I can always tell when FOX’s ratings are slipping because the producers decide it’s time once again to pick a fight with lawyers who help the injured. Either that or my Republican Party needs campaign contributions and they are going to stir up the doctors to get out their credit cards. I read the teaser on FOX titled, This Week’s Show: Parasitic Tort Lawyers,  and see it’s about medical malpractice and how evil some lawyers are for assisting patients to legally file a lawsuit. Oh my! I think the sky is falling. Frankly I’m not going to watch or read anything more than the teaser because the doctor says my blood pressure is already too high as it is. So this morning I’m sitting in front of the computer writing this blog since I know of no cheaper form of therapy.   I have to tip my hat to FOX, because they really know how to sell ice cream to the public. FOX treats news as if there are flavors of the facts; like Baskin Robbins has 32 flavors of ice cream.

The people running Fox know how to market something like news by repackaging the facts before scooping it all up into your TV cone. The style they use is to create controversy and no fact is important enough to get in their way.  It’s all about pushing buttons; and that’s what newsA-tainment is all about, emotional button pushing. FOX after all is NOT a news organization; their style of “journalism” is newsA-tainment. In this style of television entertainment the facts aren’t important; what is important is advertising revenue. And they get plenty of it. There is a large TV audience that doesn’t care about fact as much as they do watching a TV news show that looks and feels like news but has prettier faces, neatly coiffed sprayed hair and is above all else entertaining.  That’s what I call newsA-tainment. Previously I called it Hair spray News but that’s really a role played by good looking people posing as journalists.

I can’t blame only FOX in their quest to sell the viewing public a different flavor of the news. After all FOX didn’t create it, they simply concentrated the far right flavor. Other news organizations have had conservative commentators, but FOX takes it to a new level by having just conservative view points. No liberal ice cream here! I’m not sure who did it first. I recall Tom Snyder being somewhat controversial in the 1970’s although I can’t really say he was a far right conservative. There is William F. Buckley and lately I think Jeff Greenberg tries to be the flip-side of mixing cheesecake with chocolate. FOX knows that news organizations are having a hard time financially and to survive against the digital news world they have to reinvent themselves. And like it or not the viewing public has become less discerning in wanting to hear the truth.

If news organizations had accountants GAAP would require reporting fully diluted truth as a better measure of the ultimate facts. I actually blame reality TV shows for the demise of truth and justice. Reality TV has made lying, deceitful behavior, neurosis and cheating into skills one must hone to win the money. Lately I’ve been wondering if defamation may be in the early stages of dying because what I see from the Bachelorette to the Jersey Shores is that  a bad reputation translates into economic success. People are famous for just trying to be famous, not for having brains, skill, talent or telling the truth. To win you have be good at lying. To being truthful some say F_ck U.

Take ABC’s Good Morning America as a newsA-tainment product. You have professional journalists like George Stephanopoulos sprinkled with Robin Roberts. Previously the show had its resident lawyer Chris Como as the meaty part of the show and he would at times act like a thinking journalist using his legal skills to get at the truth. But ratings being what they are he’s gone on to greener pastures because his wanting to report fact had value to the legal profession but added no value to ABC’s flavor of GMA newsA-tainment. If I were in that business and were sitting where FOX sits looking at GMA I’d probably think, Why not? If the public will buy the GMA flavor of the facts, why not offer a new flavor. Concerntrated Chocolate Conservatism. We can repackage the facts and make them factalicious!

The public believes it’s all about flavors, because for the most part they can only think of me-me-me. It’s my-this and it’s my-that. Is the US Government giving me a handout today or what?  The public sees Wall Street and Banksters getting their billions why not us. Ultimately they won't be fooled by the charade of facts presented to justify handing the Wall Street gang a 700 billion dollar welfare check and I'm not fooled by the banksters getting virtually no-interest money from the Fed and sitting on it to buy government bonds rather than lend it to taxpayers. Just look at the last treasury auction, banks bought up government bonds using cheap government money. It’s a manufactured return using taxpayer dollars.  It’s always the same, they win and Main Street loses. The news organizations aren’t there for the facts, they are there to appease the masses and keep most of us satiated and not thinking about the Second Amendment.

So as “news organizations” evolve to keep the public placated I’m sure like Baskin Robbins we will be presented with a new flavor every month. Who knows maybe someday Paula Deen’s show will have newsA-tainment items presented while we wait for sticky buns to come out of the oven. And know this, if you look like a porn star or street walker then you can be a Fox News Anchor or reporter. If not then just yell louder or act brasher and Fox will find you a place to create your own diatribe about things you know nothing about.

And if ratings get bad enough there is always Charles Mason interview. He too has his own flavor of the facts. I’m left wondering if FOX will be there next.

For real news watch this YouTube video that discusses how FOX argued to the Court that as a news organization they have a Constitutional right to air a version of the truth.

And may I wish Steve Wilson a speedy recovery.