Years ago, Fox News came up with a brilliant strategy. The idea was to build a media empire by projecting bias on other news agencies while attempting to paint themselves as something different. After all, you have to present a negative before offering a solution to the problem. So they invented a negative image to perpetuate their projected ‘positive’ idea. The “Fair and Balanced” (FAB) marketing method was born.
Unequaled data certainly deserves equal time, right?
To begin with, Fox News attempted to offer equal time on their shows to members of each party and political spectrum. Many will argue that they offered insincere or weak spokespeople for the ideals they disagreed with, but that isn’t what we will be analyzing. The point is that they presented the idea that regardless of facts, truth, or verifiability, they would allow equal time to each side of an argument.
The way that Fox injected this new marketing method was a novel concept. It paved the way for weaker and less intelligent debate. By convincing a large portion of the populace that each side deserves equal time, EVEN WHEN PROVEN WRONG, LYING, DISHONEST, FACTUALLY INCORRECT…etc.
(lowercase all of this, you will prove your point with the following facts).As a result, a large swath of the American public now believes that equal time has to be allotted to items that have already been proven completely wrong time and time again. Effectively, this process has elevated the marketing of dishonesty along with lowering the value of verifiable data.
It should be pointed out that these same people (what people? Fox?) are completely against the Fairness Doctrine (define), while they are demanding it’s practice (just for the least intelligent side of debates). Think about that: the very same people who oppose “equal time for equal debate” are the ones crying, “fair and balanced” when their known lies are dismissed as irrelevant.
While I take no specific interests in the political aspects of the FAB talking heads, the implications on online marketing and deceptive practices have been enormous.
Because paranoid people offer the best advice.
Everyone from the (is Natural News a company? If not, lowercase. If it is, then capitalize “food bank”)Natural News food bank scams to Anti-Monsanto social media advocates are now using the FAB method to disarm debates and sway members of the audience with non-arguments. (That’s a long ass sentence, break it into two?) These non-arguments include straw-man tactics, dishonest comparisons, bogus science (natural news (company?) being the king of this one) and other variations of attacks on facts. Conspiracy theorists have even used this method to project lack of arguments (ie. people writing their theories off as mentally challenged and refusing to engage them) as verification of their theories. The practice has become a pervasive manifestation of the modern marketing model and even those who despise the “Faux Noise” (?) organization utilize the same practice day in and day out.
Currently there is a debate on the suicide of Officer Joe Gliniewicz. Even while the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that it was indeed a suicide, those who refuse to accept it are demanding equal airtime for their purported theories and invented stories that have no factual or realistic basis. The result is a social media debate on almost every Chicago area news page that is pushing traffic higher and higher. The media groups now have only to put out the story and allow this poor debate model to run itself. It’s for instances like these that we believe the FAB mentality has become a poisoned pill to all forms of cultural debate.
Even while speaking with people who had just watched a political debate, we found the same marketing practice manifested in their post-debate conversations. After this most recent debate, one person at the coffee shop immediately opened tabs to a few “fact checking sites”. He was quick to point out the painfully obvious lies, mischaracterizations, exaggerations, and blatantly false statements used in the debate. Rather than listen to the fact driven responses he was calling out, several people from the audience quickly said something to the effect of ,“He should have just as much time to voice his thoughts as anyone else”. Yes, in political debate, where facts can literally decide wars, fortunes and financial collapse, people are wanting to skip on the demand for honesty and instead demand equal time for any statements, regardless of how ridiculous these statements can be. (too long of a sentence)
The FAB model, as was most likely intended, has dumbed down the populace to be marketed ideas, topics, sales devices, fear driven products, and complete lies with impunity. No longer are arguments simply ignored because they lack credibility or factual backing. No longer are ideas discarded because data shows them to be false.
This is only funny because we all know someone who might actually do it.
Social workers we spoke to for this article note that this manner of discounting reality could even be pervasive within individual choice reasoning that is leading to a more imprisoned populace. When people are allowing equal time for false, negative and improper ideals to be spoken, it can logically be assumed that they are also allowing these falsehoods equal time within their own minds. Let that sink in, the prudes (opinionated term, your reasoning should paint them as prudes) at Fox may have led us to a more deviant society. Impulse control and situational reasoning has been damaged in our society. It isn’t absurd to theorize a connection between this constant push for equal time of all ideas, even those ideas, ideals, and concepts that are completely wrong.
We think the patterns of response from the FAB open a wide door of deceptive and vulture marketing while closing the door on common-sense. Many in the consumer protection bureaus are aware of the degeneration of consumer defenses in the modern market, but it would be interesting to know how many are linking this degradation to the Fair and Balanced model. It would seem the model was created only for the public to limit their ability to perform viable pro and con debate within their communities and also within their own minds. The repercussions of which could be quite damaging to society and culture itself.
