Foxification
Foxification. How do you like the sound? It’s a new word to describe what we regard as a sad state of public broadcasting. Interestingly, it does not apply directly to Fox News, although that network is the source of the term. It is being used to describe the dramatic decline in viewership of what was once the dominant TV news outlet – CBS. That network’s ratings have plummeted since the station was acquired by a prominent right-wing organization. The news slant has become very conservative – it has been Foxified – and the process has driven away many of the viewers who since the days of Walter Cronkite have trusted CBS for honest reporting.
More recently, Fox news itself has seen a significant decline in viewers for its news broadcasts. We wonder why that has taken so long, for Fox has a well-earned reputation for turning political news into conservative propaganda. It is still the overall leader in viewership. A ridiculously high 37% of TV news viewers regard it as a reliable source of information. And where would Donald Trump be without it? For years, most stories involving Trump have been Foxified. Negative news often appears as neutral or even favorable to Trump. It routinely blames former democratic administrations for problems. Trump has created.
We were likely among the first journalists to see this unfortunate situation developing. It was 1968 and Roger Ailes, at the time a news director for a Philadelphia radio station, was managing Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign. Managing is a mild term for Ailes set up interviews with favorable reporters, carefully avoiding those who couldn’t stand Nixon. Joe McGinniss, also based in Philadelphia at the time, became famous for his portrayal of Ailes and his methods in the best-selling book “Selling Of The President - 1968.”
He added new term to news vocabulary.
We interviewed Ailes at the time and he said he would like to create a conservative news channel to balance what he considered Democratic Party dominance of mainstream television. It took him almost 30 years to do that. Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long to undo the harm he has done to the broadcast industry, as well as the nation.
