‘PURPOSEFUL IDIOCY’…. If you learned about the new nuclear arms treaty with Russia yesterday from a major news outlet, you probably gained a reasonably accurate understanding of the developments. If you learned about the treaty from Fox News, you probably ended up knowing less than if you’d simply spent the day in a sensory-deprivation tank.
If you have a few minutes, watch this segment from “The Daily Show.”
It’s worth emphasizing the fact that Fox News personalities got just about every aspect of this story wrong. And by “wrong,” I’m not just referring to areas of judgment and consistency; I mean they told viewers things that aren’t true, making claims with no foundation in reality.
Jon Stewart referred to the network’s “willful misunderstanding of the policy,” and characterized a back-and-forth between Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity as “purposeful idiocy.”
Stewart added, “We’re at the point now that the by far number one ranked news network in this country, no longer feels the need to report what a policy document says in black and white.”
