It's no secret that Fox News is a shrill for the Republican party but I had no idea that the level of bias extends to the comments section for foxnews.com. Fox News is not exactly "Fair and Balanced(tm)" but in the past I have tried to post a comment to dispel some hatred and misinformation I was reading in the comments board. I have never seen one of my posts appear before. Perhaps it's because I articulate information in a calm and reasonable fashion. For example, I've tried to post the following comment:
Name: New Voter I used to be a foreigner but now I'm a US citizen voting for my first Presidential election. I'm proud to cast my first vote for Obama because he is a man of first class intellect, reason and temperament and will do a great job at bridging together this divisive nation and repair our relations with the rest of the global community. In recent years there has been a really low opinion about the United State in the rest of the world. Until we get out deficit and debt under control we as a nation are at the mercy of the global community to finance our wars and bailouts. If we can't unite to solve basic problems and choose to propagate the divisive do-nothing, ideological wasteland of American political thought then foreign investment and markets for US goods will evaporate and that giant sucking sound will be the implosion of the dollar. The only good thing in this scenario is it will solve the illegal immigrant problem since they will probably go back home - along with other talented foreigners who do drive the innovation economy of the United States. I'm a proud supporter of Obama and have contributed generously to his campaign. For the sake of the future of this country it's important that he becomes the next President.
When I posted the above comment, it seemed to take about 15-20 seconds to process and then the page reloaded and then comment was not added. I thought it may be server overload but I tried it again under and different name and email address and got the same results.
Just for laughs, I decided to re-frame the comment to dish out all the "Red Meat" that Fox News partisan Republicans want to hear:
Name: RedMeat I don't like Obama because he is too smart and he uses reason and logic to frame his arguments. He talks all fancy pants like a liberal elitist. Besides, he was associating with terrorists a long time ago after they became teachers. We need McCain to be a President because we need a leader who will be aggressive, impulsive and take unilateral action against Iran, North Korea and Russia. We need to drive out the foreigners and foreign investment from our country. We don't need their money or expertise. America is the greatest country in the world and we don't need foreign scientists, mathematicians, academics or any leading thinkers to keep maintaining our technological lead. Go McCain/Palin '08!!!!!!
I was really surprised that this comment took a fraction of a second to process and was immediately presented on the page! The php script probably has a collection of key phrases that it process against the comment and kick it out if doesn't reflect a certain point of view. Perhaps it detected that my original comment didn't mention anything negative about Obama and nothing positive about McCain.
The funny thing is that a liberal sympathizer on this group named "toby" picked up on my elitst comment and took it at face value. He didn't see the irony in my post and didn't see that I was indeed slamming McCain. I was curious as why he seemed to be the lone dissenting sheep thrown into a pack of hungry wolves. But this is Fox News and they like to have a liberal punching bag in the mix. A lone sheep among the wolves. A lone Coolmes in a sea of Hannitys.
Fox News Channel wraps the flag around themselves more than any other channel and are the loudest at exclaiming that they and their viewers are the most patriotic and represent "Real Americans". This country was founded upon free speech and dissenting voices. Silencing dissenting points of view is no only unethical but unpatriotic. Sheltering the viewers and readers from alternative points of view reinforces the echo chamber and stunts political discourse. They have been living in a media bubble for a long time. I think the viewers of Fox News are in for a very rude awakening on Nov 5th.
