowing and then pandering to your audience. Once you know that, you can manage your Nielsen numbers and charge advertizes much, much more...

 

[Arkady]

this isnt true only of CNN. major newspapers such as the NYT and WaPo have been severely downsizing their international presence for a decade now.

more and more media outlets - newspapers and electronic - are relying on free lancers and reporters who work in/for a specific country's media (especially in the middle east) because they have better contacts and local knowledge.

the summary execution of daniel pearl and other american reporters has simply hastened the impulse to curtail the official presence of US news organizations in that region, as well.

I suppose it's inevitable, but I think we lose something with that model. In the days of the big old foreign bureaus, there were people there who were keeping an eye on things even when they weren't in crisis mode, and could push stories up to national attention that were not yet crisis stories -- stories of big-picture developments that would end up mattering a lot, but hadn't yet had some disastrous incident commanding attention. Now we're more likely not to even hear about things until there's a deadly riot or coup or natural disaster, and at that point the outlet scrambles to outsource their coverage to some local freelancer for a news-cycle or two, and then promptly forgets that part of the world even exists. It leaves Americans deeply ignorant of most of the world most of the time.

I was struck by this recently when I challenged some people to the following game:

http://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/how-many-countries-can-you-name.php

The idea of that is that you name as many countries as you can in twelve minutes. You don't even need to find them on a map -- just come up with the name. Most of the people I saw do that were HORRIBLE at it.

Aside from the US, Canada, Japan, China, Australia, Mexico, India, and the largest countries of Europe, the only places they seemed able to name were places the US had gone to war in, or had been saber-rattling at (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Koreas, Libya, Cuba, and Pakistan). They couldn't even remember a lot of that latter group (Bosnia, Croatia, Grenada, Lebanon, Haiti, Yemen, Somalia, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, East Timor, Panama, Sudan, South Sudan, Venezuela, and Syria, for example). Within the last generation or two, all those places supposedly mattered enough to this country to justify threatening or actually taking military action, and yet these fairly well educated people forgot they even existed.

That geographic ignorance makes sense when you think of how modern international news coverage works. When was the last time you heard discussion of Indonesia on the news? It's the world's fourth most populous nation, and sixteenth biggest economy, but it's neither a common vacation spot nor a place we regularly threaten to bomb, so it hardly pops up on our news radar. How about Nigeria? It's momentarily in the news because of the kidnapping crisis, but it'll soon fade into utter obscurity again, as far as US news coverage goes. Yet that's the world's seventh most populous country, and the second-biggest economy on a whole continent. The people I saw take that quiz nearly all whiffed on Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Turkey, every one of which is more populous than, say, the UK.

I get that most people aren't going to be aware of little Tuvalu, but we're talking about major world players that lots of Americans are fully unaware of unless they happen to be in the midst of some major crisis at the moment. That's a disgrace.

 

[Arkady]

For the best in political coverage and analysis....tune to Fox News!!!

Fox News: America's Number One Source For....Geography-

Screwing up Iraq on that map is particularly bizarre, since, at the time, we'd been at war with them for six years, with a price tag in the trillions of dollars, and thousands of body bags coming back home. Even by the standards of American ignorance of the wider world, Iraq wasn't an obscure country.

 

[Arkady]

You talking about "provincial people" is almost too much irony to bear...LOL

I suspect you don't know the definition of "provincial".... or maybe the definition of "irony." There are plenty of insults that stick nicely to me, but "provincial" isn't one of them.

 

[marvin martian]

I suspect you don't know the definition of "provincial".... or maybe the definition of "irony." There are plenty of insults that stick nicely to me, but "provincial" isn't one of them.

I know both quite well and, despite your high opinion of yourself, you display provincial thinking in quantity. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but besides maybe Gordon, you have one of the smallest worldviews on the board and it's evident in virtually everything you post.

I see you!

 

[fairsheet]

I'm guessing that from a bidness/bottomline perspective, large, far flung, "wholly-owned news bureaus are an anachronism. In this day and age, the NYT (for example) shouldn't need to have its own man in Timbuktu. In theory anyway, it makes way more sense for them to simply have someone they trust on their call list, to cover Timbuktu.

Then....it comes down to who's on that call list and how the particular medium makes use of it. For instance...IF something newsworthy were to go down in Timbuktu tomorrow, I'd expect to hear reporting from someone I've never seen before - someone who actually IS an expert on Timbuktu. But...if the only person I hear from is the same old face I've always seen from this medium..the one that "covers" the entire eastern hemisphere, that's a tell and not a very good one.

 

[NightSwimmer]

I suspect you don't know the definition of "provincial".... or maybe the definition of "irony." There are plenty of insults that stick nicely to me, but "provincial" isn't one of them.

Interesting to get so many critiques of your personality, rather than of your thread topic.

 

[marvin martian]

Interesting to get so many critiques of your personality, rather than of your thread topic.

Come on, really? His thread topic is the same every time; red = bad, blue = good. Like yours. There's no point commenting on the same tired premise yet again...