Fox Nation -The White Trash Pravda- Squelches Free Speech

Most fair observers already know that Fox Nation is a cesspool of right-wing propaganda and deliberately dishonest attacks on Democrats and progressives. Their blatantly biased approach to news would embarrass any conscientious journalist. The Fox Nation is the perfect communications model for other nations like China or North Korea. They are publishing what would best be described as the White Trash Pravda.

Fox Nation CensorshipIt appears that their comments section is no more fair and/or balanced than their so-called news. Despite the fact that their logo says “All Opinions Welcome,” the truth is that only opinions that don’t challenge their readers’ sensitive preconceptions are permitted. When attempting to post comments there I am now being rejected with a message that says “Your comment must be approved by a moderator before appearing here.” Then, of course, it never appears. And my comments are always civil and relevant to the topic.

For instance, in an item about Bill O’Reilly’s appearance on The View, the Fox Nationalists noted with shock that Whoopie Goldberg and Joy Behar walked off the stage in response to O’Reilly’s bigoted assertion that “Muslims killed us” on 9/11. Here is my comment on this:

“How come no one on this site seems to have noticed that O’Reilly backed down and apologized for his outrageous bigotry?

He was wrong and even HE knew it. Yet most of the comments here are supporting the bigotry for which he apologized.”

This doesn’t even seem to me like a particularly controversial remark. It simply states a fact that was being ignored by the Fox Nation community. Nevertheless, I made two additional attempts to express this opinion and all were rejected by the Fox Nationalist censors. Comments that were approved included references to the the show’s hosts as “bitches” and to all Muslims as terrorists.

That should tell us something about Fox and their audience. They are clearly afraid of engaging in an open dialog. They have determined that their arguments are too weak to undergo debate and that their readers are too stupid to be allowed exposure to free thought. But when all you have on your side is disinformation and lies, I suppose it’s necessary to shield your feeble flock from frightening concepts like the truth.

This principle is in play throughout the Fox News empire. And it is why Fox News is so harmful to the state of discourse and to democracy.

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8 thoughts on “Fox Nation -The White Trash Pravda- Squelches Free Speech

  1. Wow. This is a really big deal. Blatant hatred is ok, but not an insightful comment? Did they just do this to your IP address? Use a friend’s computer to write a comment. If it still needs approval then this is a REALLY REALLY big deal. Seriously, this is huge.

    • I’m not going to spend a lot of time running this down. I can live without commenting at Fox Nation. But I will publicize their hypocrisy. And I have heard of many other cases similar to mine.

  2. What annoys me more than the blatant censorship is that the feedback your comments elicited would have been downright hilarious. And who knows: you might have caused one or two not entirely robotic minds to reassess their kneejerk support of all things FOX.

  3. I have been there as well. The comments most likely to get deleted are the ones that point to sources that can highlight factual errors. The quality of the ‘stories’ is varied enough that comments on some stories are even more harshly censored.

    I think everyone who is interested in engaging the far right, especially if you spend most of your time in a coastal metro area talking with other progressives, should go to the site and try commenting. I think it is important to work extra hard to be civil and respectful and for that matter constructive. E.G., on a thread about story discussing how a private museum in London had airbrushed a cigar out of a Churchill photo, I noted that this wasn’t an issue of political correctness, but rather of property rights.

    One random thought. I’ve wondered if the comments aren’t largely from people paid to sound worked up about this stuff. In keeping with the Pravda theme, they tend to sound eerily similar. One speculation I’ve had is that Uncle Rupert pays a group of Chinese in a factory like setting to churn out the comment diatribes. Google “Chinese Internet Army” or “Cyber Red Guards” or “Red Guards 2.0” for the groups that are suspect to do similar work for Chinese officialdom.

    • While your speculation about Murdoch employing Chinese commenters is funny, it is also sadly unnecessary. There are plenty of deluded Americans who are all to happy to post inane comments on Fox Nation.

  4. Not suprised, Saddened for the future of the media but not suprised. Actually I would be suprised of “any” other responce from that S.O.B. net work.

  5. CNN does the same thing. With the exact same graphic. It’s a third-party filtering system that filters all content in the same way. This is not unique to Fox.

    • It has nothing to do with the graphic. That is just from Disqus, their comments manager. It is Fox Nation, however, who decides what to allow and sets their own moderation standards.

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