Fox News attempts to trend upon the creative methods of popular entertainment programs such as The Daily Show and Colbert Report on its late-night program Red Eye this week, methods in which shows send out correspondents to playfully jostle its subjects in ways that, while entertaining, challenge ideas and perspectives of both viewers and interviewees, a method that Fox News, well, ultimately fails.
This particular Red Eye program began with host Andy Levy speaking in rhymed verse perverse assumptions and exaggerations of the people protesting. The host then introduced its "smelliest correspondent" personality Bill Schulz dressed in attire straight out of a Rolling Stones photographic essay on Woodstock, and whom had prior to airtime ascended upon Zuccotti Park, holding signs and shouting asinine things in mock protest such as "I like toast, bagels suck! Yay toast! Boo bagels!" and "Bring back 'Growing Pains'!" Immediately following the segment, Fox then segued into the formulaic obligatory opinions panel consisting of Levy, Schulz, the obligatorily hot white woman, and a younger white man and a middle-aged black man to “diversify” their opinions. Missing both the point of satire and the plight of their subjects entirely (as usual), the Fox program succeeds in nothing more (as usual) than loud-mouthed media bullying. The purpose of satire is to elevate thought through very intelligent comedy that can sometimes be offensive; Schulz was more obnoxious than witty. Furthermore, Red Eye’s “diverse” opinion panel is such a contrived concept, and the majority of the panelists have no desire to be intellectually elevated or to elevate their viewers—they are comfortably settled into their overt disdain for their subjects. The complaint of young people that they are not listened to is founded, Fox News being proof.
Fox also fails its outreach because American youths flat out don't watch Fox. If you ask a young college kid (and it’s not long ago that I myself was one), Fox is for old people, and people who never fully developed past the ego phase psychologically in childhood, and "Don't Tread On Me" baseball-cap wearers whom believe that America's saviors are Gold and Silver, and people who don't think for themselves or challenge ideas, so they make fun of people who do. In a time-honored tradition of old curmudgeons mocking the youth instead of making sincere efforts to understand them, Fox News delivers to its ageing and waning demographic, which brings me to my third reason of why Fox News fails to attract young viewers: Fox News is disingenuous and cruel, a business model that is increasingly becoming unpopular and obsolete in a population of global citizens.
This segment is just another example of how Fox News embarrasses the American people and debases the profession of journalism, a profession whose duty is to investigate social events and report critically, not to impose their uncouth opinions, ill-informed assumptions, and biased values upon them.
Watch part of the segment here. I could not find a video on YouTube that includes the discussion afterwards; I will update the link if I do.
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