wilkes

Isn't that the truth, pineapple?!?!

And, just like that, my faith in the American education system is restored.

"Make the lie big. Make it simple. Keep repeating it and eventually they'll believe it." Joseph Goebbels

Years ago (decades actually, but who's counting) I was pursuing my degree in Mass Communications at Arizona State University. Several of the classes leading to that degree were of the journalism variety and one of the first things they taught us was that reporting the news required impartiality.

Despite appearances over the last few years, it seems they still try to teach journalistic ethics, at least in one Vermont high school.

Last year Fox's Bill Reilly sent one of his ambush interview producers to Bennington, Vermont to expose the city as a bunch of pot smokers, ski bums and (gasp) LIBERALS! (No real "Muricans" in sight.)

Vermont high schoolers studying journalism at Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington decided to use this for a case study for a "professional integrity audit" based on the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics.

Turns out they found so many ethics violations, they lost count. In their words,

"Based on our studies about the field of journalism, we have determined that you're not practicing journalism. You're practicing rank propaganda." [�]

"By watching Fox News, we have learned buckets about journalism � what to do and, more importantly, what never to do. It is our hope that Fox News can learn the very same from watching us."
Roger Ailes set out to create a conservative propaganda outlet when he built Fox News. That he succeeded is discouraging. That he gets called out by high schoolers is encouraging.

Roger got his big start in the 1968 Nixon campaign. (Why am I not surprised about that?)

Working as Nixon's "executive producer for television", Ailes manufactured a series of fake news events, then paid TV stations to run them as if they were real news. (Seems like ol' Rog has been into fake news long before FOX.)

Fired by Nixon after the election, he later was put in charge of the newsroom for Television News Incorporated. TVN was a pet project of Joseph Coors, the archconservative beer baron. (Loved his beer, hated his politics.)

The business plan was to provide news clips that stations could use as their own for a small percentage of normal production costs. Once the stations were hooked on the discounted clips, according to its President, TVN would "gradually, subtly, slowly" inject "our philosophy in the news." Btw, the network's motto was "Fair & Balanced". (Ring a bell?)

There was just one problem. TVN made the mistake of hiring professional journalists who revolted over such crap. One news director who quit said the network was a "propaganda machine." Of course those that didn't quit in protest, were summarily fired and replaced. (Roger learned never to make the mistake of hiring real news people again.)

There used to be a time in this country when a propaganda organization wouldn't have been allowed. At the time, all broadcast media had to conform to the "Fairness Doctrine".

The doctrine "required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable and balanced." (No relation to B.S. Mtn's "Fair & Balanced".) That all went away when Saint Reagan was elected President. His F.C.C. dumped it in 1985.

Interestingly enough, Canada still has a law on the books that keeps Fox out of their hen-house. (And believe me, Fox has tried to break in!) It seems they have this silly law that requires news media to tell the truth, as far as they know it.

We could learn something from Canada!

Written by Dave Kilby 1/24/2015

This won't come as any surprise to the intelligent posters of GW, but a group of highschool students in Vermont applied the principles of journalistic integrity to a propaganda piece done on their town and clearly show that FOX has ZERO integrity.