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2021/9/8

  Today we discussed what we saw in the documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism". First Mr. Paterson taught us about how politics works in America. There are the democrats and republicans, the left-wing and the right-wing, but he also mentioned that democrats are slightly in the right on a global scale of politics. Media are meant to report both sides of these political parties but Fox News went to to the extreme. They became the business of propaganda under Murdoch. Then in class, we discussed events that might have influenced the documentary during the course of creating it; between 2000-2003. In these few years, there was an election between Al Gore and Bush. This was the only American election that was decided by the supreme court and not the citizens. Gore and Bush had very close votes, and Gore requested a recount since the election was a mess. But since there was a risk that Bush might lose their party declined and eventually the supreme court had to decide for them. Bush won 5-4 and won the election but Americans were not happy about it so Bush started off with a bad reputation. This made Fox News show full support towards Bush and his party and exaggeratively report his actions. 
  I lived in America before but I didn't watch Fox News so it was very interesting to learn about it. I moved back to Japan during the 2016 election and I was in California, a blue state, so I wasn't in touch with these kinds of topics. But with the current situation of Covid-19 and the pandemic, I see lots of clips of Fox News trying to stop mask mandates claiming that it's against the constitution. I also see people citing Fox News to back up their claim. It makes me wonder what they are exposed to every day. It scares me how we can be easily manipulated by the information we are exposed to. This goes both ways because CNN became the Fox News for democrats and watching these channels will narrow perspectives. 

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