"If Home Depot is serious about protecting the environment, they must stop advertising on Fox - a network that consistently spreads misinformation about and denies the existence of global warming," says a petition on www.foxattacks.com.
Since the dawn of the information age, groups have tried to manipulate news organizations by going after their advertisers. The first casualty was in the “Marlboro Man” and smoking. That battle still rages with hearings on Capitol Hill regarding the use of smoking in movies and the manipulation of the ratings system to appease the anti smoking crowd. Even in the recent attacks on the Fox News Channel, groups have used Rupert Murdoch’s relationship with cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM) and how that led to Murdoch’s vast media empire ignoring stories about the negative effects of smoking. It isn't enough, however, to try to control the behavior of the American people by controlling the legal products they have access to in the marketplace. The left wants to control what you think and read by controlling your information sources.
The most recent tactic used against the number one cable news channel, Fox News, has been a campaign by activist and filmmaker Robert Greenwald. Through the website, www.foxattacks.com, Greenwald is going after advertisers, like Home Depot to get them to pull their ad dollars from The Fox News Channel because they dare to present an opposing view regarding the role of humans in global warming. Greenwald is also the man behind the documentary “OUTFOXED,” MoveOn.org's attack on Fox News and Rupert Murdoch's media empire. These guys on the left hate to be challenged- anywhere. Their testiness is especially evident after the “Live Earth” debacle. They are scrambling to regain some sense of decorum on the discussion of Global Warming.
You may recall that Greenwald also conducted a recent internet campaign against a planned Fox News presidential debate in Nevada. He’s also credited with pushing top-tier Democrats to pull out of a Congressional Black Caucus debate. Fox News has to pay, according the left, for allowing opposing points of view on global warming and other tenets of the left. You really have to love the angle on this. Greenwald and his crowd want to have debates of “their” candidates on news channels that nobody watches, not on the news channel with three times the viewers of either of the other news channels. They are afraid of the free market of ideas.
Look at the pattern-the silencing of opposing points of view. For arguments sake, let's assume that Fox News is the Right Wing Arm of the Right Wing Nuts of America. Fox News is not looking to silence the opposition through boycott or through governmental means, they are looking to obliterate the opposition through ratings, bringing viewers to their network by providing what viewers seem to want. They employ a free market solution.
The right competes in the marketplace of ideas and is willing to have their ideas challenged. When lefties controlled all the news magazines, righties came up with their own magazines and competed. When the mainstream news programs wanted to limit coverage to the “Big 3” networks, along came CNN and then the Fox News Channel to add to the discussion, not to limit it. When AM radio was about to die on the vine, Rush Limbaugh came along to add conservative talk to the mix and it filled a void that led to a dominance of conservative thought on talk radio. The dominance results from the fact that we, the talk radio community, won that battle in the marketplace.
Those of us on the right and those who love free speech seek to expand dialog and the left with the help of people like Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films seek to suppress discussion. They know they can't win with facts and ideas, so they want to shut down the debate. Whether advertisers like Home Depot want to advertise on Fox News or have “eco-friendly” policies in their companies is their business and the marketplace will decide is they are doing the right thing, not a bunch of fringe folks who don't want to hear the truth.
If these guys win, they won't stop with the Fox News Channel. This week, Michael Moore unleashed a diatribe on an unsuspecting Wolf Blitzer over the questioning of his facts in his new movie, “Sicko.” Yes, that's right, Michael Moore accused Wolf Blitzer and CNN of hiding the truth from the American people. The Inconvenient Truth of this whole matter is that the left is too entrenched in their “collegial” strategy - that is, they lecture to the American people without allowing question, legislate free markets out of existence and control what you hear and see, when you hear and see it because THEY know what's best for you. Sounds a bit like Aldous Huxley's “Brave New World,” instead of Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films. Or maybe they are one in the same.
