Tag: bias

Many question whether Palin is fit for Fox News, claiming she is “unbalanced”

Briana Hansen1 Comment

Despite the clear excitement from many of her conservative supporters, many people are now wondering how good a choice it was for Fox News to bring Sarah Palin onto their news team.

The news networks slogan for years has clearly been “fair and balanced,” and though they admit to not caring too much about remaining true to it, many people argue that Palin’s addition is a slap in the face to those who believe that the station should be “fair” and “balanced.” For them, Palin is clearly an unbalanced person, with many issues and demons she faces in the public eye every day.

From stepping down from being governor of Alaska midway through her term in order to finish a set of memoirs and go on a lucrative book tour, to preaching abstinence-only education while having a daughter who becomes a teenage mother, some argue Palin is the definition of someone who is unbalanced in both her career and personal life.

When confronted with the hypocrisy, Fox News representatives replied with a simple, “Meh. She’ll get us good ratings we hope.”

Sarah Palin joins Fox News cast; her new makeup artist quips she’s now “Going Rouge”.

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Despite always wearing heavy makeup along the campaign trail to appear fresh and chipper, Sarah Palin faces a new challenge in a world seemingly filled of them for her. She will be a regular commentator on Fox News. This time around, the challenge will be adjusting to having TV makeup put on her before she gets on camera every single time.

Few people are accustomed to the layers of TV makeup that are required in order to look natural on camera. Palin’s new makeup artist, who has been specifically assigned to her every time she goes on air for consistency purposes, joked that Palin is now “Going Rouge” because of the high amount of foundation she’ll be putting on her skin. When making the joke to the former governor, Palin looked at the artist stone faced and said, simply, “It’s Rogue. Going Rogue.” The artist, wanting to make a connection with her new client, joked back, “Oh right-like the X-men!” Palin, remaining stone faced, repeated, “No, like rogue. Like a maverick.” In one final feeble attempt, the artist responded with, “Top Gun style?”. There was a moment of silence between the two woman, which was finally broken by Palin saying, stone faced, “It’s Rogue.”

Despite the pitfalls, the makeup artist still hopes Palin will understand the joke one day and the two can be friends. “At least she didn’t call me the “L” word,” she said. “That liberal title can mean unemployment around here.”

Fox News will replace words with colorful drawings on cue cards for new commentator Sarah Palin

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Upon signing Sarah Palin as a regular guest commentator on Fox News, immediate changes began to be made all over the station to accommodate her. Any coffee mugs from Caribou Coffee were immediately outlawed, for fear that the former governor would shoot at them upon first sight. All the stations women workers were given specific Palin-style glasses, whether or not they had a prescription that needed them. And, perhaps most significantly, her cue cards were agreed to be changed from words to colorful drawings.

While the rest of the Fox News commentators will use large words on their cue cards, Palin’s representatives say she does better with more general, abstract reminders of the points.

For instance, if there’s a debate on healthcare coverage, it’s more helpful for Palin to see a stick figure labeled “Democrat” with bloody knife standing over a stabbed senior citizen and a small picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache in the corner. Or if the discussion is centering around the economy, it’s helpful for Palin to see a picture of Obama with a turban and a Hitler mustache burning a pile of bills. Or, if the discussion is about terrorism, it’s helpful for her to have a picture of Obama with a Stalin hat on top of his turban and a Hitler mustache in a treehouse with a label of “Secret Meeting! No Republicans allowed!” sitting next to Nancy Pelosi, Hilary Clinton, Osama Bin Ladin, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler himself. All of those people would have to be labeled for clarification, but the general gist should be clear enough to give Palin room to riff on the subject matter for a while.

The colors also help keep her attention span, which has been known to wane on occasion. When called out on her inability to stay on a single subject matter for longer than a few moments, she sighs and simply explains, “I am such a woman!”

Fox News admits using different camera angle on new commentator Sarah Palin, in order to accommodate both her legs and her hair.

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New Fox News commentator Sarah Palin is known not only for her hard-line stances on many controversial issues and simple expressions that attempt to reach all Americans. She’s also known for having both brains and beauty. Especially the beauty.

Not since Condoleezza Rice has a person shattered so many stereotypes about what it means to be a woman and conservative. Both Rice and Palin have an extraordinary ability to speak and think like wealthy, old, white men. But, their appearances are quite different.

Palin is what some consider traditionally pretty. She has moderately nice features and puts herself together well. A former beauty pageant contestant, she knows how to hold herself with poise and speak when spoken to, two traits conservative men love.

And conservative men also love her toned legs, which she shows off in both heels and skirts, and her non-threatening updo. For many men, it reminds them that as much power as she might garner, she still cares about what the opposite gender think of her enough to keep her hair long and take time to put it up every morning. And for many conservative women, she is the epitome of retaining elements of your femininity in a liberal world that wants everyone to wear flannel and convert women to lesbianism.

That’s why Fox News will be catering to Palins unique look by creating a very specific camera angle that encompasses both her legs and her hair, to remind viewers why it is they listen to her. That way, they can have the station on mute and still glean all the information from her that they could possibly glean.

When asked to describe this camera angle and how they could possibly always be sure to feature two distinctly different parts of her body, Fox News representatives simply said, “You’ll have to watch and see.”

Sarah Palin gets in fight with TelePrompTer, accusing it of having a liberal bias

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After being hired on as a regular commentator on Fox News, Sarah Palin has already found the latest scoundrel who is trying to make her look stupid because of its own political, liberal bias. The TelePrompTer that she’d been using to read off of.

“That prompter began moving way too fast, making it difficult to read and making me look like I didn’t know what I was saying,” Palin claims. During the incident, Palin began getting flustered, which started with some unnecessary “don’t know knows” coming out of her mouth and culminated in a single strand of hair coming undone from her updo hairstyle.

When asked how she came to the conclusion that it was the TelePrompTer’s own political agenda that had caused the onscreen breakdown she replied, “Two words: Barack Obama.” According to Palin, because Obama has mastered the art of using a TelePrompTer effectively, he has somehow courted the entire community of TelePrompTers and convinced them to slyly undercut the careers of all conservatives he felt threatened by.

Palin claims that members of the liberal media are all part of this grand conspiracy, but nobody will report on it. Except, now, Fox News. Through her.

“These TelePrompTers need to be called out for what they really are, members of the liberal elite,” she says. Needless to say, the TelePrompTer she was using during the aforementioned incident has been fired, and is currently collecting unemployment. “Typical lazy, social-parasite liberal,” Palin added.

The White House refused to comment on the accusations.

Fox News finally admits not caring about being “fair and balanced”

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After days of explaining how their slogan of “fair and balanced” can be justified with hiring of new commentator Sarah Palin, a near demigod to neoconservatives, Fox News representatives have finally admitted to not actually caring about the truth behind their slogan.

“She’ll make us money and attract more of the types of people who watch our programming,” says Rex Freeman, a representative of the station. “Plus, for the types of people who already agree with the overtly biased news we put out, it will seem ‘fair and balanced’ which is all we really care about.”

Fox News came up with the “fair and balanced” slogan after accusations that their news had a clearly conservative bias and spin to their stories. It was their way of saying “nuh-uh!” to many other news stations who went above and beyond to find out all sides of a story before presenting it.

From the beginning of the slogan’s implementation, there was worry that people would think they were a little too over-the-top about it. Like a schoolgirl who blushes and gets flustered when asked if she has a crush on the football team’s captain, adamantly denying that she has any feelings for him at all, Fox News wanted people to know-at least on the surface-that they care about providing good news, not just pandering to a very specific segment of the population and playing up on their fears and worries to make more money.

Despite admitting that the slogan is not exactly the station’s top priority, there is absolutely no talk of getting rid of it. Freeman explains, using the schoolgirl analogy, “You can’t just start saying ‘no comment’ if people ask you if you like somebody. They’re going to assume you do. You have to stay adamant that you don’t, even if it’s obvious the opposite is true.”

Sarah Palin, joining Fox News, redefines meaning of “fair and balanced”

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Since exploding onto the political scene as John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 Presidential election, Sarah Palin has been a influential, often-controversial and polarizing figure for many Americans. Her extremely conservative roots and belief systems, combined with her candid and more simple vocabulary, have catapulted her to the forefront of the neo-conservative movement in the Republican party-especially in the wake of a Democratic sweep in the elections of 2008.

Such a strong political figure commands some sort of strong reaction in the gut of many Americans. Those to the right of center tend to love her, those on the left of center tend to hate her and those in the middle tend to ignore her.

Fox News has hired her on to be a regular commentator and part of their political team. The news outlet, which maintains a slogan of “fair and balanced,” believes that she’ll make a great asset to the team. Both Palin and representatives of the news outlet seem to believe that if you repeat something enough times, even if it has no truth behind it, people will start to believe it. Hence, their repetition of how “fair and balanced” their news source is despite hiring the controversial figure.

“The thing about ‘fair and balanced’ is that its meanings are constantly changing,” explains Rex Freeman, a representative for Fox News. “People think they mean giving a full, and unbiased perspective on a story…and that could be accurate. But we like to think of it as meaning we’ll give a partial and biased version of our perspective of a story so people think we’re smart and like to watch us. That way, we get more ratings and more ratings means we can charge more money for commercial time which means, in turn, our station ends up making more money, which means pay increases all around,” he adds.

Having Palin on the station, a woman who has become notorious for saying rather outlandish or indecipherable things, will be a seeming gold mine for the news station. And working to get more money, to Fox, is the current definition of “fair and balanced.”

Sarah Palin, joining Fox News, misinterprets meaning of “fair and balanced”

Briana Hansen1 Comment

Fox News, who’s news slogan is “fair and balanced”, has brought aboard with conservative icon Sarah Palin to be a new commentator for various programming. Palin agreed to do the shows in part because she believed so strongly in their slogan.

Palin quickly came to realize, however, that her interpretation of the words “fair” and “balanced” was completely different than the more general interpretation of them. An avid movie-watcher, Palin interpreted the word “fair” based on the musical-turned-movie “My Fair Lady.” She figured that meant that Fox News would give her a complete makeover-much like the McCain campaign only without the controversy- and would teach her to speak properly without her debilitating accent. She even hoped for a dance lesson or two, to more properly impress the well-to-do-men that surround her.

As for what “balanced” meant to the former governor of Alaska, she interpreted it to mean what most would consider symmetrical. “I, like Denzel Washington, have a very balanced face, which makes it pleasing to the eye,” she explains. “That’s why I’ll make a great addition to this team.”

When attempting to explain the differences in interpretations to Palin, she simply started laughing and said, “You like you could use a brownie,” and began cooking and humming away to herself.