Halleluiah!!
Anyone who follows news coverage from an objective perspective has to be grateful for Fox News, as unattractive an object of admiration as it is. The mainstream media partisan and political bias is palpable, and materially damaging to democracy, so Fox’s looking glass perspective does a great deal to relieve the imbalance by reporting legitimate stories that the other networks unconscionably bury. To CNN, a missing Malaysian airplane justifies scanty coverage of dangerous U.S. foreign policy fiascos, growing evidence of criminal political activity by the IRS, and California state senators under indictment. To CBS, a smoking gun memo showing the White House deliberately misleading the public and the press in the wake of the Benghazi violence isn’t worthy of reporting. Fox remedies these and more, every day. For the remedy to be effective, credible and respectable, however, the network has to avoid justifying its ideological critics’ attacks by behaving like a clown act. That shouldn’t be so hard, really. It only requires hewing to professional journalism standards. For Fox News, however, this is often hard, and sometimes, like this morning, too hard.
Fox and Friends decided to report a minor news event in Saugus, Massachusetts as a miracle. I’m sure this pleased Fox’s demographic of god-fearing Christians, but it is juvenile, unprofessional, silly and incompetent journalism, and proselytizing to boot. After this, there is no reason not to expect that the next time Jesus’s face is said to appear on a tortilla, Fox will break into its programming with a BREAKING NEWS!! alert. This is supposed to be a morning news show, not the “Hour of Power” or the “700 Club.”
Grace Ministries Church in Saugus, Mass, was unexpectedly threatened Saturday when a massive boulder, blown loose by construction blasting nearby, rolled toward it. The giant piece of rock, estimated to weigh 20 tons, stopped a foot short of demolishing the church. Pastor Rick LeClair, told the press that his church was rescued by God. “The Lord kind of said, ‘That’s enough,’” he told reporters. Well, of course that’s what he would say. He’s a pastor!
Fox News, however, is supposed to be made up of journalists, not apostles, and journalists are obligated to deal in facts, not faith, and not wild conjecture. The New York Daily News, quite properly, described the church’s narrow brush with disaster as “dumb luck.” If a reader, a Fox News watcher or anyone else wants to attribute that luck to divine intervention, that’s their choice. It is not, however, fact, news or a conclusion a news network should be promoting.
But that is exactly what Fox did today. The headline under the interview with LeClair read “Divine intervention?” The Fox and Friends hosts were completely unskeptical about the pastor’s conclusion—“It seems as if a big hand just came down and stopped the boulder!” one of these idiots said—and might as well have shouted “Amen! Halleluiah!” as he spoke.
What an embarrassment. They didn’t have to mock or argue with the pastor, any more than I expect the Today Show hosts, while interviewing the elated parents of a child rescued after being lost in a forest, to protest when the mother says that God was looking out for little Robbie. The Fox and Friends journalistic obligation is neutrality, not bias, and they breach professional ethics when they turn a news show into a promo for any church or religion itself. If Fox wanted to enlighten the audience on the validity of such claimed “divine intervention,” it could direct its on-air talent to remind audiences that several U.S. churches were flattened by tornadoes less than a month ago. What’s so special about Saugus? (I’ve been to Saugus. No comment) They could raise the question of why God chose to stop a boulder, but couldn’t use his Big Hand to foil terrorists from kidnapping and selling little girls in Nigeria. Better yet, the alleged journalists could just do their jobs and report the news, let the pastor get his 15 minutes of fame, and otherwise behave sufficiently like credible professionals that when the network reports a genuinely significant story the other news outlets chose to bury in partisan manipulation of public information, what Fox reports is taken seriously.
That is too hard, apparently. Remember this episode the next time you hear critics say that Fox News isn’t a real news network.
Unfortunately, they have a point.
Ethics Alarms 
Would this be a good time to mention the old strain at a gnat, swallow a camel idiom?
the counterpoint is to ask if there are any real news networks.
The answer to that is “No.” C-Span is the closest.
Jack
Doesn’t the question mark at the end of the headline “Divine Intervention?” suggest some willingness to be skeptical – leaving the viewer to make the distinction between dumb luck and something else?
I mean what if the NY Daily News had used “dumb luck?”. That could also suggest that something else could have contributed to the boulder stopping a few inches short. Basic Physics would suggest that it was not just dumb luck.
Putting a headline on a human interest story is always difficult and I agree that objective news reporters should not use hyperbole to advance an agenda but this is infotainment not really a news story that has any significant impact on anyone other than those involved.
You have to admit that either headline is catchier than ” Coefficient of friction prevents destruction of church by overcoming the acceleration of an igneous mass”.
I’m embarrassed to say that I am not certain of the question mark, and the more I think about it, I may have included it in error—because that IS what it should have said, if divine intervention were going to be mentioned at all.
The problem was really the unwavering certainty communicated (at least to me) that the three hosts agreed that this was a miracle of divine origin.
“Meh.” I don’t have a problem with journalists on a commercial broadcast using “church speak” to cover a story like the rock-and-church in Saugus. Nor would I have a problem with journalists who are confirmed non-followers of a particular sect behaving according to the rituals of some sect they are covering, just to get a story.
Obviously Fox’s market calculations reached the conclusion that there are many like you. The problem is that “preaching to the choir” doesn’t convince anyone.
But Fox was not necessarily preaching to any choir. Fox might have been simply angling to “snag” interest from a particular segment of their known audience, and nothing more. There is a point at which the responsibility to be skeptical and to honor skepticism is not the journalist’s, but the viewer’s or hearer’s. That is partly why I included my second sentence. Like the Fox News slogan goes, journalists report and viewers decide. I don’t expect journalists to be any better at avoiding calling an incident of dumb luck a miracle (or vice-versa) than they are at avoiding calling the Affordable Care Act the sole salvation of public health.
I do. I expect skepticism, objectivity, and fairness, and unequivocal acceptance of the supernatural, simply because a guest says that’s what happened, is both poor journalistic practice and evidence of stupidity.
Although I give thanks to the Almighty that Fox exists, perhaps Fox News should take a look at this quotation and ponder it: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
~Galileo Galilei
That’s just about perfect, Wayne.
As a God-fearing and believing Christian, I can only say well-reasoned, well-argued and well-done on the part of Ethics Alarms.
On the whole, you’d rather be in Philadelphia? (Nod to W.C.Fields.)
Either you have been misinformed, or that is unwarranted exaggeration. They weren’t little girls but teenagers. Yes, yes, I know, they will always be little girls to their parents – but we aren’t their parents, and that is distorting the facts. It is no service to the truth and to formulating a proper response, which is what we would get from “I expect skepticism, objectivity, and fairness”.
Quibble alert. At my age, anyone under the age of 20 is a little girl. The term was meant to convey innocence, youth and vulnerability.
You’re talking a size difference of maybe two to one. The searchers will have to be equipped to rescue people like that, and the rescuees’ moral condition isn’t an issue for that but their physical condition is. That’s no quibble.
I suspect that what we have here is a cultural difference of the sort that gave rise to the Simpsons’ cliche, “won’t someone think of the children?” Thinking of children like that, in that way, gets in the way of doing the job.
In this case? I think that’s wrong. The teens are no more able to control their fates than infants…indeed, as they are being sold, no more than loaves of bread. I’ll agree that the “little” qualifies as hyperbole, but in this instance, it is immaterial.
I’d rather be in Philly than Saugus…or dead.
Frankly, I think this entire question is a lot of ado about nothing!