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Fox Gone Wild

By Simon S. Maloy, Media Matters original to AlterNet. Posted March 2, 2006.


Scantily clad women and on-air sexual harassment are the orders of the day over at Fox News Channel.
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When one is in the business of correcting conservative misinformation, one spends a great deal of time watching Fox News Channel -- America's foremost purveyor of conservative misinformation.

After many thousands of hours of viewing Fox News' stable of anchors, correspondents, and spinmeisters, one begins to see patterns emerge in FNC's programming: on-screen text that bashes Democrats, reporters adopting White House terminology, etc. But after a while, the din of GOP talking points and anti-liberal screeds slowly fade and an altogether different pattern emerges.

A person idly watching Fox News all day, for example, has an excellent chance of glancing at the screen and seeing some partial nudity or a male Fox News personality hitting on a female colleague on the air. Scantily clad women and on-air sexual harassment are the orders of the day over at Fox News Channel.

Take, for instance, Fox News' premier business news program, Your World with Neil Cavuto. Cavuto, Fox News' vice president of business news and the worst James Bond since Timothy Dalton, regularly shows footage of Victoria's Secret runway models and Playboy bunnies -- presumably in the name of business.

Cavuto also has a special obsession with a certain football game played every year in early February: the Lingerie Bowl. Last February, Cavuto interviewed two Lingerie Bowl contenders in their -- ahem -- uniforms. As the News Hounds blog pointed out at the time, this interview was preceded by a one-on-one with Focus on the Family's James C. Dobson, who said that parents must monitor what their children are "looking at because pornography is everywhere, as you [Cavuto] know."

This year, Cavuto switched things up a bit and interviewed just one backfield beauty (in a slightly less revealing outfit) opposite the considerably less attractive, though certainly voluptuous, William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

Fox Gone Wild

Cavuto's special love for the Lingerie Bowl is shared by others in the Fox News family. This year, anchor Jon Scott had the pleasure of interviewing a pair of "uniformed" Lingerie Bowl representatives on Feb. 3. Snippets of that interview were later replayed during a straight news report on the game, which also featured some footage of the athletes stretching, bouncing, gyrating and participating in other activities clearly intended to balance cardiovascular health with rhythmic jiggling.

When not reporting on the Lingerie Bowl, Fox News was busy reporting on the partially nude aspects of the Super Bowl itself. Every year Fox sends sports reporter and terrorism expert Brian Kilmeade to the Super Bowl host city to provide in-depth, "on the ground" reports. This year's coverage from Detroit dealt substantially with the Playboy party, of which Kilmeade gushed on the Feb. 5 edition of Fox & Friends Sunday: "I've never seen so many women wearing so little."


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Simon S. Maloy is a writer and researcher for Media Matters for America.

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Great article
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Posted by: ccbite on Mar 2, 2006 4:16 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hopefully you were debriefed after so many hours of watching that crap. Yechhh. You are right on. These Fox people are Machiavellian in their details. The Fox talk shows seem to see themselves as the 'last line of defense' in a world where the white patriarch way of life (and all of its inherited but allowed double-standards) is perceived to be 'under attack'. It is as if their aim is to create a 30-minute escape to the 'good old days' where people speak in absolutes, children don't question ("do as I say not as I do"), and women conform to traditional or fantastic roles. In some ways it is a regression to childhood. And of course by packaging opinion as news (and in absolutes) Fox uses its format as a means to falsely 'empower' the uneducated viewer. Instead of being faced with news that might call into question your knowledge and cause you to consider the massive range of possibilities impacting the news story, watching Fox news in contrast is easy: just sit on the couch, flick on the TV and bring your own opinion. So viewers do what comes easily: they take mental short cuts without being held accountable for their beliefs (TVs don't talk back). When opinions go unchecked it piles into a self-serving routine and it makes it harder to go back and admit you were wrong. It might be tangential but a good example is immigration. Most people who consider themselves anti-immigration would probably see this problem differently if they knew somebody dealing with this first-hand. Imagine if the anti-immigrationist had an illegal immigrant and their family over for dinner but didn't know they were illegal? I'm fairly sure they would they make exceptions. ("Pedro's situation is different", "Ana Maria is not like the others"). They probably make the same exceptions for Bush and his breaking of civil liberty laws ("Laws are unjust if it means we have to pull out all the stops and stop the evil-doers. Screw the laws.")

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clinker
[Report this comment]
Posted by: cottontail on Mar 2, 2006 9:30 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Idiots and low grade morons watch Fox News. I'm sure being part of the Bush slime machine (propaganda organ) pays very well. What other reason could one have to sell one's soul? Or are Hannity, O'Reilly and company that stupid?

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» RE: clinker Posted by: adp3d
rover
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Roverton on Mar 3, 2006 1:40 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
FOX NEWS is Pro Wrestling for journalism.

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» RE: rover Posted by: kww355
» RE: rover Posted by: Roverton
FAUX NEWS IS EYE CANDY FOR TRAILER TRASH
[Report this comment]
Posted by: kc10ken on Mar 3, 2006 5:46 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What do you expect from a media outlet owned by ultra right wing conservative Rupert Murdoch? It's ALL about the $$$$$. Americans are SO horribly misinformed by this GOP TV wave of shit and yet they LOVE it....why?

Because it's eye candy.

They tell people what they want to hear.
The economy is GREAT
The war is going GREAT
dumbya is the GREATEST President ever

That's what the pathetic 34% of America (who STILL support this idiot dumbya) want to hear. It's a sad situation when I have to tune into the BBC to find out what's going on in my own country because other media outlets are following FAUX cable news' lead in broadcasting only fluff news stories and completely ignoring the REAL news that's going on in the rest of the world.

If Americans only knew who was deceiving them on FAUX cable news......

Rupert Murdoch: Owner and self proclaimed ultra right wing conservative who openly admits that he uses all of his 236 media outlets to futher his right wing agenda.

CEO/PRESIDENT Roger Ailes....republican whore extraordinaire. One of the biggest contributors to the bush campaign and former head of the republican party

PROGRAMMING DIRECTOR: None other than dumbya's first cousin John Ellis. Think he's going to air ANYTHING negative about his cuz? ......Think again.

Want to read a GOOD book on this subject of how our media misleads? Read "Bad News" by Tom Fenton, correspondent for CBS for over 30 years. He points out some very interesting things about WHY the media is giving this adiminstration a free pass.

Also....watch the movie "OUTFOXED".....a good expose about the inner workings of FAUX cable news.

FAUX cable news is nothing more than a bunch of WHORES for the GOP.

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daccame
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Posted by: daccame on Mar 3, 2006 5:50 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And yet...Fox is the most watched channel. This is how they increase their ratings while hypocritically claiming to be for "family values". It's all about the bottom line. Never underestimate Fox's willingness to sell out. And never underestimate American's desire to be titillated.

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Your point proven
[Report this comment]
Posted by: jkrehbiel1 on Mar 3, 2006 7:27 AM   
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While reading the article I clicked on the "Juliet Huddy" link within and was sent to a page that also contained a Huge Victoria Secret ad and a "Top Stories" link to a story called "Holy Hotties".
How blatantly obvious is that?

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» RE: Your point proven Posted by: bleedingheartliberal
Faux News
[Report this comment]
Posted by: dalton on Mar 3, 2006 7:35 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
One of the first things I noticed about Faux news was the "full body" shots of the "newsdeliverers", the women's painted-on make-up, and their short skirts hiked up to their hips. Maybe I noticed it because I'm female, but it was so obvious they were not a serious news organization.

(You have to watch that crap? I watch it sometimes for a couple of minutes for a laugh, but the graphics, waving American flag, foolish drivel and appearance of the breathless newscasters can only be taken in small doses!)

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Fox Gone Wild
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Paul Cardwell on Mar 3, 2006 12:30 PM   
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You are a bit late on this subject. Murdock got his start (and money to control TV) from "scantily clad" (or less) pictures which were the feature (certainly not the news) in his tabloids in Australia and Britain.

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Their high ratings might be bogus?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: justaperson on Mar 4, 2006 3:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Remember that the ratings people are also probably counting the people who tune in just to see how crazy and disgusting things really have become.

Besides sex they are also very obsessed with death. Greta Von Nosubstanceatall focuses mostly on grizzly homocides. She practically drools over every disgusting detail. Violence and sex, The Neanderthals love it! But they aren't the majority of America folks!

If the ratings people count everyone who tunes in with the same purpose I have---peering in to see the worms in the can wiggling around--then maybe that's why they have such high ratings.

Corporations and businesses seem to keep them on in waiting rooms and cafeterias too. Because they are "entertaining" and pro-business? What company would want their employees watching Lou Dobbs talk about outsourcing American jobs? Much better to let them watch the Fox news bimbos giggle about swimsuits or screech and scream about murder.

Fox News must screen potential newscasters with a voice recorder. If they don't have a high pitched, high volume voice that equals a fingernail being dragged down a blackboard, they're obviuosly not hired.

As for Bill O'Rielly he's really a cross-dressing Tokyo Rose.

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It all makes perfect sense
[Report this comment]
Posted by: jules_siegel on Mar 4, 2006 5:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Conservatives are uptight prudes who need excuses to look at naked flesh. Fox gives it to them. Why is anyone surprised? Have you ever seen British tabloid journalism? [Not safe for work] That's Fox News.

The obsession with nudity increases in direct ratio to the obsession with covering it up.

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woo-hooo! fox.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: chrstof on Mar 5, 2006 10:52 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
of course fox news are the purveyors of the high moral standards. you can tell by the way they flaunt women on their broadcasts.

i'll watch some of their shows because the female host are usually pretty hot, and wearing short skirts.

it's easy to get guys to swallow the misinformation. they're distracted hoping they'll really get to see up her skirt every time she moves her legs.

if your story has no legs, make sure the presenters and pictures do!

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different standard?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: af28305 on Mar 7, 2006 5:12 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Your article reminds me, once again, that mainstream media continues to use white male stereotypes of minorities, which, of course, reinforces the stereotypes for future generations.

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WATCING FOX WITH A STRAIGHT FACE
[Report this comment]
Posted by: JayBee on Mar 7, 2006 7:13 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I am amazed that anyone can watch Fox News with a straight face.

I have concluded that to work for Fox News, you need to be blonde, attractive, and have nice legs OR you need to be rude, insulting, and totally off in right field!

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mj7
[Report this comment]
Posted by: mj7 on Mar 7, 2006 5:50 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Fox News needs to suffer from the same popularity decline that is befalling this President. After all, their relentless propaganda is largely responsible for his electoral successes. Everyone must continue to expose this organization for what it is; a manipulative tabloid with a hidden agenda.

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» RE: mj7 Posted by: Roverton
Sleep...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Roverton on Mar 9, 2006 1:06 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
FOX NEWS is CRAP-NOSIS.

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UN Has Too Many Nations
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Posted by: missecho on Aug 14, 2006 5:13 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Fox News Bimbo Speak:
today it topped them all. While watching Fox News while in the waiting room getting my car fixed, I heard the Fox News Bimbo of the day opine that the UN was really hard to deal with, because there were Soooooo many nations there!

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