How Fox News Uses Visual Messaging To Keep Their Audience Dumb And Angry

If there is one thing that Fox News is determined to do, it’s to make sure that their audience is fed a constant stream of lies. Their purpose is to insure that they are incapable of understanding the real world around them and remain in a perpetual state of outrage over the falsehoods that Fox disseminates.

Fox Nation

Case in point: Today’s headline story on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation blasted the lede that “‘Our Openness To Refugees’ Is How We Fight ISIS: Obama Reiterates Pledge to Bring In 100,000 Muslim Refugees” There is so much wrong with both the text and the image associated with it that it requires a detailed analysis.

First of all, notice that the picture juxtaposes President Obama with a band of ISIS terrorists in a manner that nearly suggests he is leading their mission. That obvious bit of visual messaging aims to create an impression of Obama as a traitor who is aligned with the enemy. The allegation that Obama, or other Democrats and liberals, are terrorist sympathizers or worse is one that has been expressed explicitly by Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests. Just this weekend, Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox to declare that Hillary Clinton could be considered a founding member of ISIS.

Additionally, the use of ISIS fighters in the image is a distortion of the accompanying text in that the story is about refugees, not terrorists. But Fox deliberately chose not to use refugees in the picture. By using ISIS fighters they imply that the refugees themselves are terrorists, which in fact is what Fox and other conservatives believe. That is their justification for opposing the humanitarian admittance of refugees into the U.S. And it mirrors the official positions of the two leading Republican candidates for president. Donald Trump has been saying for weeks that he would prohibit any Muslims from entering the country, while Ted Cruz has proposed surveilling the ones already here.

For the full measure of just how deplorable that message is you have to understand that the refugees are the victims of the terrorists. That’s why they are seeking asylum in the U.S. and elsewhere. What Fox is saying is akin to associating Jews with the Nazis who tortured and murdered them. If Fox News, Trump, Cruz, et al, were around in the 1940s they would have called the Jews potential terrorists and forced them to remain in the region were they were being slaughtered.

Next we’ll look at the the headline on the article which purports to be quoting the President. But contrary to Fox’s account, Obama did not say that “‘our openness to refugees’ is how we fight ISIS.” What he said was that our openness to refugees is “another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our counter-terrorism work, and our diplomacy.” That’s an important distinction in that the humane treatment of refugees is just one part of a broader strategy to defeat the enemy militarily while also undermining their propaganda campaign. The Fox News, right-wing plan to insult our Muslim allies and stigmatize Muslim Americans will only help the enemy recruit new fighters. That’s the message Obama gave in his weekly address. He said in part (video below):

“As we move forward in this fight, we have to wield another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our counter-terrorism work, and our diplomacy. And that’s the power of our example. Our openness to refugees fleeing ISIL’s violence; our determination to win the battle against ISIL’s hateful and violent propaganda — a distorted view of Islam that aims to radicalize young Muslims to their cause.” In that effort, our most important partners are American Muslims. That’s why we have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim Americans and their enormous contribution to our country and our way of life. Such attempts are contrary to our character, to our values, and to our history as a country built around the idea of religious freedom. It’s also counter-productive. It plays right into the hands of terrorists who want to turn us against one another.

Finally, the headline on the article also lies about the President’s efforts to rescue refugees by saying that he is proposing to admit 100,000 refugees (Trump, in his pathologically lying way, has escalated that to 250,000). However, the current plans call for admitting 10,000, so Fox is only off by 90%. But misinforming their audience on this matter plays right into their continuing effort to demonize the refugees and make Americans afraid of an imaginary horde of potential suicide bombers. The truth is that entering the U.S. as a refugee is perhaps the most difficult path to entry. It takes going through a rigorous array of inspections that can take years to complete. Why would a terrorist subject himself to a process that takes so long and is likely to result in his capture?

That’s a question that Fox News will never bother to address because they are only interested in portraying refugees as clandestine evildoers. And it’s why they construct these graphical lies in order to deceive their all too willingly ignorant audience. Keeping them dumb and angry is the core mission of the Fox News cultists.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

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