December 24, 2015

Fox News’ new war on truth: This is why Donald Trump and GOP field get away with lies

Fox News’ new war on truth: This is why Donald Trump and GOP field get away with lies

"So how is a racist liar like Trump still a thing? And why is Carson still in the race? He even made the loony claim that the Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain! But rather than end his political career Carson’s pyramid claim might have actually helped him. What’s going on? The answer is due, in part, to the mainstream news media and the increased power of Fox News. The folks that support Trump and Carson largely get their news from Fox News– the network that uses the trademark “fair and balanced” to hawk lies and fear. Fox News has been shown to be a major agent of disinformation. Politfact explains that they lie about 60 percent of the time. Only 10 percent of the Fox News claims they rated were true. This is why their viewers score so badly on tests of their knowledge with one study suggesting that people who watched no news of any kind scored higher on aptitude of current events than Fox News viewers. But that’s not all of it. Fox News viewers don’t only suffer from a network that lies; they are also victims of the increasing politicization of truth. It is no longer the case that we have commonly accepted truths from which we derive our political beliefs. Now every truth is itself ideological. Truths are not drawn from evidence and fact; they are culled from deep belief systems."