President Obama gave a speech today in which he outlined a "framework" he hopes will break the logjam in Congress and fuel more economic growth for the middle class. But Fox News decided not to air the speech, just repeatedly criticize it. Talk about "We don't report, we just decide!"
Media Matters writes:
As the speech started, rather than airing the president's remarks, Fox brought on guest Chris Stirewalt to continue the network's general attack on his policy proposals without any context from the actual speech. Stirewalt explained that the speech offered little pragmatic solutions, and was solely based around the president's alleged desire to show he is willing to compromise.
Similarly, Your World turned to Herman Cain for a segment criticizing the speech and Special Report made sure to report on Republican reaction to the speech - as if the network hadn't already done enough of that.
Can you imagine if Fox reported on the Zimmerman verdict by not showing verdict, just their commenters giving it a big thumbs up? Instead of reporting election results, Stirewalt just tells us if it's good news or bad? Or how about a baseball game where the announcer just told you how badly the fielding sucked?
Of course, they would never do that. That is, unless showing the actual news was expected to provide an outcome that was too favorable to Democrats.
As I mentioned over at Media Matters on this subject
(http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/30/fox-attacks-obamas-economic-agenda-ignores-actu/195132#disqus_thread) — the trolls are on fire in that one — it would do no good for Fox to broadcast the President’s speech in its entirety, for two reasons:
1. Broadcasting the President’s words, verbatim, makes it that much more difficult for the Fox pundits to put words in his mouth, and
2. The vast majority of Fox’s demographic is unable to comprehend polysyllabic words, anyway
.