Haters of Fox News like to call it “Faux News”, a lame play on words that doesn’t even work if you actually know how “faux” is pronounced. But the real faux news channel is at the other end of the political spectrum, where MSNBC now admits that it’s not really a news channel:
At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the network’s own analysis, comes down to this: breaking news is not really what MSNBC does.
“We’re not the place for that,” said Phil Griffin, the channel’s president, in reference to covering breaking events as CNN does. “Our brand is not that.”
I’m reminded of years ago when professional wrestling admitted it was fake, in (if I recall correctly) a legal filing that argued it was entertainment, not sport, which thereby improved its legal position somehow.
In MSNBC’s case, the article goes on to say — hilariously — that political opinion is the brand that MSNBC “has cultivated with success”. (Sure, if by success you mean having no one watch you.) But Fox, CNN, and even Headline News all manage to have both opinion and news. By managing only the opinion side, they fall into the same category as Current TV, Al Gore’s network (now owned by Al Jazeera) that manages to draw even fewer viewers than MSNBC.
(Via Jennifer Rubin.)
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