Grant Jones

OTM - Smoke and Handcuffs, Feb 28th

This On the Media was very interesting. Bob Garfield was covering for Brooke Gladstone. Bob claimed that for the past twenty years, Fox News has been a “Blast Furnace” for the Right Wing political party. It is hard to deny that Fox News is anything but a republican infused Entertainment Tonight, but I’ve always kept that to myself, knowing my parents are huge Fox News fans. They both claim it is “actually news.”

“Foxism and Trumpism are made for each other,” Bob claims. He then goes on to say that Fox and Trump have created a “Feedback Loop” of political agendas. There is a huge amount of distortion of the news, and their viewers eat it up, soaking up all of the news and taking it as cold hard facts, and also mirroring the discriminatory and harsh language and mindsets that the news anchors have. Donald Trump is among those viewers. In the podcast, and also seen on social media are the instances that Trump reportedly gets his news from Fox News before his intelligence. “Ungrateful Traitor, Chelsea Manning,” was found on Fox News, and later on a tweet from Donald Trump. It is safe to say President Trump reiterates Fox News. The Sweden debacle was due to Trump watching Fox when Tucker Carlson was talking about Sweden with a filmmaker who was explaining his findings in Sweden over a long period of time. The filmmaker was talking about crimes on the rise, and Trump thought it was current for whatever reason, and decided to talk about it in a press conference.

The next topic on the On The Media talk show was about Sanctuary Cities, and how they were in danger. ICE has been on the move, now more than ever, since Trump has been in office. However, cities have been pushing back, and not allowing ICE to perform the way Trump would like. The immigrant policies and enforcements have always been an issue, as the documentary “13TH” mentions. It was hard to fathom the extent of the Trump administration in terms of deportation and incarceration of minorities and undocumented citizens. I think it is a huge waste of money and recourses. It is also a perfect example of justified, legal, and political racism and discrimination. It was baffling to see how much discrimination from political leaders and parties is rooted in their decisions to “Make America Great Again.”

It’s hard to make any headway in resolving conflicts of racism and immigrants, terrorism, environment, or anything else, when the government and media stations setting such a poor examples. I do believe that our government and certain media stations are not solving issues, but fueling them. With such huge entities such as the President and media companies such as Fox News all saying the same things, it will be very hard to convince viewers of a different mindset. All in all, things are getting out of hand and certain news outlets have been notifying the public in a way of certain praise, rather than a critical standpoint.