“Fox News is populated mostly by dropouts”

By Tom Quiner

Fox News reporters are a bunch of dunces. This was the allegation made to Quiner’s Diner reader, Shawn Pavlik, on his Facebook page. Shawn did some research and discovered that, in fact, Fox News reporters have impressive educational credentials. Quiner’s Diner reported his research last week in a post entitled, “The educated team at Fox News.” Another Quiner’s Diner reader, Sral, was not impressed. He responded with clarity:

“Much of your report is nonsense. Having an education is a basic minimum requirement to be a journalist. The conservative community thinks that the fact that many of the talking mouthpieces on Fox have a basic level of education to be a journalist is an admirable accomplishment. It is not, it is too be expected. And journalism degree do not give you an education sufficient to give an “expert” opinion on anything being broadcasted. It is to report the new, as objectively as possible, and as factually accurate as possible. Yet they fail to do even that hour by hour, day by day, week by week, for years. They are utter failures as journalists. It is transparently a propaganda machine. I would say all they do is give their idiotic opinions but even that is a stretch because the truth is most of what they way is not even their own talking points. Conservatives in this country are an absolute joke. A laughing stock bringing shame to America on a global stage. Pathetic. As bad as the worst most marginalized and irrelevant political parties in the rest of the industrial world. Yet in America they cling to political relevance due to a well funded 24 hours propaganda machine.”

Shawn provided this counterpunch:

“Well, I originally posted the above on Facebook, because one of my leftist friends made a claim that “Fox News is populated by mostly dropouts”. As you can see, they are not. I will admit that Fox News has a conservative slant to it, but you cannot say they are factually inaccurate or “utter failures as journalists”. I would say they get the facts right about as often as the other major networks. And as far as being “failures”, Fox news is considered the most trusted cable news station in America. It is also the most watched cable news station in America. Hardly failures. Now I am talking about the news shows on Fox News, like America’s News Room, Happening Now, Shepard Smith Reporting, Your World with Neil Cavuto, and Special Report with Bret Baier. If you want to take umbrage and say that the other programs like O’Reilly, Hannity, The Five, Greta, Outnumbered, or The Kelly File are propaganda, opinions, whatever, that’s maybe a little closer to the truth, because these are commentary shows. The people on them are commentators, not journalists. They are speaking to a conservative audience, and they know their audience, and their audience loves them. Just as MSNBC has that nutjob Ed Schulz and Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews. They are even more biased than Fox News. To another of your points, how is conservatism a joke? I would agree that some of the leadership of our party, i.e. Boehner, Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, are jokes. They don’t stand for anything. But the true conservatives, people like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Trey Gowdy, Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, etc., are not jokes at all. They have a vision to restore America to greatness once again. Obama and his ilk act like we are not a great country. Progressive liberals like him do not believe in American exceptionalism. Ted Cruz’s speech the other day, I believe, sets him up as the man to beat in 2016. It was brilliant, on a level with some of Reagan’s speeches. Know what I think is a joke? “Progressives” continuing to push bigger and bigger government while the rest of the world is scaling back. China has reverted to a mostly capitalist system. Their Communist government is in name only, though their brutality remains. Their economy is growing quickly because of their embrace of capitalism. Europe is teetering on the edge of collapse because of their socialist progressive policies. Greece and Spain are basically bankrupt and only being propped up by the more successful, more capitalist nations like Germany and the UK. Israel just voted in a conservative government once more. Meanwhile, libs in our government continue to push for more and more government control and spending, while our debt careens out of control, $20 trillion by the time Obama is done, adding more to our national debt during his presidency than ALL of the previous candidates combined. I thought Bush was a crappy president because of all his increases in spending, but Bush was a piker compared to Obama. Conservatives continue to “cling to relevance” in America, because voters consider themselves conservative at a much higher rate than liberals. The gap is closing but according to a recent (Feb 11) Gallup Poll, 38 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative compared with 24 percent liberal. One might wonder how the Democrat party continues to “cling to relevance” with numbers like that. Only reason that Obama won was the Republican candidates we chose didn’t stand for anything. We need a standard bearer similar to what we had in Ronald Reagan, one who will raise a conservative banner of “no pale pastels but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people”. If we do, 2016 could be similar to 1980 or 1984, an overwhelming defeat for liberals.”

Thanks to Shawn and Sral for the lively discussion.