Friday, August 27, 2010
Boycotting Fox News
A major strand in the Reducing Global Machismo panel at Wiscon was Fox News and its fear and hate-mongering. I wanted to pass along this link to Color Of Change's organized effort to boycott Fox. You can turn off Fox in your household - they'll even give you a free sticker as incentive.
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4 comments:
The problem is that anyone who doesn't agree with Fox News already avoids them. A boycott, in this case, doesn't really mean much to them since they cater to a specific audience that buys into their BS viewpoints.
An organized, visible boycott will mean a great deal more to Fox than the limitation of their audience share. An organized, visible boycott speaks to advertisers. It makes them think twice about paying big bucks sponsoring shows that are offensive & despicable. This has been proven in certain instances of activism directed against egregious talk radio programs where sponsors have withdrawn their support.
TV too: there's a reason Benn Gleck is so dependent on Goldline as a sponsor.
I agree that my saying I'm boycotting Fox News isn't very meaningful, given that I never watch it. However, posting this on Facebook allowed me to discuss it with some of my friends on there, a number of which are conservative, and there was some interesting discussion about it there that (I think) might have allowed some information to be exchanged that wouldn't have otherwise.
One of the things about the link is that it also points to a campaign to tell businesses that are showing Fox News on their televisions that it's a choice that may irritate or annoy some of their customers to the point where it ends up getting switched over to a more neutral channel.
I think it's important to speak out and make one's position clear rather than thinking "Well, I'm not going to persuade anyone, why bother?" I have some relatives who watch Fox News by preference. I'd rather have them thinking "Some people don't watch Fox, I wonder why" and raising that question in their minds than simply being silent.
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